Sharia Degradation of Women

By Eileen F. Toplansky

9/13/2010 Islam (American Thinker) – The unremitting degradation of women in most of the Mideast, Africa, and other parts of Asia where Islamic law plays a huge role is horrifying and appalling. Islamic law endorses slavery, demands executions for apostasy, and condones the repression of women.

The debasement of women plays a critical role among Palestinian women, where little girls live under a death threat of honor killing. The male sexual abuse of female children is quite pervasive. It traumatizes and shames women into obedience and renders them incapable of resistance or rebellion. This degradation of women is not restricted merely to the Palestinian community, whose lives have been repeatedly squandered by their terrorist leaders. In Iran, for instance, the Islamic government does not recognize women as fully human. In 1992, over 100,000 women were arrested in Tehran for “improper veiling” and “moral corruption.” Scores of pregnant women were flogged in public on the same charge. Women appearing in public without traditional veiling are sentenced to up to 74 lashes. As I write this, there is a worldwide protest concerning the injustice being meted out to Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani. Unfortunately, she will probably be flogged to death.   

Books highlight the terror that permeates daily life for women. Reading Lolita in Tehran describes the endless tales of frustration, humiliation, and sorrow of female college students. The women endure daily indignities by the militia who patrol the streets to ensure that the women are wearing their veils. The patrols demand that the women students walk in public with men who are their brothers, husbands, or fathers. Sporting jewelry and wearing nail polish are punishable crimes. If a woman uses a bus, the seating is segregated. Female students are penalized for running up the stairs if they are late for a class. The age of marriage has been lowered from eighteen years to nine years of age. Stoning is a punishment for adultery and prostitution. Women found guilty of any infraction are forced to wash toilets, fined, jailed, and flogged. Humiliation is the source of the Islamic fundamentalist power.

Not only confined to Iran, such abuse is common elsewhere as well. In March 2002, a Nigerian woman, who had a small baby, was convicted of adultery and sentenced to death by stoning. In Pakistan, an average of two women every day die from “honor killings.” In the book entitled Princess by Jean P. Sasson, a father drowns his own daughter because she has met with foreign-born men. 

This is not an isolated situation. It is emblematic of a world where girls are sold into marriage to men five times their age and brutally murdered for the slightest transgression. In Afghanistan, women are beginning to wear the burqa again because they fear the resurgence of the Taliban. When the Taliban reigned supreme, music was forbidden and the female voice banned. To walk in shoes that clicked would elicit the Taliban’s wrath. Young female children attending school have acid thrown in their faces. Where do such turpitude, cruelty, and vile behavior come from?

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