We’re The Problem And Other Fantasies

Yup, western values, along with Jews are the ‘root cause’ of problems facing the Arab and much of the Islamic world. If it weren’t for our hated values and the Jews, the Arab word would be a Utopian paradise for all.

Right.

From the NYT, A Cutting Tradition:

When a girl is taken — usually by her mother — to a free circumcision event held each spring in Bandung, Indonesia, she is handed over to a small group of women who, swiftly and yet with apparent affection, cut off a small piece of her genitals. Sponsored by the Assalaam Foundation, an Islamic educational and social-services organization, circumcisions take place in a prayer center or an emptied-out elementary-school classroom where desks are pushed together and covered with sheets and a pillow to serve as makeshift beds. The procedure takes several minutes. There is little blood involved. Afterward, the girl’s genital area is swabbed with the antiseptic Betadine. She is then helped back into her underwear and returned to a waiting area, where she’s given a small, celebratory gift — some fruit or a donated piece of clothing — and offered a cup of milk for refreshment. She has now joined a quiet majority in Indonesia, where, according to a 2003 study by the Population Council, an international research group, 96 percent of families surveyed reported that their daughters had undergone some form of circumcision by the time they reached 14…

According to Lukman Hakim, the foundation’s chairman of social services, there are three “benefits” to circumcising girls.

“One, it will stabilize her libido,” he said through an interpreter. “Two, it will make a woman look more beautiful in the eyes of her husband. And three, it will balance her psychology.”

Worldwide, female genital cutting affects up to 140 million women and girls in varying degrees of severity, according to estimates from the World Health Organization…

Nonetheless, as Western awareness of female genital cutting has grown, anthropologists, policy makers and health officials have warned against blindly judging those who practice it…[emp-SC&A]

More:

The men in this poor farming community were seething. A 13-year-old girl was brought to a doctor’s office to have her clitoris removed, a surgery considered necessary here to preserve chastity and honor.

The girl died, but that was not the source of the outrage. After her death, the government shut down the clinic, and that got everyone stirred up.

“They will not stop us,” shouted Saad Yehia, a tea shop owner along the main street. “We support circumcision!” he shouted over and over.

“Even if the state doesn’t like it, we will circumcise the girls,” shouted Fahmy Ezzeddin Shaweesh, an elder in the village…

For centuries Egyptian girls, usually between the ages of 7 and 13, have been taken to have the procedure done, sometimes by a doctor, sometimes by a barber or whoever else in the village would do it. As recently as 2005, a government health survey showed that 96 percent of the thousands of married, divorced or widowed women interviewed said they had undergone the procedure — a figure that astounds even many Egyptians. In the language of the survey, “The practice of female circumcision is virtually universal among women of reproductive age in Egypt.”

The challenge, however, rests in persuading people that their grandparents, parents and they themselves have harmed their daughters. Moreover, advocates must convince a skeptical public that men will marry a woman who has not undergone the procedure and that circumcision is not necessary to preserve family honor. It is a challenge to get men to give up some of their control over women.

…And it will be a challenge to convince influential people like Osama Mohamed el-Moaseri, imam of a mosque in Basyoun, the city near where the 13-year-old girl lived, and died. “This practice has been passed down generation after generation, so it is natural that every person circumcises his daughter,” he said. “When Ali Gomaa says it is haram, he is criticizing the practice of our fathers and forefathers.”

...It is an unusual swipe at the Islamists who have promoted the practice as in keeping with religion, especially since the government generally tries to avoid taking on conservative religious leaders. It tries to position itself as the guardian of Islamic values, aiming to enhance its own wilted legitimacy and undercut support for the Muslim Brotherhood, the banned but popular opposition movement.

Here’s the deal. The Arab and Muslim world have no business deriding our values, demanding that we accept their own as equal or superior or passing judgment on any civilized society. They have no business telling us to clean our house when the stench from their own is so putrid.

Female Genital Mutilation, along with that other delightful practice known as ‘honor killing’ are a stain and blot on civilized society, period. No culture or society that turns it’s back on those practices is in any position to dictate what is and isn’t moral to others.

The slaughter in Sudan has gone on for over 20 years. The regime in Khartoum made no effort to conceal their desire to slaughter the Christians and Animists of that nation. They were so successful that 2 million were killed and there are virtually no Christians or Animists left in that country. The proof is in the pudding, as that truth has been of little concern to Arabs and Muslims the world over.

The genocide in Algeria seems to be coming off a moratorium. The GIA Islamic fundamentalists spent decades raping boys and girls in the name of God before murdering and dismembering them. The government offered an amnesty to the rebels, save for those who committed sexual crimes against minors. The GIA were outraged at that precondition. As of late, there has been a resurgence of fundamentalist activity. Now as before, the majority of the Arab and Islamic world is silent, preferring instead to excoriate westerners and Jews.

In Mauritania, the slave trade, almost exclusively the domain of Arab slave traders goes on unabated as it has for centuries. As expected, the Arab and Islamic world remains silent on the issue.

All the while, much of the Arab and Islamic world are demanding that we apologize to them.

We will wait for Muslim shame and apologies addressing the vile and despicable Muslim world portrayals of Jews, Judaism, Christians and Christianity. We will wait for  as well as religious pronouncements of the same before we consider their criticisms as valid.

We will wait for the Muslim shame and apologies directed at the regular bombings, shootings and mosque and church burnings in Pakistan- with worshipers inside.

We will wait for Muslim apologies, outrage and shame directed at mass, violent protests against the barbaric practice of beheading and other kinds of torture so often found in the Muslim world.

We will wait for the Muslim shame, apologies and outrage at the fact that according to the UN Report on Human Development, the Arab World has the lowest standard of education in the world, with the exception of sub Saharan Africa.

We will wait for the Muslim shame and apologies and outrage at the 140 million women that have suffered Female Genital Mutilation.

We will wait for the Muslim apology and outrage at Arab world Holocaust denial and the excoriation of Iran’s Almadinejad’s stated aim of ‘wiping Israel off the map.’

We will wait for the Muslim apology and outrage directed at Muslim cleric that whip their flock into a frenzy, with cries to ‘Slaughter the Jews!’ and ‘Slaughter the Christians!’- and how all too often, parishioners leave prayer services, looking for victims.

We will wait for the Muslim apologies and outrage directed at their own cultures and societies that have allowed Mein Kampf to be at the top of the best seller list, after the Quran.

There are but a few of the issues that separate most of the Arab and Islamic world from the civilized world.

Why on earth should the America, the west and Israel deal with most of the Arab and Muslim world as if they were our equals?