Thursday, January 19, 2006

Islamic Extremism and Fear of Women's Sexuality

The German weekly, Stern, talks with Salman Rushdie.


British author Salman Rushdie said the West had failed to grasp the extent to which Islamic extremism was rooted in men's fear of women's sexuality.
...
"The Western-Christian world view deals with the issues of guilt and salvation, a concept that is completely unimportant in the East because there is no original sin and no savior," he said, in comments printed in German.

"Instead, great importance is given to 'honor'. I consider that to be problematic. But of course it is underestimated how many Islamists consciously or unconsciously attempt to restore lost honor."
...
Rushdie, 58, said that much of the anger toward the West was provoked by that split on sexual issues.

"(It is) because Western societies do not veil their women. Because they do not defuse this potential danger," he said.

Well, there certainly are other cultures with no concept of original sin and redemption and though they repress their women, probably for much the same reasons, they don't exactly veil them. Nor do they inflict suicide bombers on the rest of humanity in protest. I would surmise a lot of the actual overt behavior has as much to do with the not-to-be-named individual these Islamists are emulating.

Western culture has its rapists and sexual predators like any other society, and they existed long before women went bikini. But the majority of Western men adapted along with the hemlines. Today's erogenous zones are much smaller than they were a century ago.

But a religion written in stone and immutable does not allow its adherents to adapt, nor its erogenous zones to change. And it forces its women to be the keeper of the zone, refusing to give the male any responsibility for his own behavior.

(h/t Rantburg)

25 comments:

Syl said...

You all chicken?

::ducking::

Eric said...

I seem to remember some book, the crux of which was that white racism against blacks was all wrapped up in white guys being afraid that black guys were going to bone white women. (Or something like that. Maybe it was all racism. Anyway, white guys being afraid of black guys boning white women was the point.)

I'd love to see what that author would make of the Saudis.

All that being said, the issue of things like 'honor killings' and what not do seem to support Rushdie's assertion.

flenser said...

Why are women so consumed with the idea that men have this great fear of womens sexuality?

I guess a follow on question would be why women are so obsessed with the topics of sex in general and their own sexuality in particular. See any issue of any women's magazine.

I have never heard a man obsess about his own sexuality in a similar fashion.


More directly on topic. it's a mistake to see all this as a male vs female issue, although that is the only prism through which feminists can view the world. The hard fact of the matter is that Muslim women are on the same side as Muslim men. People are kidding themselves if they think otherwise.

Syl said...

flenser

You making generalities again?

Why are women so consumed with the idea that men have this great fear of womens sexuality?

don't look at me.

I think men have a fear of their own. But it's much much less in some cultures than others. In ours I really believe it's very little.

You're on a roll today:

it's a mistake to see all this as a male vs female issue, although that is the only prism through which feminists can view the world.

First nobody is viewing 'all this' as only a male/female issue. It is one aspect of it.

Second, since when is Salman Rushdie a feminist? And you'd better as heck define just exactly who you include in 'feminist'. I bet your definition would be tautological.
However one spells it.

The hard fact of the matter is that Muslim women are on the same side as Muslim men. People are kidding themselves if they think otherwise.

When one knows only dependence and life under rules (for everything), it's sometimes hard to even conceive of any other way. And some people prefer it that way. It's true.

Some other people would at least like to have the choice.

flenser said...

Knucklehead

I also thought that Rushdie was "playing to the audience" a bit.

But I'm not sure that your master/slave relationship holds up either. I think its a mistake to view Islamic women as being an oppressed class. I have seen Western secularists make similar remarks about conservative Christian women - that they must be somehow coerced into thinking as they do. Surely all "enlightened" women would reject such retrograde thinking?

I don't know any way to prove the matter one way or another, but I believe that most women in the Islamic world fully embrace the Islamic worldview. They appear to see Western women as the ones who are degraded and treated as mere objects.

Syl said...

Knuck

Why the vehemence? The relationship between males and females in these societies is complex, yes. But dismiss sexuality as 'Freudian' is kind of silly.

I've personally seen aspects of this in closer cultures. Yes, possession of the woman as your property is spot on. But that property includes her sexuality.

I've been yelled at because somebody in public was looking at me. Somebody I didn't even notice.

If one man gets 'turned on' by something, he assumes every other man will too. I've experienced that. If Osama gets excited seeing an ankle, then all women should cover their ankles.

Just look at some old photographs. See what bathing suits looked like a century ago.

The erogenous zones certainly aren't the entire story, but they do play a role.

You guys are all fine. No problem. It's the cultures which don't accept the changes you have which are.

buddy larsen said...

After raising a few little rug-biters, I call them zones "error-genius".

flenser said...

I can tell Knuck is a married man. ;)

buddy larsen said...

It takes strong identity-formation to use 'Freudian' and 'tongue-in-cheek' in the same sentence.
\;-D

flenser said...

Knucklehead

I saw a retrospective piece on the Iranian revolution (1979?) a couple of weeks ago.

One scene which stuck in my mind was an Iranian woman if full chador telling the camerman "This is true dignity! This is true freedom!"

National Geographic had a picture on the cover back in the '80's I think of a young Afghani woman with haunting eyes. I'm sure you have seen it.

They tracked her down a few years ago and spoke to her. She is not "anti-American" I think, but is fully commited to her own lifestyle and culture, including the veil, and had no interest in coming to America.

I'm sure you have also seen the Palistinian women bragging about how many children of theirs were killed as suicide bombers.

These are anecdotal examples rather than generalities.

