RUTHFULLY YOURS

By claiming that Islam is “feminist,” these self-appointed advocates seem to be trying to convince others that Islam is keeping up with modernity, human rights, and democratic values. This, sadly is a lie, and one that unfortunately seems told to facilitate the assimilation of Islam into Western countries and to improve its image.

Furthermore, both men and women from their earliest age are indoctrinated by a male-dominated society to think that staying subjugated is part of a woman’s fulfillment of her duty toward both her husband and her religion.

Many women like the idea of being supported by a husband and not having to find an outside job. Nowadays, a large number of young women do not even finish their studies, but instead stay home to wait for their “prince charming” to get married. That they would apparently prefer to be their husband’s “slave” and “concubine” to working to support themselves is probably often the main reason they reject Western values such as feminism and gender equality.

Lately, western Muslim “feminists” such as Linda Sarsour or Yasmin Abdel-Magied claim that Islam is a “feminist religion” that respects women’s rights. “Islam to me,” says Abdel-Magied, a Sudanese-Australian author, “is the most feminist religion”.

By claiming that Islam is “feminist,” these self-appointed advocates seem to be trying to convince others that Islam is keeping up with modernity, human rights, and democratic values. This, sadly is a lie, and one that unfortunately seems told to facilitate the assimilation of Islam into Western countries and to improve its image.

The religion of Islam is supported by Sharia, a set of religious laws that organize the lives of all Muslims. Sharia — originally, in Arabic, “The Path,” but in modern times meaning Allah’s laws and recommendations — is based on the Quran and the hadiths, which are sayings and deeds of the prophet Muhammad, regarded by many Muslims as the perfect man.

Under Sharia, however, Muslim women enjoy fewer rights than men. In inheritance for instance, “The male shall have the equal of the portion of two females”(Quran 4:11). This law is applied even in countries such as Tunisia or Algeria, in which the legal system is not based on Sharia. As a result, Muslim women habitually inherit far less money than men, an injustice that virtually forces them, economically, to stay submissive to men. It is also a situation that has built into it the reason this law is never repealed by any parliament.

Another “tradition” perpetuated by Sharia is polygamy: allowing Muslim men to have up to four wives:

“And if you fear that you shall not be able to deal justly with the orphan-girls, then marry (other) women of your choice, two or three, or four…” Quran (4:3).

Countries such as Egypt, Jordan and Morocco, under the pretext of “practicing Sharia,” have thereby legalized — and thereby even further cemented — the submission of women.

In addition, both men and women from their earliest age, are indoctrinated by a male-dominated society to think that staying subjugated is part of a woman’s fulfillment of her duty toward both her husband and her religion.

Women in Islam are often regarded as men’s possessions — here to satisfy and please them whenever their men wish:

“Your wives are a place of sowing of seed for you, so come to your place of cultivation however you wish and put forth [righteousness] for yourselves.” (Quran 2:223).

The concept of women as objects of desire has often led to complicated outcomes:

“Beautified for people is the love of that which they desire — of women and sons, heaped-up sums of gold and silver, fine branded horses, and cattle and tilled land. That is the enjoyment of worldly life, but Allah has with Him the best return.” (Quran 3:14).

From it, “Jihad al-Nikah”, sexual Jihad, has arisen. “Nikah”, in Arabic, actually has multiple meanings, which include temporary marriage as well as offering oneself as a “comfort” to Muslim fighters on the battlefield. Young women recruited by ISIS for “Jihad al-Nikah” are basically “sex toys,” concubines, pleasuring terrorists for a few hours.

A man wielding a butcher knife and shouting “God is great” in Arabic stabbed two ​young ​women to death — slitting one’s throat — outside a French train station before being shot dead by soldiers Sunday morning.

​The Paris prosecutor’s office launched a terrorism investigation into the killings in Marseilles. Hours later ISIS claimed the attacker was its “soldier.”

The unidentified terrorist struck ​his victims — who were just 17 and 20 — ​at the Gare Saint-Charles train station​, cutting one’s throat and stabbing the other in the chest and stomach.​

​He crept up behind his unsuspecting first victim, a witness named Dominique said, according to The Telegraph.

“She couldn’t have seen a thing,” she said.

French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said the man seemed to be fleeing after killing his first victim but turned around and attacked the second woman while again shouting “Allahu Akbar (God is great).

He then rushed towards Operation Sentinelle soldiers responding to the scene and they gunned him down. The soldiers have been stationed around key sites in France am
id an ongoing state of emergency called to combat increasing terror attacks.

