According to Philip Slater at Huffington Post, there isn't any difference between Christian fundamentalists and Muslim fundamentalists. He just tars 'em all with the same brush.
Let's face it. All over the world, male-dominated societies tend to be thug-dominated societies, violence-dominated societies, war dominated societies. They're also religion-obsessed societies.
Last October Australia's top Muslim religious leader said women without headscarves were like uncovered meat to a cat, and men couldn't be blamed for raping them any more than cats could be blamed for eating the meat.
This attitude shouldn't surprise anyone. Fundamentalism--in Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, or any other guise--has nothing to do with religion. The primary distinction between fundamentalists and all other religious groups is their attitude toward women. For the fundamentalist, women are inferior creatures who should be rigidly controlled and prevented as much as possible from exercising free will. Fundamentalists are not merely anti-choice when it comes to abortion. They are anti-choice of any kind.
There are, of course, other fundamentalist characteristics: bigotry, xenophobia, closed-mindedness, arrogance, imperviousness to reason (a friend of mine claims that 'fundamentalism' means 'thinking with your fundament'), but these are epiphenomena.
Yeah, we've all seen evangelical Christians lopping off heads or stoning women for not wearing the proper attire--oh, wait, those were Muslims.
And countries like the United States, which codified freedom of religion, are full of laws barring women from various professions from the theater to medicine--oh, wait, those are Muslim countries again.
If you want a list of countries which treat women as inferior beings, you can start here, where you'll discover:
-- In Algeria, wives have legal obligations to obey their husbands and are not considered guardians of their children.
-- In Bahrain, non-Muslim women can’t inherit from their Muslim husbands and Shia wives may not inherit land.
-- Domestic violence, sexual harassment and rape are common in Egypt but tend to go unreported; when they are reported, such cases are not prosecuted comprehensively and domestic abuse is not considered a crime.
-- In Jordan, a man's testimony is the equivalent of two women's testimonies in cases involving Shari'a courts (for divorce, custody, or inheritance, for instance)
-- In Kuwait, a married woman cannot get a passport without the permission of her husband.
-- In Libya, imprisonment of women for engaging in political activities is tempered practice by the regime.
-- In Morocco, young women are prosecuted for having children out of wedlock.
-- In Oman, women must receive the permission of their male guardians to travel abroad.
-- In Saudi Arabia, women are barred from serving as either judges or lawyers.
And the list goes on. Funny, Slater doesn't discuss any of these ways Muslims treat women as inferior beings. No, he just lumps any religious "fundamentalist" in the same category. They all don't want women to "choose."
The essential, bedrock premise of all fundamentalist religions is that women should not be able to choose: how they look, what they wear, who they sleep with, who they marry, whether they conceive, how they spend their time, what activities or careers they pursue. All fundamentalist religions and all authoritarian societies on our planet rest on this single foundation: the control and restriction of women's freedom to make choices about their lives.
Yeah, those repressive regimes just let men do whatever the hell they want. And those fundamentalist Christians are always forcing women to do things they don't want to do. I mean, it's not like there are any laws on the books to stop this repression of women in the U.S. Oh, wait. Yes, there are.
I guess Slater doesn't realize that in America women get to determine which religion they practice and the law doesn't tell them to obey or get their heads lopped off.
No, what Slater's pissed about is abortion. How dare those fundamentalist Christians think abortion kills babies! Not that abortion is illegal or anything, but those tolerant lefties certainly shouldn't allow fundamentalists to affect the debate (the kind that doesn't happen in real fundamentalist--Muslim--regimes).
Interestingly, Slater does admit that the values espoused by Westerners actually come from religion. But I guess he doesn't think that being endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights makes up for the repression he thinks religion puts on people.
Are there repressive, anti-women regimes in the world? Absolutely. But they aren't Christians, fundamentalist or otherwise. They're Muslim. It's too bad that Slater's hatred of religion blinds him to reality.
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