My Say: Hypocrisy, Ignorance on Parade in Washington D.C. January 21, 2017 by Ruth King
On January 21,2017 after the inauguration, a protest march in Washington, originally billed as a “Million Women March” has been pared down by three quarters to an expected 176,000 (weather permitting) participants and is now billed simply as a “Woman’s March.”
The somewhat disappointing numbers do nothing to dampen enthusiasm. In fact, a sub group named the “Pussyhat Project” is busy crocheting, knitting and sewing 1.7 million (????)”pussyhats.” (https://www.pussyhatproject.com/)
And Vogue Magazine, whose editor is a big Hillary supporter has run a tribute to the women who planned the parade. (http://www.vogue.com/13520360/meet-the-women-of-the-womens-march-on-washington/)
In 2011 the magazine tucked among its ad pages featuring $20,000.00 pocketbooks and other expensive must have accessories, a column praising Asma-al Assad, the wife of Bashar al Assad titled “A Rose in the Desert.”
Here is just a snippet of adulation:
“Asma al-Assad is glamorous, young, and very chic-the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies. Her style is not the couture-and-bling dazzle of Middle Eastern power but a deliberate lack of adornment. She’s a rare combination: a thin, long-limbed beauty with a trained analytic mind who dresses with cunning understatement. Paris Match calls her “the element of light in a country full of shadow zones.” She is the first lady of Syria.
Syria is known as the safest country in the Middle East, possibly because, as the State Department’s Web site says, “the Syrian government conducts intense physical and electronic surveillance of both Syrian citizens and foreign visitors.” It’s a secular country where women earn as much as men and the Muslim veil is forbidden in universities, a place without bombings, unrest, or kidnappings, but its shadow zones are deep and dark. “
Incidentally, the column has been taken down from their site but is available in its entire idiocy:
(http://gawker.com/asma-al-assad-a-rose-in-the-desert-1265002284)
So, this is how Vogue describes the forthcoming march:
“……., a mass mobilization of activists and protestors that will descend on the capital on January 21, the day after we inaugurate into office a man who ran the most brazenly misogynistic presidential campaign in recent history, and whose victory has emboldened a Republican-led Congress to wage an epic war on women’s rights.
Perhaps you’re planning to be there? Perhaps you’re bringing your mother, your grandmother, your daughter, your sister? You’ll be in good company. Per the event’s Facebook page at press time, 176,000 people are planning to attend, with another 250,000 still on the fence. It seems likely, said Linda Sarsour, one of four national cochairs acting as spokeswomen for the movement, that it will be “the largest mass mobilization that any new administration has seen on its first day.”
That fluidity says something about the Women’s March and how it functions; it’s an organic, grassroots effort that prides itself on being inclusive, intersectional, and nonhierarchical, on taking what Bob Bland (one of the movement’s cofounders, now serving as a national cochair) called “a horizontal approach to leadership.” Horizontal????Huh????
And this is how the epic event’s founders describe their goals:
“On January 21, 2017, we will unite in Washington, DC for the Women’s March on Washington. We stand together in solidarity with our partners and children for the protection of our rights, our safety, our health, and our families — recognizing that our vibrant and diverse communities are the strength of our country.
The rhetoric of the past election cycle has insulted, demonized, and threatened many of us–women, immigrants of all statuses, those with diverse religious faiths particularly Muslim, people who identify as LGBTQIA, Native and Indigenous people, Black and Brown people, people with disabilities, the economically impoverished and survivors of sexual assault. We are confronted with the question of how to move forward in the face of national and international concern and fear.
We support the advocacy and resistance movements that reflect our multiple and intersecting identities. We call on all defenders of human rights to join us. This march is the first step towards unifying our communities, grounded in new relationships, to create change from the grassroots level up. We will not rest until women have parity and equity at all levels of leadership in society. We work peacefully while recognizing there is no true peace without justice and equity for all. HEAR OUR VOICE”
Wow!!! !I hear you but I am baffled.
