"These cultural issues and customs have nothing to do with Islam."

True enough, in the sense that they are not prescribed in the Koran.

But why are they practiced by so many Muslims?

Of course, given the choice of which to believe---written words or empirical evidence--- one should ignore observation and give all credence to the words.

Tribalism, trumps religion.

STOCKHOLM SYNDROME

Ah, the balanced perspective of a new convert! It's traditionally regarded as the most refined form of wisdom, don't you know.

Yeah right Ridley, I'm sure the universally dismal state of women's rights in the Muslim world is just some sort of strange coincidence, and has nothing to do with the book that's the source of all law in those parts. I'm sure all the women of Iran, for instance, are totally happy with their enforced public wardrobe.

But OJ is partly right: this isn't really just about women. It's about defending modern Judeo-Christian-Greco-Roman civilization from a force that wants to destroy it.

Ridley is right in a way.

Islam is not only about liberating women. It's about liberating all of mankind.

Last sentence of the article: "Now you tell me who is civilized and who is not."

Glad you asked. Civilized > Laws against killing a fellow human; Uncivilized > Laws promoting killing a fellow human.

Everything else is blather.

BTW - Barry did you forget the s/on and s/off on your comment?

ERP:

Yes, abortion and euthanasia certainly make us uncivilized. But capital punishment and the like are the basis of our civilization.

The folks going after veils are the same ones after the cross. It's not about Islam.

Barry:

Which is why it, like Christianity, has such an easy time winning converts. Very scary to the seculars.

Which is why Paul is the Founder of Christianity.

Thirty years ago the people who've fallen in love with the veil would have gone on about how wonderful the "making of omelets" was going on Southeeast Asia (or a decade earlier in China), or how "liberation theology" was a form of religion they could finally support. Never underestimate the intellectualloids' willingness to defend those who would destroy them first should they ever take power. But the intellectualoid believes this will never happen, so it's okay to consign "the other" to societies that the intellectualloid would never tolerate for himself.

Again, we can apply analogy-by-OJ, this time using one of his anti-Darwinian tropes. The oppression of women in the Muslim world is not a case of tribalism trumping religion. It is simply a case of applied religion.

Application of Islam liberates them. Tribal tradition oppresses. The great value of the religions of Abraham is that they are universal and destroy tribalism. That's why we have such an easy time assimilating peop-le while the Darwinist Europeans can't.

It's secular intellectuals who are fighting the veil and the cross, because they tend to "divide" us--they happen to have found some useful idiot Islamophobes who don't understand the stakes.

Poor Forrest Gump. So easily forgotten....

I don't understand what she is trying to say. She lumps the veil in with honor killings, child marriage, and female circumcision and says these things are not Islamic (which is true), and that we unfairly blame Islam for these cultural malignancies (which is also true). Then she turns around and tells us that since she became a Muslim she realizes the veil is a-ok and that we should all be tolerant of it. She is very confused.

Notice that she rejects straw men arguments against Islam and then uses them against the west. Take down here:

http://feminine-genius.typepad.com/femininegenius/2006/10/battle_of_the_s.html

Around here, "Islam" is what "Communism" was back in the '80s to various intellectualoids, something "great in theory" and something whose innumerable flaws need to be rationalized away.

Islamophiles talk about all the wonderful things that the theory is supposed to bring ("A careful reading of the Koran shows that just about everything that Western feminists fought for in the 1970s was available to Muslim women 1,400 years ago.") and then completely ignore how that theory has been implemented. We've got over a millennia of Applied Islam from which to judge whether it will change for the better, and those promises to women, for example, haven't been met. If Islam still can't fulfill it's promises after a millenium, then thinking it'll magically start in the next year or two is self-delusion. The tribalism is an inherent part of Islam, and no amount of "Abrahamic" wishful thinking will hide that.

I believe it was Harry Eagar, years ago now, who first pointed out here that while OJ may be correct in attributing so many of the cultural advances that have led to capitalist democracy to the efforts of Christians and even the Church, it was not until said Church had a secular Enlightenment to deal with that it could be bothered. Applied Christianity was a disaster until it had competition.

Raoul: Indeed.

M.: Yes, plus Christianity was built on many aspects of Greek and Roman thought, which produced a civilization with a lot of hybrid vigor.

The great value of the religions of Abraham is that they are universal and destroy tribalism.

Then why are all the areas where Islam is dominant still very tribal?

It must be difficult (sometimes) for a professor at an Egyptian university, or for an imam in Istanbul, or for a doctor in Morocco, or for this writer, to see how Islam is practiced in parts of Nigeria, Sudan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Indonesia. Or how things are done in Gaza. Or Tehran. Or Damascus. Or Baghdad. Or even Paris.

But I'm guessing it's not that difficult, at least for Ms. Ridley.

Yvonne Ridley is a member of George Galloway's RESPECT party - check out the link at CaptainsQuarters.

And let's see the Islamophiles rationalize away this gem. More likely they're just gonna sweep into the Memory Hole (which someone has got to empty soon, as it's getting clogged with this sort of stuff.)

The Chechen cause is just and they'll win in the end.