"Who Speaks For The Thousands of Women Oppressed & Abused [By Islam] Every Day?" (video)

Evidently not the western liberals who readily betray the rights of girls and women on the altar of appeasement and political correctness when the oppressors are of the Islamic sort.

It's great to see the ever courageous Chloé Valdary giving Fred Lawrence and Brandeis University a  (polite) blast.

They Hang Women, Don't They?

Is there any sight more despicably hypocritical than a left-liberal paying obeisance to Islamo-fascism and betraying Western liberal values as a result?

Consider this extract from a letter that 87 faculty members at Brandeis University sent to president Frederick Lawrence, successfully imploring him to overturn the university's commitment to honour one of the most courageous female public figures in the world?

"Please know that, like Ms. Hirsi Ali, we fully recognize the harm of forced marriages; of female genital cutting, which can cause, among other public health problems, increased maternal and infant mortality; and of honor killings. These phenomena are not, however, exclusive to Islam.

The selection of Ms. Hirsi Ali further suggests to the public that violence toward girls and women is particular to Islam or the Two-Thirds World, thereby obscuring such violence in our midst among non-Muslims, including on our own campus.... We cannot accept Ms. Hirsi Ali's triumphalist narrative of western civilization, rooted in a core belief of the cultural backwardness of non-western peoples."

Note, if you will, the neglect in the first quoted sentence to acknowledge the fact that female genital mutilation is a crime against the person of the female herself: note the fact that the signatories, to their shame, consider only the effects of the practice on "public health" in the form of its possible deleterious effects on the mutilated female in childbirth, and upon her infant.

It is almost as if the signatories do not consider a female at risk of that barbaric Third World procedure an individual in her own right, as if by some strange osmosis they are projecting primitive misogynistic Third World attitudes towards women onto the females of such "cultures".

Note, too, the dismissive attitude to "honor" killings (yes, inverted commas around that word "honor" should be de rigueur in all politically correct circles, since malecentric femicide is what these killings represent, based on the concept of women as infantile and inferior chattels of their male relatives.

Ah, but what is that document if not an example of the cultural relativist's sophistry, an insistence that all cultures are as good, or perhaps I should say as bad, as each other? 

In my previous post I mentioned, inter alia, the plight of an Iranian woman who is due to be hanged in that hellhole for the female of the species (see this article on the execution of Iranian women), and now comes word that another women is in danger of the Iranian noose:

'Roya Nobakht, 47, presently being detained as a political prisoner in Iran, may face execution for insulting Islam. She has lived in Stockport, England with her husband for the last six years and holds dual British-Iranian citizenship.

Her husband, Daryoush Taghipoor, has stated that his wife was arrested while visiting a friend at Iran's Shiraz airport last October for comments she had made on a Facebook group calling the government of Iran "too Islamic." According to a copy of her charge sheet seen by the UK's Independent [newspaper]; she was transferred to Tehran and charged with "gathering and participation with intent to commit crimes against national security and insulting Islamic sanctities"-- crimes punishable by death.

In an interview, Mr. Taghipoor told the Manchester Evening News that "his wife is not well at all...she has lost three stones [42 lbs]… and is scared that the government will kill her." He also said that a confession had been extracted from his wife "under duress." As is well documented, torture is systematically used by Iranian authorities to obtain confessions from political dissidents and even from some common prisoners....'

 The report continues:

'Ms. Nobakht's fears are not unfounded. Iran's persecution of expatriates is nothing new. The first known case was that of Ms. Zahra Kazemi, a Canadian-Iranian photojournalist who died under torture in 2003 while in custody. Ms. Zahara Bahrami, a Dutch-Iranian, was hanged in 2011....

 Ms Zahra Kazemi, a Canadian-Iranian photojournalist who had left Iran in 1974, returned in 2003 to cover a story about Iran. She was soon arrested and detained in Evin prison on charges of espionage. As Iran does not recognize dual citizenships, Ms. Kazemi was not allowed representation by Canadian authorities. She later died in custody. The Iranian officials claimed she had died as a result of a stroke but refused to return her body to Canada. In 2005, however, Dr. Shahram Azam, a doctor with the Iranian security forces who had examined Ms. Kazemi's half-dead body, fled Iran. He testified that the victim's body showed extensive signs of torture administered over a few days. The notes from his medical journal include a crushed toe, broken fingers, missing finger nails, broken ribs, a skull fracture, severe abdominal bruising, marks of flogging on her back and feet, extensive damage to the genitals and peculiar deep scratches on her neck. She was 52 years old and the first victim of the Islamic regime's war of terror on Iranians holding dual citizenship.... '

 Read more here

The last woman to be hanged in Britain went to the gallows in 1956; she was a criminal's moll and had been involved in a murder.  Her name was Ruth Ellis, and the left-liberals of the day were up in arms; their campaign against capital punishment, spearheaded by the Labour MP Sydney Silverman, succeeded in 1965.

