Feminism as a “movement” in America is largely played out. The work here is mostly done. The good news for those who want to continue the fight for women is that there is plenty of work left to do — abroad.
The plight of women in other countries is not only dire, it’s central to global poverty and the War on Terror. Jihadism is largely a male problem — no surprise, given that jihadis commit mass murder in pursuit of a virgin bonus in the afterlife.
Islamist extremism and oppression of women go hand in hand. While the correlation between poverty and terrorism is often overstated, the correlation between prosperity and women’s liberation is profound. Female education is tightly linked with GDP growth, lower birthrates and even higher agricultural yields.
It’s also tightly linked with human freedom and decency, which is why no Islamic “spring” is possible without a feminist revolution. Countless Islamist countries practice gender apartheid and countenance wife-beating, honor killings and female genital mutilation. Islamist radicals have thrown acid in the faces of young girls for trying to go to school.
In Turkey, long the crown jewel of secular, modern and moderate Islam, the murder rate of women has risen 1,400 percent since the country lurched toward Islamism, notes my American Enterprise Institute colleague Michael Rubin. In Egypt, those who hoped for a secular and democratic revolution are dismayed by the army’s burgeoning partnership with the Muslim Brotherhood and reports that the military forced “virginity tests” on female protesters taken from Tahrir Square.
After being admitted to the UN Commission on the Status of Women, Iran shepherded to passage the only resolution this session aimed at a specific country: Apparently, Israel holds back Palestinian women somehow.
Meanwhile, as Omni Ceren of Commentary has noted, “Iranian prison guards rape female dissidents before executing them, lest their victims go to heaven as virgins. Iranian men get to avail themselves of temporary marriages, de facto legalizing the institutionalized slavery and rape of prepubescent girls. Iranian women are consigned to the backs of buses, have to shroud their bodies from head to toe.”
But there are signs of hope, too. In a widely circulating video, Veena Malik, a Pakistani model and actress, tears apart a smug Islamist mullah berating her for being “un-Islamic.” Not only does she stand up for a modern, humane Islam that can tolerate women and “fun,” she tells the cleric, “I am more angry with you people than you are with me.”
Malik offers heroic moral clarity that should cheer anyone who has lamented the lack of moderate Muslims willing to condemn the extremists.
And she offers a reminder for us all that the real war for women’s equality is now a battle to be fought in foreign lands.
JonahsColumn@aol.com