Phyllis Chesler has chided American feminists, quick to cry foul when henpecked politicians in the West fail to grant their every wish, for being oblivious to the status of women in the Middle East, where victimhood isn’t just a card to be played.
Chesler has written an excellent piece on women in Egypt. Unlike many trendy western journalists, Chesler spots a threat to women in the form of the Muslim Brotherhood (you know, those radicals now being “cautiously welcomed” to the negotiating table by Secretary Clinton).
More disturbing, Chesler believes that women in Egyptian society, along with their fathers and brothers, are likely to welcome the Muslim Brotherhood, perhaps with significantly less caution than Ms. Clinton. Years of neglect by American feminists have not helped change the status of women in genuinely male-dominated nations. Maybe western feminists face a choice between feminism and multiculturalism? Or maybe they’d just rather complain here, where they are treated with kid gloves, than do something difficult such as advocate for women in a closed society.
Anyway, Chesler has taken a close look at the pictures coming out of Egypt-and she doesn’t see many women:
First, most photos show us mobs of mainly men marching, men at prayer, men shooting, running, falling, wounded in hospitals, standing atop tanks. These could be scenes from Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan. I am not suggesting that women rush out to join a promised American Nation of Islam style “Million Man March”-as women, they are horribly endangered among groups of men, which is why Muslim men argue that “their” family women must be veiled, sequestered, kept in purdah, strictly supervised, accompanied wherever they go by a male protector.
Muslim men know how licentious they truly are, what their view of all women (who are not their mothers) truly is, and how sexual repression, forced marriage, polygamy (a shortage of available wives for poor men), affects men who have been fired up by a mosque sermon or by a holy war to seize state power.
Women are also shorter, weigh less, and have rarely been trained in boxing, martial arts or weapons training compared to most men; most women cannot hold their own against one angry and determined man, certainly not against thousands of such men.
Yes, there are some female faces in the Cairo mob scenes, but understandably, they are in the minority. …
The Egyptian women you do see are veiled:
My reading of these photos suggests that Egyptian women have already been Islamified. Whether they have done so to please their loving (or abusive) families or a favorite mullah, whether it was peer pressure from girlhood on that did it; or whether it was the teachings of the Muslim Brotherhood being preached in every mosque, on every media channel, and in school that did it, the fact is:
It is done. Women are veiled. Such women-and their fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons, will vote for the Muslim Brotherhood to run their country.