I wonder how many of the left-liberal brigade will be up in arms over the fate that in all likelihood  awaits Roya Nobakht.

In the United States opponents of the death penalty (abolished in some states, but not in others) like to say that it is "cruel and unusual punishment".

What, I wonder, do the Brandeis University cultural relativists who signed that despicable faculty letter make of Iran's penchant for sending people to the gallows, including women?

Will they, and others of their ilk, consider it "cruel and unusual punishment"?

Or, seeing as it's based on Islamic injustice justice, will they merely shrug and say:

"We cannot accept [a]triumphalist narrative of western civilization, rooted in a core belief of the cultural backwardness of non-western peoples"

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Sign the petition

From Washington Free Beacon (see below)

"I stand before you as someone who is fighting for women's and girls' basic rights globally. And I stand before you as someone who is not afraid to ask difficult questions about the role of religion in that fight.

The connection between violence, particularly violence against women, and Islam is too clear to be ignored. We do no favors to students, faculty, nonbelievers and people of faith when we shut our eyes to this link, when we excuse rather than reflect.

So I ask: Is the concept of holy war compatible with our ideal of religious toleration? Is it blasphemy—punishable by death—to question the applicability of certain seventh-century doctrines to our own era? Both Christianity and Judaism have had their eras of reform. I would argue that the time has come for a Muslim Reformation.

Is such an argument inadmissible? It surely should not be at a university that was founded in the wake of the Holocaust, at a time when many American universities still imposed quotas on Jews.

The motto of Brandeis University is "Truth even unto its innermost parts." That is my motto too. For it is only through truth, unsparing truth, that your generation can hope to do better than mine in the struggle for peace, freedom and equality of the sexes."

That, inter alia, is what Ayaan Hirsi Ali intended to say at Brandeis University had not president Fred Lawrence's made the unconscionably decision to rescind the planned honorary degree to give a woman who, in the blunt words of Canadian columnist Mark Steyn, campaigns against "the barbarous practice by which Muslim men deny women sexual pleasure by having their clitorises cut off. 

(The procedure, in all its ghastly primitive barbarism, is graphically displayed in the following video from Ethiopia, which readers would probably be wise to skip, although it should perhaps be compulsory viewing for the Fred Lawrences of this world):

Steyn continued, justifiably enough: 

"Lawrence and the other fellows who run Brandeis are in no danger of any equivalent procedure since it seems clear they've nothing down there to chop off anyway. The eunuchs of the American academy are the beneficiaries of western liberty, of the spirit of openness and inquiry that is the principal difference between us and the intellectually stagnant Muslim world. But they will not lift a finger to defend that tradition." 

It was, of course, in response to pressure from CAIR and following receipt of this petition that Dr Lawrence made his disgraceful, dishonourable, dhimmitudinous climbdown.

Now, another petition has been instituted, requesting Lawrence to do the decent thing:

"Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Somali-born women's activist whose work focused on the abuse of women in Islamic societies. Hirsi Ali was supposed to be the commencement speaker at the 2014 Brandeis University commencement ceremony on Sunday, May 18, 2014 at the Gosman Sports and Convocation Center. She was also to be given an honorary degree in social justice for her human rights work. However, with little notice she was told by university officials that she would not be getting the degree nor would she be speaking at the ceremony. She didn't ask to be given an honorary degree, and now, the Brandeis' administration has used the honor to dishonor her. We, the people signed below, want it reinstated." [Emphasis added]

As the petition's organiser notes:

"It took more than 6,800 signatures to get Brandeis University to rescind its honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali. It's going to take that and much more to let the university know Hirsi Ali had many more supporters than the marginal group who wanted her honors stripped. Please share on social media to get the word out."

To sign the petition click here


Incidentally, among the many condemnations of Brandeis president Fred Lawrence's recent cowardly decision are messages on Lawrence's Facebook page.  This one's a corker:

"Dear Dr. Lawrence:

.... I can’t help but think that there’s something desperately pathetic about an institution that advertises itself as a bastion of liberal thinking turning tail and running when a handful of academics squeal about the unbearable intellectual threat posed by a woman who has been on the receiving end of Islam’s generosity (female genital mutilation, a future as a child bride, and an unending barrage of death threats akin to those that her colleague Theo Van Gogh received before his brutal murder), and who is then brave enough to speak out loudly about Islam’s sordid, misogynistic, anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, anti-Western element.

Interestingly, you were entirely comfortable inviting (and then not rescinding invitations to) Tony Kushner and Desmond Tutu, both of whom have gone on record repeatedly mouthing grotesquely anti-Semitic statements when they took a break from attacking Israel – which, I might add, is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East, one that gives fully rights to people of all races, colors, creeds, sexes, and gender orientations. (Should I also add that Louis Brandeis, the school's namesake, was an ardent Zionist?)

