Infidel: Wimpy Misogynism

The reason the new, pure Islam of the Muslim Brothehood requires absolute separation of men and women, and hiding women in the anonymous hijab? The men are scared of the women!

From Infidel:

As women, we were immensely powerful, Sister Aziza explained. The way Allah had created us, our hair, our nails, our heels, our neck, and ankles - every little curve in our body was arousing. If a woman aroused a man who was not her husband, she was sinning doubly in God's eyes, by leading the man into temptation and evil thoughts to match her own. Only the robe worn by the wives of the Prophet could prevent us from arousing men and leading society into fitna, uncontrollable confusion and social chaos.

The woman's form created to be arousing to a man? Check.
Deliberately leading men into temptation is sin? With you so far.
Wearing the hijab and social chaos are mutually exclusive? Whoa! Stop right there!

Women are so powerful that they must be covered up, and men are so weak that they can't be trusted to be responsible for their thoughts and actions. Going to this extreme is an easy way for men to avoid the nuisance of personal morality and responsibility. That said, I'm not sure the pendulum hasn't swung too far the other way in the Western world.

Redefining the Family?

Front page news in the Globe and Mail this morning: Canadians Redefining the Family. The article of course, reported some of the statistics from the latest Canadian census. Special attention was paid to the falling rates of married couples, young women with kids, number of kids per family, etc.

The family being the basic unit of society and civilization, it is proper to be concerned with its health and status. But the Globe and Mail's primary interest isn't how the size of families or the number of single-parent families have changed. It deliberately ties the phrase "redefining the family" to stats on same-sex "marriages" and couples. It wants its readers to consider a same-sex couple a family. The Globe and Mail wants you to know that the debate is over, and you might as well shut up and get used to it. Same-sex "families" are here to stay.

Here follows the first paragraph under the headline of a similar story on the Globe and Mail website:

The redefinition of family continues apace in Canada, with the latest household figures from the 2006 census showing a significant increase in the number of same-sex couples and a first-ever count of same-sex marriages.

Four of the article's first five paragraphs are about same-sex couples. For the Globe and Mail, this is the most important aspect of the census.

A family is a family, and regardless of what Canadians do, they cannot change its definition. But the Globe and Mail is trying anyway, by implicitly and explicitly equating same-sex households with families. And it just can't resist shilling for them at every little opportunity.

Infidel: African Political Systems in the 70s

I'm doing a second reading of Infidel, Hirsi Ali's memoir.

Largely due to her father's involvement in the resistance against the Somali leader Siad Barré, Hirsi Ali was moved from country to country. She was born in Somalia, lived in Mecca and Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, and then briefly in Ethiopia before moving to Kenya.

Right before she discusses the move to Kenya, she offers this gem of a reflection on the political systems she had lived under:

That is how, by the time I turned ten, I had lived through three different political systems, all of them failures. The police state in Mogadishu rationed people into hunger and bombed them into obedience. Islamic law in Saudi Arabia treated half its citizens like animals, with no rights or recourse, disposing of women without regard. And the old Somali rule of the clan, which saved you when you needed refuge, so easily broke down into suspicion, conspiracy, and revenge. (p.60)

No wonder she can not subscribe to the PC relativist notion that all civilizations and political systems are equal.