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rfmcdonaldReturning to the recent murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, Abiola Lapite has a post up criticizing Rohan Jayasekera's article. Jayasekera makes some good points concerning the marginalization of the Dutch Muslim immigrant community and van Gogh's extremely provocative language.
He fails completely to recognize, though, that there are indeed serious issues concerning the rights of women which do need to be addressed, somehow. As Yule Heibel (linked to by Lapite, and who wrote another interesting article touching upon the rights of women in Muslim immigrant communities) notes, Jayasekera
Jayasekera does the same thing that I caught Haroon Siddiqui doing in the course of a fisking back in June. Acceptable Muslim women are those who respect Muslim religious tenets, as defined by Muslim conservatives. Muslim women who do not respect these tenets, or who challenge them outright, are "troubled," and "unrepresentative," and really, just as incapable of offering critiques of cultural practices as the conservatives say that they are.
What a charming combination of misogyny and racism this is.
He fails completely to recognize, though, that there are indeed serious issues concerning the rights of women which do need to be addressed, somehow. As Yule Heibel (linked to by Lapite, and who wrote another interesting article touching upon the rights of women in Muslim immigrant communities) notes, Jayasekera
doesn't once mention women's issues, except to execute Hirsi Ali through character assassination:Artistically van Gogh's shock-horror work looked juvenile. And his working relationship with the Somalia-born Dutch MP Ayann Hirsi Ali - a lost soul, tormented by personal experience and embittered into a traumatic loss of faith - appeared faintly exploitative. [More...]
And now you know why I'm a feminist, and why I'll tell the leftwing progressives to take a hike when push comes to shove. The guy who so casually but viciously dismisses as mentally unbalanced a woman who in merely ten years worked her way into Dutch society, learned the language, went to university, and became a member of parliament.
Jayasekera does the same thing that I caught Haroon Siddiqui doing in the course of a fisking back in June. Acceptable Muslim women are those who respect Muslim religious tenets, as defined by Muslim conservatives. Muslim women who do not respect these tenets, or who challenge them outright, are "troubled," and "unrepresentative," and really, just as incapable of offering critiques of cultural practices as the conservatives say that they are.
What a charming combination of misogyny and racism this is.