Could it be that you were confident that Israelis and Jews would disparage, but not kill, you for inviting to your campus two such divisive, unpleasant human beings? And could it be that, when you belatedly enlightened yourself about the reality of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s dangerous life as a crusader against the extreme elements of Islam, you suddenly realized that your comfortable little mantra that Islam is a “a religion of peace” is certainly right as to the vast majority of the world’s Muslim, but quite wrong as to a small but deadly cadre that expands its reach by threatening to kill “liberal arts” cowards like yourself, your administration, and your faculty?

Reality bites, doesn’t it? I believe it was Winston Churchill who said “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.” You pretended that there was no crocodile or that, if there was, it had no teeth.

The crocodile has teeth, you and your colleagues are fools...."

I think Fred needs tickling up a bit, don't you?

Let's hope that the new petition, whether or not it succeeds in changing his mind, receives all the signatures it can muster, in order to demonstrate a moral truth and achieve at least a moral victory.

Meanwhile, yet another sickening case of Islamic injustice against women is occurring in Iran, the land certain Israel-bashers of this blog's acquaintance seem to love:

Reports the Washington Free Beacon:

"The Iranian regime is slated to hang on Tuesday a 26-year-old woman charged with fatally stabbing her accused rapist ....

Rayhaneh Jabbari, a 26-year-old former interior designer, is scheduled to be hanged this week after serving the last seven years in prison for stabbing a doctor who she claims drugged her and attempted to rape her.

The case has drawn international outrage from human rights activists, who are fighting to stay the execution. These activists have cast a spotlight on Iran’s flawed judicial system, which executed more than 500 people in 2013 and is on pace to kill even more this year.

A petition aimed at pressuring Iran to stop the hanging has already drawn more than 126,700 signatures online, but has not appeared to sway the Iranian judiciary, the head of which recently upheld the execution order and insisted that it be carried out on Tuesday...."

To view that petition, click here

As for the treatment of (Australian) animals in Gaza, here's a report that I can't bear to read (h/t JW)

A Litany of Shame: Fabulous Phyllis highlights Brandeis's past betrayals

Professor Phyllis Chesler knows a thing or two about Islamic oppression of women, as her recently published memoir, An American Bride in Kabul, makes clear.

A staunch defender of Israel, she has already criticised here Brandeis University's craven rescinding of its planned honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an act which of course suggests that when the claims of Islam clash with the claims of downtrodden womankind, liberal-leftists will betray the latter in order to placate the former: "Islamophobia" is, evidently, more of a crime in leftist eyes than Islamic misogyny (see, for instance, here).

Indeed, Islamic misogyny is not to be differentiated from the vestiges of sexism that occur in the United States and other Western societies: to make that distinction, in the eyes of liberal-leftists, is racist and unconscionable, hence the disingenuous piffle of  signatories to a faculty petition against Ms Ali's honouring that "gendered violence"occurs everywhere.

But in her latest critique of Brandeis, Professor Chesler dwells not on the above obvious points but on something which to many of us is not so obvious: she has done yeoman service in highlighting the fact that Brandeis has form when it comes to accommodating the enemies of Israel.

She writes, inter alia:

'In 2003, Brandeis partnered with Al-Quds University—and did so, year after year, until 2013, when violent demonstrations broke out on the Al-Quds campus, replete with traditional Nazi salutes.

In 2006, the Brandeis community of students and professors did not protest the Distinguished Professorship Brandeis awarded to the "inflammatory" anti-Zionist playwright Tony Kushner.

In 2006, Brandeis also staged a "Voices of Palestine" exhibit. Seventeen paintings by Palestinian youths depicted their lives under Israeli "occupation." This time, refreshingly, Brandeis students had the exhibit taken down because there was absolutely no Israeli perspective being exhibited.

This was not surprising. There usually isn't an Israeli perspective exhibited. Kudos to these Brandeis students.

In 2006, Jordan's Prince Hassan bin Talal delivered the keynote address at the Brandeis graduation. Students did not protest Jordan's human rights record vis a vis the Palestinians (they massacred them in 1970), or in terms of torturing its own citizens, nor its abysmal record on honor-related violence, including honor killings.

Indeed, Brandeis students and staff did not hold Jordan accountable for its former systematic desecration of Jewish holy places and for its forcing the evacuation of Jews, many of whose families had been there for centuries, from the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem in 1948.

Brandeis students did not create online petitions to debate the merits of choosing Jordan's Prince as a speaker.

Here's why. Arabs and Muslims have been and still are treated super-sympathetically on American and Canadian campuses. Jews and Israelis are not. Nevertheless, the false charge of "Islamophobia" is received as divine revelation on many of these same campuses....'

In 2007, Dr. Daniel Pipes was invited to speak at Brandeis. However, he was defamed by Brandeis's former President who compared the distinguished and sober Pipes to Holocaust denier Norman Finkelstein. Both allegedly were speakers who "inflame passions, whose mission is not so much discussion and education as it is theatre, a show." Pipes did not lecture at that time—but subsequently did so.

Oh, but there's more.  Read all of Phyllis Chesler's revelations here