“We have until now managed to avoid such dramatic incidents,” said Marseilles Mayor Jean-Claude Gaudin. “I think it was a terrorist attack and the individual who was killed seems to have had several identities.”

In the eyes of some, Emmanuel Macron flunked it.

When the French president last week delivered a marathon speech outlining his vision of the European Union, many economists hoped this would include a radical plan for deeper eurozone fiscal integration.

Indeed, the expectation was that this would form the core of his speech. Yet Mr. Macron didn’t say anything about pooling eurozone debts and had little to say on the creation of a common eurozone budget. Instead, the most eye-catching parts of his speech concerned security and defense, where he proposed a far-reaching agenda to secure the EU’s external borders, stabilize its neighborhood and establish a European Defence Force to be funded by a new tax on financial transactions.

But Mr. Macon’s choice of priorities shouldn’t have come as a surprise. It isn’t just that the chances of the EU reaching an agreement on fiscal integration look remote given opposition from several Northern European countries, not just Germany.

The reality is that there is no urgent need for the eurozone to pursue fiscal integration, particularly now that it is in a cyclical recovery. Sure, the eurozone remains vulnerable to shocks. But there is little the eurozone could do that would improve its ability to cope with a crisis in the Italian bond markets—widely perceived to be the biggest threat to eurozone stability—nor the risk that the crisis in Spain over Sunday’s attempted referendum on Catalonian independence spirals into a wider threat to financial stability. For now, the key to strengthening the eurozone lies in policies that will raise potential growth through better functioning markets, which is where Mr. Macron focused his economic agenda.

Europe’s security challenges, on the other hand, really do pose a clear and present risk to the EU’s survival.

Senior officials say that the closest the EU came to collapse was at the height of the migration crisis in 2015. The arrival of more than one million asylum seekers led to a collapse in public trust in the EU. The flow has since been slowed, with arrivals in Italy and Greece in recent months having diminished to a trickle. But the legacy of 2015 continues to cast a shadow over European politics, as shown by strong support for the anti-immigration Alternative fur Deutschland party in last week’s German elections. EU officials estimate around 200,000 people will attempt to enter the EU illegally this year, in line with the long-term average over the previous two decades, but even this may no longer be politically sustainable. To win back public trust, the EU needs to show it is in full control of its borders. CONTINUE AT SITE

The news from Catalonia — at the time of this writing, Sunday night in America — is not good. There has been violent confrontation over the independence referendum.

Hundreds injured in Catalonia as Spanish police crack down on referendum vote…
Police acting on orders from the Spanish government to stop the voting across the country’s northeastern region clashed with Catalans who were attempting to stop them from confiscating ballots. Videos that emerged Sunday on social media appear to show police using brutal force on people attempting to cast their vote.

Catalonia’s health service said Sunday night that at least 844 people were injured today by the evening — nearly half of them in the Barcelona region, where police fired rubber bullets near at least one polling station, according to The Associated Press. Spanish authorities said 11 police officers were injured in the melees.
— ABC News

For weeks, the Spanish state had been doing all it could to obstruct and suppress the then upcoming October 1st vote. The Madrid government had been threatening people, arresting Catalan officials, and had stepped in to take over the province’s finances.

Spain has taken control of Catalonia’s finances to prevent funds being used for an independence referendum it deems illegal, a move that limits the region’s autonomy and puts in doubt the payment of thousands of public workers’ salaries. — TheLocal.es, September 20, 2017

On October 1st, Madrid followed through with its threats of force should the referendum go ahead.

What immediately comes to mind is that Madrid did not act as forcefully as Franco would have. Franco would have sent in tanks and just killed people. The present Spanish response might have been thuggish, but it was measured. Likewise, the response of the Catalan people and their representatives were also measured.

It was not totally clear how the vote was going to swing. Pro-Madrid media were accusing the Catalans of suppressing local anti-Independence sympathies; and there seemed to be a degree of truth to that, as the data indicated. Still, however, Catalonia had a long history of striving for independence. There seemed to be real local sympathy for their cause. While most anticipated a victory for the pro-independence side, there was also the precedent of how the referendum for Scottish independence failed in 2014. Recently, even the Catalan government produced some disturbing poll results.

Opinion polls are hard to come by but the clearest indication came in July, when a public survey commissioned by the Catalan government suggested 41% were in favour and 49% were opposed to independence. — BBC