Monday, June 27, 2016
From Ian:
Prager U Video: Why Don't Feminists Fight for Muslim Women
Phyllis Chesler: The American Gulag
Prager U Video: Why Don't Feminists Fight for Muslim Women
Are women oppressed in Muslim countries? What about in Islamic enclaves in the West? Are these places violating or fulfilling the Quran and Islamic law?Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Why Don't Feminists Fight for Muslim Women?
In Prager University's newest video, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an author and activist who was raised a devout Muslim, describes the human rights crisis of our time, asks why feminists in the West don't seem to care, and explains why immigration to the West from the Middle East means this issue matters more than ever.
Culture matters. It ‘s the primary source of social progress or regression. Nowhere do we see this more clearly than in the status of women. The Judeo-Christian culture -- and perhaps a more apt word is civilization -- has produced over time the law codes, language and material prosperity that have greatly elevated women's status.
But this progress is not shared everywhere.
There are still hundreds of millions of people that live in a culture -- the Islamic, for instance -- that takes female inferiority for granted. Until recently, these cultures -- the Western and the Islamic -- were, for the most part, separated. But that is changing. Dramatically so.
Large numbers of immigrant men from the Middle East, South Asia and various parts of Africa have brought a different set of values to the West, specifically Europe. More than a million arrived in 2015 alone. More are on the way.
As a result, crimes against girls and women -- groping, harassments, assaults and rape - have risen sharply. These crimes illustrate the stark difference between the Western culture of the victims and that of the perpetrators.
Phyllis Chesler: The American Gulag
Left censorship is going from bad to worse.Western Universities: The Best Indoctrination Money Can Buy
For years, beginning in 2003, I have personally faced both censorship and demonization. When I began publishing pieces about anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, and Islamic gender and religious apartheid at conservative sites, I was seen as having "gone over to the dark side," as having joined the legion of enemies against all that was right and good.
My former easy and frequent access to left-liberal venues was over. I learned, early on, about the soft censorship of the Left, the American version of the Soviet Gulag. One could think, write, and even publish but it would be as if one had not spoken--although one would still be constantly attacked for where one published as much as for what one published.
Since then, Left censorship has only gotten worse. (There is also censorship on the Right--but not quite as much.)
A week ago, a colleague of mine was thrilled that a mainstream newspaper had reached out to him for a piece about the violent customs of many male Muslim immigrants to Europe. He discovered, to his shock, that his piece had been edited in a way that turned his argument upside down and ended up sounding like American Attorney General Loretta Lynch's view, namely, that home-grown terrorists need "love and compassion," not profiling or detention.
I told him: One more left-liberal newspaper has just bitten the Orwellian dust. He could expose this use of his reasoned view for propaganda purposes--or wear out his welcome at this distinguished venue.
The tendency of modern liberals to wring apologies out of governments for the actions of their ancestors, from the slave trade to Orientalist depictions of the peoples of Islam, is a pointless attempt to re-write history. There are, of course, no calls for Muslim governments to apologize for anything from their slave trade to the early Arab conquests.
"The ethics of establishing a campus in an authoritarian country are murky, especially when it inhibits free expression." -- Professor Stephen F. Eisenman, Northwestern University (which has a branch in Qatar)
Oxford and Cambridge, have accepted more than 233.5 million pounds sterling from Saudi and Muslim sources since 1995 -- the largest source of external funding to UK universities.
"Several agreements made between the MEC [Oxford's Middle East Centre] and donors appear to indicate that funders have sought to influence the centre's output and activities." -- Robin Simcox, A Degree of Influence, 2009, p.35
One of those "dilemmas" is the influence by teachers across the United States on impressionable students who organize Israel Apartheid Weeks. They join with assorted anti-Semitic demonstrators, condemn Israel for every sin under the sun, and use intimidation against Jewish and Zionist colleagues, but are never told any historical, legal, or political facts by their equally biased faculties.
