Muslim Women Speak

The Gallup organization recently surveyed Muslim women, asking what they wanted in their lives. Oddly enough, few in the West have ever thought to do this. Instead, Western feminists are content to decide for them what Muslim women ought to want. Patronizing; but feminism generally does not believe women can or should think for themselves.

Of 8,000 women surveyed, not one cited the burqa or chador as oppressive.

Why would they? Despite an obsessive concern with them in the West, the wearing of the veil is voluntary. Muslim women wear it if they want to.

That Western women imagine this is somehow an important issue shows, firstly, how very little they have to worry about. If nothing else, having time and concern for such trivial matters demonstrates that they can hardly be oppressed.

But second, I think, it shows that Western feminism is not really about rights for women at all. It is about sex, and the right to advertise for casual sex. Otherwise clothes would not be an issue.

Muslim women have the West pegged on this one. “When asked what they least admired about the West, they said moral decay, promiscuity and pornography, which degraded women.”

Conversely, the women said the “best aspect of their cultures was their countries' ‘attachment to moral and spiritual values.’” Things like wearing the chador, to express their spirituality and lack of interest in material things.

Their chief concern was to get the vote, to end corruption, and to unify the Arab world. But these are not “women’s issues”—men in the Middle East seek these as well.

Middle East Online