March 8, 2008
AlterNet

Is Islam Really Stuck in the 12th Century on Women's Rights?

by Joshua Holland

Before 9/11/01, the media relegated stories about women in Islamic societies to page B27, below the fold. Ever since 9/12/01, those same stories have screamed from the front pages in 100-point type. The shift in discourse coincided with the launch of Bush's global "War on Terror," when various hawks began using the plight of women in Islam to illustrate the supposed perfidy of our "enemies," and to justify a series of military "interventions" -- invasions -- by Western powers. . . .

But I've seen no empirical data to suggest that an Islamic majority itself correlates with the subordination of women better than other co-variables like economic development, women's ability to serve in government, a political culture that values the rule of law or access to higher education. . . .

Support for equal rights is robust in all Muslim countries. Large majorities say it is important in Iran (78%), Azerbaijan (85%), Egypt (90%), Indonesia (91%), Turkey (91%) and the Palestinian territories (93%). . . .

Like the promotion of human rights during the Cold War, there is a geopolitical goal being served. The United States has been in a state of permanent war since the 1940s . . .

We had a seamless transition from World War II to Cold War to Drug War to War on Terror, and in every instance, the unadulterated evil of our opponents has been a consistent theme, as has been our ability to turn a blind eye to the same offenses when perpetrated by the United States or our allies.

And now our existential enemies are the spooky brown people of the Muslim world, with their frightening and alien habits and supposed tendency towards "Islamofascism." The problem with that storyline is clear: the Western, predominantly Christian world has far more economic and political influence than the "Muslim world" -- much of which escaped the yoke of colonialism just in the past 50-75 years -- and, more significantly, it has hundreds of thousands of troops on the soil of several predominantly Muslim countries, whereas the reverse does not obtain. In other words, the "threat" of an Islamic takeover of the West is as realistic as the threat of my sweet grandmother beating the Hell out of Mike Tyson. . . .

The truth is that universal suffrage came to Iran in 1979, five years before women in Liechtenstein got the vote. It came to Bahrain in 2002, 12 years after the Swiss Supreme Court ordered the stubborn Canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden to accept women's suffrage. Portuguese women got the vote in 1976, Swiss women in 1971 -- both in my lifetime -- and in my baby-boomer mother's lifetime, women in Italy, Belgium and Japan first got the franchise. . . .

And when comparing apples and apples -- among economically developed Western democracies -- the United States has very little standing to criticize anyone else about the status of women. We rank 71st in the world in terms of the proportion of women serving in our legislature, with just 16 percent. That's significantly worse not only than the European countries, it's also a poorer showing than Sudan, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates and Uzbekistan. . . .

According to Harvard's Project on Global Working Families, the United States is one of only five countries out of 168 studied that doesn't mandate some form of paid maternal leave. The only other advanced economy among those five was Australia's, where women are guaranteed an entire year of unpaid leave. That puts the United States -- the wealthiest nation on the planet -- in the company of Lesotho, Papua New Guinea and Swaziland. . . .

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"Women in Islam," The Wisdom Fund

Michael Neumann, "Has Islam Failed?," The Wisdom Fund, May 15, 2003