Sharia Law: Legal Abuse of Girls and Women
When proponents of Sharia Law organize national Women’s Marches it is time to ask questions. Do organizers Linda Sarsour and Gloria Steinem have the same objectives when they raise their fists in solidarity?
It looks like the Women’s Movement, a liberation movement I have proudly embraced, is being used for something other than Women’s Rights.
Since when do laws privileging male dominance over women fit into this struggle?
As Alternative Facts run rampant, liberal values are turned upside down when Gloria Steinem raises her fist with Sarsour and Rachel Maddow buys into Sarsour’s America being Islamophobic for fighting Sharia Law.
Did Maddow see Sarsour’s crude attack against Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a woman who continues to try to bring to light the dark night forced upon women in countries operating under Sharia? Was Maddow aware of Sarsour’s vicious tweets and taunts on Hirsi Ali after the film “The Honor Diaries” was released? How Hirsi Ali should have her vagina ripped off for speaking out against genital mutilation and forced marriage, which Hirsi Ali endured and fled?
If a woman wants to dress modesty and cover her hair, there is plenty of room to do that in the United States. Modesty is freely practiced. But when a promoter of Sharia bemoans “Islamophobic” anti-Sharia laws and Maddow cries with her, I cry over the cunning manipulation we in the free world are prey to.
It is not Islamophobic to be against Sharia any more than it is sexist to arrest men who batter women.
The Women marched in the free world in the spirit of not going backwards. Sarsour’s belief system goes backwards further than the existence of the United States. Sharia law is poison for women trapped in countries that devalue and oppress and sit on their heads, crush their spirit and their minds. Sharia law is legalized abuse of women and girls.
In the United States we strive to criminalize not elevate abuse towards women.
We have laws set up to prevent and care for abused women. Battering women, rape, clitoral mutilation and forced marriage are against the law. Women have equal rights in divorce. We don’t elevate the most primitive forms of sexism and turn them into some kind of “cultural” curiosity.
Women under Sharia law are dominated by their fathers and brothers and uncles in ways American women used to having civil rights cannot imagine. Accepting these unspeakable laws are not a choice in Islamic countries where Sharia is the law. Women dressed “immodestly” are dragged off the streets and beaten. Women are stoned in public for disobeying, for shaming their family, the men. They live in fear.
There is no choice, freedom is not for females. For free women to carte blanche Sharia law as if has a place in the women’s movement instead of anti- Sharia posters, and fighting for women who cannot speak up is a disgrace. We are aiding and abetting a hideous culture of male dominance over millions of girls and women buried alive under Sharia. We need to speak up, Hirsi Ali reminds us tirelessly, “because they cannot.”
It might appear hip and cool and maybe even sexy to have sharia observant women lay hijabs on the heads of well-meaning marchers if it wasn’t so manipulative and ultimately misguided. wearing a head covering is not a big deal if it’s a choice. Being beaten, forced to cover up, owned as property, forced into marriage and treated like a lesser human being is a big deal, and it is never a “choice.”
Fact is, it’s not hip cool or humane for millions of women who are seriously deeply and heartbreakingly oppressed by these very laws and would do anything to rip these laws off their bodies if they could. If they could speak up without having to face consequences we in the free world don’t want to imagine, they would. In a heartbeat.
For the women marching against losing control of our lives it is ludicrous to allow proponents of Sharia law behave as if they are leaders in Women’s Liberation.
Sharia is antithetical to freedom for women. It is about male control of every female’s life from birth to death.
You can’t have it both ways, freedom means choice, and Sharia is anything but that.
Originally posted on Huffington Post.
