What disappoints so much is how feminists have failed to rally in protest against the surrender of the Swat Valley in Pakistan to the Taliban. An action that will at the very least deny girls an education, and along with that the means to be independent, to move from the abject servitude to troglodyte men from the Dark Ages, and at worst threatens all people with the totalitarian theocracy of terror that Islamism offers as "morality".
I have written before of my disgust at the appeasement by the semi-failed state of Pakistan in fighting these barbarians, and the actions since the Taliban took over.
Now Jane Perlez and Pir Zubair Shah have written in the New York Times about how the Taliban have now banned music, how people have been fleeing the area and how such appeasement emboldens the Taliban. "The Taliban also announced in the local mosque that every family in the village would have to contribute one young man to their ranks" conscription ISN'T peace.
Christopher Hitchens write in Slate that there is now a new trend of separating the moderate extremists from the extreme extremists "In the last few days, we have heard President Barack Obama musing about a distinction between good and bad Taliban, the British government insisting on a difference between Hezbollah the political party and Hezbollah the militia, and Fareed Zakaria saying that the best way of stopping the militants may be to allow them to run things in their own way".
Imagine talking about those good and bad Nazis, or Khmer Rouge.
Hitchens predicts disaster for the Swat valley "A state or region taken over by jihadists will not last long before declining into extreme poverty and backwardness and savagery. There are no exceptions to this rule. We do not need to demonstrate again what happens to countries where vicious fantasists try to govern illiterates with the help of only one book." Quite, but worst of all it will hurt far wider than the people of that valley.
"who will be blamed for the failure? There will not, let me assure you, be a self-criticism session mounted by the responsible mullahs. Instead, all ills will be blamed on the Crusader-Zionist conspiracy, and young men with deficiency diseases and learning disabilities will be taught how to export their frustrations to happier lands. Thus does the failed state become the rogue state. This is why we have a duty of solidarity with all the secular forces, women's groups, and other constituencies who don't want this to happen to their societies or to ours."
In other words, the war against terrorism is a war against the destruction of civil society by these forces of the Dark Ages giving themselves succuour and a land of people to enslave and bully. THIS is the battle that should unify secularists and those who support individual liberty and the rights of women as a part of that - yet they are mostly silent. Hitchens calls it shameful that this be left to happen "we shall long have cause to regret the shameful decision to deliver the good people of the Swat Valley bound and gagged into the hands of the Taliban, and—worst of all—without even a struggle."
One wonders when the scourge of Islamism will be serious enough for the Western left to unite in disgust, or for the so-called peace movement/feminist left to stand up and recognise that the greatest fight for peace and womens' rights today is against Islamists, who worship violence and the subjugate of women and girls.
I have written before of my disgust at the appeasement by the semi-failed state of Pakistan in fighting these barbarians, and the actions since the Taliban took over.
Now Jane Perlez and Pir Zubair Shah have written in the New York Times about how the Taliban have now banned music, how people have been fleeing the area and how such appeasement emboldens the Taliban. "The Taliban also announced in the local mosque that every family in the village would have to contribute one young man to their ranks" conscription ISN'T peace.
Christopher Hitchens write in Slate that there is now a new trend of separating the moderate extremists from the extreme extremists "In the last few days, we have heard President Barack Obama musing about a distinction between good and bad Taliban, the British government insisting on a difference between Hezbollah the political party and Hezbollah the militia, and Fareed Zakaria saying that the best way of stopping the militants may be to allow them to run things in their own way".
Imagine talking about those good and bad Nazis, or Khmer Rouge.
Hitchens predicts disaster for the Swat valley "A state or region taken over by jihadists will not last long before declining into extreme poverty and backwardness and savagery. There are no exceptions to this rule. We do not need to demonstrate again what happens to countries where vicious fantasists try to govern illiterates with the help of only one book." Quite, but worst of all it will hurt far wider than the people of that valley.
"who will be blamed for the failure? There will not, let me assure you, be a self-criticism session mounted by the responsible mullahs. Instead, all ills will be blamed on the Crusader-Zionist conspiracy, and young men with deficiency diseases and learning disabilities will be taught how to export their frustrations to happier lands. Thus does the failed state become the rogue state. This is why we have a duty of solidarity with all the secular forces, women's groups, and other constituencies who don't want this to happen to their societies or to ours."
In other words, the war against terrorism is a war against the destruction of civil society by these forces of the Dark Ages giving themselves succuour and a land of people to enslave and bully. THIS is the battle that should unify secularists and those who support individual liberty and the rights of women as a part of that - yet they are mostly silent. Hitchens calls it shameful that this be left to happen "we shall long have cause to regret the shameful decision to deliver the good people of the Swat Valley bound and gagged into the hands of the Taliban, and—worst of all—without even a struggle."
One wonders when the scourge of Islamism will be serious enough for the Western left to unite in disgust, or for the so-called peace movement/feminist left to stand up and recognise that the greatest fight for peace and womens' rights today is against Islamists, who worship violence and the subjugate of women and girls.
Or perhaps it is easier to send faxes about pay equity?
3 comments:
Don't worry, the Catholic Church and Christians will come through. They always do :-)
And I dread to think what might happen should Sharia law be implemented in Luton.
I don't think the locals would be too happy judging by the response those muslim protesters got when the local regiment matched through the city.
The scenes were ugly but heartening because maybe the Brits will resist the Islamisation of their own country, after all.
There's more on this over at Barnsley Bill,
"THIS is the battle that should unify secularists and those who support individual liberty and the rights of women as a part of that - yet they are mostly silent."
YES! Yes indeed.
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