Here is a generality and a theory - women are the key element in the transmission of culture from one generation to the next. Muslim culture could not exist as it does unless Mulsim women on the whole were commited to it.

I don't doubt that the male-female thing in the Muslim world is different than in ours and is hard to understand. It seems analogous to what existed in the West a hundred years or so ago.

This goes to the question of whether we are involved in a great "clash of civilisations" or not. If we are, then even the Muslims we are currently allied with are simply allies of convience and we will end up fighting them down the road. You read Yon - the Kurdish troops he admires are all Muslims, I assume. My guess is that their relationship with their women is not what a modern Westerner would consider proper. But I'm not sure that we can or should try to change it for them.

Syl said...

Knuck

Hey, no problem. I knee-jerked my reaction. So I apologize too.

As to the 'fear' bit. That was Rushdie. I don't think men, in any case, fear woman's sexuality. If anything they might be leery of their own. (Speaking only of the specific group.)

And the rules as laid forth centuries ago both sexes live under. Accept the rules and life is easy--unless you're the one being stoned or put to death or having your hand cut off.

I'm falling asleep here...

Unknown said...

This reminds me of knucklehead's post on the marriage gap. In a way. From mother to child....the family and its importance in society.

I read a story the other day about a Pakistani man who killed his three daughters to save his honor.

Their lives, his honor.

When we say that women seem to be participating in this therefor they are as responsible as the men we should remember that there were slaves who refused to leave the plantations when slavery was ended.

Just where were they supposed to go?

Women are property in a tribal culture that is patriarchal in its structure.

But when women are free and educated they tend to raise children who are free and educated. And an educated society can progress, but progress can be threatening to the guy in charge.


BTW honor killing predates Islam.

buddy larsen said...

It was Mrs. O'Leery's cow that kicked over the lantern and burned down Chicago. Never, ever, forget that.

Unknown said...

knucklehead:

I agree with you, it is for our daughters. But saving their daughters can save ours as well.

I read something interesting. Jodi Picoult writes fiction but like Crichton she has a background in science. In her latest book Vanishing Acts she makes the point that the gene in women most identified with nurturing is actually passed through the male line. Perhaps that is why men feel the need to protect their children, they too are wired for it.

I think that people fear change, even when change is desperately needed. Those women are afraid of something worse, their life experience is such that they don't expect anything better. And perhaps they fear the wrath of God.

flenser said...

Whose cow kicked over the lantren again? I forget.

Jamie Irons said...

In my line of work one rapidly learns that sex is an irreducible mystery. I was privileged to have been a protegé of the late, brilliant Robert Stoller; I highly recommend his book "Sexual Excitement," which attempts, through a detailed an strartlingly original case study, to understand just that one facet of the problem named in the title. Ingenious as he was, I don't think Dr. Stoller succeeded.

I am extremely suspicious, a fortiori, of any attempts to explain the behavior of groups by an appeal to sexual psychology, or sexual factors.

But there is no doubt in my mind, for all that, that the Islamic take on sex is a catastrophic -- what? mistake? -- and one source, among many, of the chronic misery of that benighted "civilization."

Jamie Irons

Jamie Irons said...

Of course, I meant to say startlingly original...

A further query about what I called the "chronic misery of Islamic 'civilization'"...

Perhaps that's not fair, as I have seen plenty of pictures of what look like happy, normal people and children coming out of Iraq since we toppled Saddam. But the more "fundamentalist" Muslims do seem distinctly miserable, and chronically angry, even when they aren't lobbing bombs at us. Do these people ever laugh (I mean of course in a mirthful, not fiendish, manner)? Do they ever just kick back and relax? Or is it just a sort of pious hatred, all-pious, all the time, 24/7/365?

Jamie Irons

buddy larsen said...

Don't look on THIS planet for a happy-go-lucky religious hysteric.

flenser said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
flenser said...

Monomaniacs of any sort are not noted for their cheerful and easygoing dispositions. But many writers who have visited the Middle East have found the Arabs to be great people.

See Jim Geraghty here for example. He says they rank up there with the Irish for their personal warmth. And I have seen similar accounts before.

Unknown said...

Knucklehead:

I have known a lot of people who married or mated with people they thought they knew, but did not.

I was one of them.

Syl said...

Jaimie

I am extremely suspicious, a fortiori, of any attempts to explain the behavior of groups by an appeal to sexual psychology, or sexual factors.

But there is no doubt in my mind, for all that, that the Islamic take on sex is a catastrophic -- what? mistake? -- and one source, among many, of the chronic misery of that benighted "civilization."


Thanks for weighing in here, Jaimie!

Syl said...

knuck

Men marry women expecting they will never change. Women marry men assuming they will change.

Funny, but I fully expect my men not to change. It's what they 'are' that I fall in love with.

In fact, for me, it has been the hope that I would change. That's just as delusional as to expect the other to transform.

buddy larsen said...

I think, you can make another person miserable, but you can't really make another person 'happy'.

People have to want to BE happy. If your spouse expects you to make her happy, without her really wanting to BE happy--well, welcome to something that works a little less well every passing year, as Mr (or Mrs) Make-Happy slowly runs out of fresh routines and Mrs. (or Mr.) Needy wanders psychologically out of the magic circle.

Thing is, the Performer may've originally wanted that sort of rapt attention, and only 20 years later gets tired of slipping on banana peels and farting Dixie.

So there's two sides to every story, i 'spose, and then the third, or "true" side, which just belongs to the wind.

buddy larsen said...

Like Ronald Reagan's (blessed be his name) joke about the little boy shoveling the great big pile of manure, "There's gotta be a pony in here SOMEPLACE!"