One of the original founders of the March is Linda Sarsour. Described by The New York Times as “a Brooklyn Homegirl in a Hijab” who ” has already helped to partly dismantle the New York Police Department’s program of spying on the city’s Muslims and has worked with officials in City Hall to close public schools for the observance of two of Islam’s most important holy days, Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. From her base at the Arab American Association of New York, the nonprofit group in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where she is the executive director, Ms. Sarsour has taken on such issues as immigration policy, voter registration, mass incarceration, Islamophobia and the Police Department’s stop-and-frisk tactic.” (https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/09/nyregion/linda-sarsour-is-a-brooklyn-homegirl-in-a-hijab.html?_r=0)
She is a devout Moslem who was married at 17 in an arranged marriage, who admits to tensions about her combined roles as an activist woman and a traditional and devout Moslem.That is all well and good and her right and privilege as an American.
But the coming march is about women and children and gays and their” threatened” rights under a Trump administration.
So how about some concern about Sharia law which enslaves women, forcing them to abjure all those fancy duds advertised in Vogue, and cower behind niqabs, burkas, and hijabs? In “moderate” Moslem nations they could be stoned to death for posing in the suggestive underwear ads that dot the glossy pages of Vogue.
Not a word about honor killings, or child marriage or rape and sexual subjugation?
Here is a recent blog post by Nahla Mahmoud a Moslem woman
“From my own experience living under an Islamic regime, I strongly oppose Sharia law and other religious-based laws. Instead, I deeply believe in secular, humanist values that treat human beings equally. International human rights are a testament to those values and oppose the discriminatory practices enshrined in and justified by Sharia law.
Sharia discriminates against women. A women’s testimony is worth half a man’s in Islam. She gets half the inheritance of her male siblings and a woman’s marriage contract is between her male guardian and her husband. A man can have four wives; he can divorce by simply using the word “Talig.” A woman must give specific reasons to get a divorce. Even if the father is abusive, women who remarry lose custody of their children.
Children also suffer under Sharia with life-long implications. A girl is eligible for marriage as soon as she begins her first period. Considering there were at least 30 cases of child marriage recorded in the London borough of Islington in 2010, I wouldn’t bother to count the number of child marriages in Islamic states where it is legal.” (http://www.baronessgoudie.com/blog/2013/02/13/sharia-law-discriminates-against-women-and-children)
Well Sarsour does care about children’s’ rights. On the Rachel Maddow show in February 2015 (http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/jack-coleman/2015/02/19/hyperbolic-maddow-guest-claims-muslim-kids-being-executed-us ) she made the astonishing claim that in America “mosques are being vandalized, kids being executed.”
Does she know how many and which countries openly discriminate against homosexuals? Have they any clue how ISIS executes homosexuals?
“the Nusr [‘Victory’ in Arabic] website, which claims to be the website of the Islamic caliphate, has a section on Legal Jurisprudence (evidence-based rules and the penal code). One of the pages under this section is dedicated to “punishment for sodomy”, which states: “the religiously-sanctioned penalty for sodomy is death, whether it is consensual or not. Those who are proven to have committed sodomy, whether sodomizer or sodomized, should be killed…”. (https://76crimes.com/76-countries-where-homosexuality-is-illegal/
As writer Shikka Dalmia- a libertarian who is extremely antagonistic to Donald Trump writes:
(http://theweek.com/articles/667163/why-womens-march-washington-already-failed)
“Demonstrations serve a useful function in a democracy – but only when they have clarity of purpose. That is not the case with the Women’s March on Washington, which will be held in Washington, D.C., the day after Donald Trump is sworn in. Instead the march is shaping up to be a feel-good exercise in search of a cause. And if it fizzles and fails, it’ll make it harder, not easier, to fight genuine rights violations under the Trump presidency……….Everything else about the Women’s March, however, is reaching a level of absurdity worthy of the man they are protesting. Start with the fact that they are billing this event as the voice of women when 42 percent of women (and 62 percent of non-college educated white women) actually voted for Trump.”
This march is nothing but street theater which only advances their narcissism and their desire to don the cloak of victimization.
I hope it snows that day.
Read more: Family Security Matters http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/print/hypocrisy-ignorance-on-parade-in-washington-dc-january-21-2017#ixzz4W0vt32Qu
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