Archives

The new culture wars

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Oct 21, 2007

Today’s Sunday Times quotes me, among others, to analyze the “new culture wars” — the moral confusion that arises when multiculturalism calcifies into a dogmatic religion.

Example: How can Queers for Palestine ignore the fact that to be openly gay in the Palestinian territories is to to invite serious homophobic hostility? I’d support any movement of “Queers for Liberation,” since the title would suggest liberation from Islamist colonizers as much as from Israeli occupiers. But that’s not the logic of Queers for Palestine.

Moreover, how can feminists stay quiet about the abuse of women under most forms of Sharia law? If feminists view patriarchy as global, then differences in culture shouldn’t compel us to hit the mental mute button whenever Muslim men start speaking.

That’s the moral confusion of the new culture wars.

Happily, however, reason still has a fighting chance. The silence of Western feminists is being challenged — by Western feminists themselves.

This month, Sheila Jackson-Lee, a Democrat in the US House of Representatives, introduced legislation to condemn honor killings and other forms of cultural terrorism against women. Better still, publicly supporting her is none other than the National Organization for Women (NOW), the American feminist lobby.

Why is that news? Because right-wing media regularly criticize NOW for dismissing the plight of Muslim women. Well, mainstream US feminists have “officially” spoken — yet I don’t recall seeing any of them on television lately.

Where are the conservative talk show hosts NOW?

Frankly, they should be clamoring to book the president of NOW, Kim Gandy. Here are key quotes from her statement in support of Rep. Jackson-Lee’s brave measure, known as House Resolution 32:

• The United States must call strongly for the protection of the millions of women who will become victims of stoning, stabbing, maiming, forced suicide, beheadings, acid throwing and many other cruel punishments with the false justification of “family honor.”
• H. Res. 32 begins an essential process to engage other nations in a dialogue about the treatment of women within their borders [highlighting mine].

• The world’s leaders must stand up for women who have no voice. NOW has made a commitment to help in the global effort to rid of this oppression against women.

With straight talk like this, you’d think Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Tammy Bruce, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and others would be scrambling to have Kim Gandy on their programs. Why haven’t their producers phoned? Or have they — only to find that NOW is hiding? I don’t know the answer.

What I do know is this: NOW needs to reveal that a few years ago it tried to organize a press conference about defending Muslim women from the excesses of Islamist power. That press conference never happened because, ironically, the American media’s obsession with national security made “other” Islamic issues irrelevant.

But women’s rights abroad aren’t divorced from security at home. September 11 taught us that the entire world is our backyard. The Taliban began by attacking Afghani women and, with our indifference, went on to help Bin Laden’s minions execute their assaults on 3,000-plus workers in New York City.

The lesson: What happens to some of us thousands of miles away can wind up affecting each of us.

If you believe, as I do, that every creature on God’s green Earth is entitled to a basic set of dignities, then human rights are universal. And that suggests it’s everybody’s business to protect human rights, even when we’re told that different cultures do things in different ways.

Let me draw an ultra-important distinction: Although human beings are born equal, cultures are not. Cultures aren’t born at all; they’re constructed. Human-made. More often, man-made. Which means there’s nothing sacred about them.

In turn, that means there’s nothing blasphemous about reforming the most malignant aspects of cultures, including crimes committed under the custom of honor.

To the feminists of NOW, I, as a Muslim woman, say simply: You go, girls!

And to the orthodox multiculturalists who insist that “white women” have no right to pronounce on the lives of Muslim women, deal with this: Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee is an African-American from Texas. She knows racists.

I dare you to declare her one.