The President once again, infuriatingly, tiptoed around one of the great threats facing the world today—ISIS and other violent Jihadists.  Of course, violence has been committed in the name of religions before, but that hardly seems relevant to today’s challenge.  His equivocations and mealy-mouth rhetoric are another example of the frustrating pattern of the President seeming to want to close his eyes rather than have to acknowledge what’s actually happening around the world today.

Yet one understands the desire to be sensitive and choose one’s words carefully in characterizing our enemies:  After all, if we hope to marginalize violent Islamists, moderate followers of Islam will have to take a leading role and encourage people to reject the Jihadists’ vision of their faith.   We need to make clear that it isn’t peaceful Muslims, but the subset of violent extremist, with whom we are at odds.

However, even if words have to be chosen carefully, we also need to be clear in articulating and defending basic human rights which ought to be universally recognized throughout the world.  And that includes how our society, regardless of one’s faith, treats women. 

It is bizarre that even as much of our liberal society seems desperate to identify the smallest potential slights against women that occur in our country—with efforts to ban words like “bossy” and boycot toys like pink Leggos and Barbies—there is a growing discomfort with acknowledging how women are being routinely abused in the name of radical Islam.

Most horrifyingly, we’ve seen recent reports of ISIS’s rules for the treatment of captured women.  Here is part of the sickening story.

This stomach-turning report is just the latest evidence of the horrifying treatment of women in too much of the world, and too frequently in the name of Islam.  People everywhere need to speak with one voice that women and girls deserve basic human rights, including the right to pursue an education and to marry (or not marry) whomever they choose.  Women and the treatment of women are a central issue within this debate and we can’t let a bizarre, twisted version of political correctness get in the way of calling for a vigorous defense of women’s humanity.