The Liberal Dehumanization of Women Within Islam
Sometimes there is an article that frames a topic in a crystal clear lens. Barbara Kay's piece in the National Post does that when it comes to the dehumanization inherent in the liberal silence on the abuse of women by non-western cultures referring to a caste in which an Australian judge freed the rapists of a 10 year old girl.
How could any woman get it so wrong? It’s like this: Indoctrinated in multicultural feminism, Judge Bradley is a moral and cultural relativist. Any sexual aggression against her own daughter would be anathema, but the cultural values of the Other are sacrosanct, and must be respected.
Thus, that judge didn’t see a 10-year old girl. She didn’t see an individual. She saw aboriginal Others engaged in behaviours particular to their culture, and she assumed it would be wrong to impose her standards on them.
Liberalism's Fear of its Own Racism
Liberalism's greatest problem in dealing with Islam is a fear of its own racism. That racism leads to the constant campaign by liberals against any criticism of Islam, after all just as the greatest puritans are also the greatest perverts, the greatest campaigners against bigotry also tend to be the biggest bigots. Hypocrisy and self-hatred are the driving mechanisms of true fanaticism.
But the rotten heart of liberalism is its own racism and its own dehumanization of individual members of minority groups. As Barbara Kay rightly writes, the judge did not see a 10 year old girl, she saw a member of another culture. She did not see a little girl to be compassionate too, she saw an alien creature.
Liberals insist they want us to relate to Muslims as individuals, yet when Muslims do emerge as individuals and leave behind their beliefs, the way Wafa Sultan or Hirsi Ali have, liberals are desperate to look away because of their terror of individualism. When one of the Others takes on an identity is the exact moment they choose to look away.
The Status of Women Within Group Rights
And that is at the heart of the problem we face. The clash between individual rights and group rights. Individual rights are premised on the sacrosanct status of My body, My Home, My Property. Group rights are based instead on the sacrosanct status of the group's needs and identity. And the thing about group rights, is that the bigger group always wins.
Think of liberalism as a collection of Russian dolls that fit one inside the other. To liberals, a woman has rights as a member of the larger group of 'women' but a Pakistani-Canadian woman falls into a larger group that of a Muslim-Minority-Woman and as Muslims are the larger group, they take precedence over her identity as a woman.
So too similarly class trumped the rights of women in the 30's and 40's and race trumped the rights of women in the 60's and 70's. Like Jews and Gays, Liberals pretends to care about Women's Rights but primarily when it allows them to combat Conservatives. When it comes to staking out a claim for rights within Liberalism's Utopian Big Tent of Multiculturalism, they all get thrown under the wheels of the rainbow bus.
Group Rights vs Individual Rights
Liberalism's emphasis on Group Rights over Individual Rights has created a dehumanization of the individual and replaced civil rights with a caste system in which the group you belong to determines your rights. It also determines what moral values, if any, apply to you.
The Dehumanization of the Individual has paved the way for Islam's Long March through Western Civilization. When liberals create legal ghettos for Muslims, remaining silent on the abuse of women and children and even legitimizing those abuses as 'civil rights', what they are really creating are sanctuary zones for the spread of radical Islam across North America and Europe.
When the Hijab and even the Burka are treated as something positive that we must strive to understand. When the Islamic support of terrorism is treated as a grievance requiring understanding. When the hatred and bigotry inherent in the contact between Muslims and non-Muslims is either ignored or whitewashed, the way is paved for those sanctuary zones to spill over into armed warfare against the rest of society. That has already happened in France and Sweden and will continue happening all across Europe.