Blind Eyes for Threats to Women

I hope women’s groups get access to this story out of Iran.  I remember my surprise when women’s rights groups supported Bill Clinton for President and, afterwards, supported him through the entire intern ordeal.  I thought, at that point, their credibility was shot.  I figured their on-going work would be no more effective than Jimmy Swaggart’s or Jim Bakker’s attempt at resurrecting their “ministries.”  I am not sure how the feminist groups are doing these days, but I notice a continued, willful blindness when it comes to real threats against women.

If Southern Baptists, for instance, make a statement affirming separate, but complementarian roles for men and women, saying that women should submit to the loving authority of their husbands in the home, the feminist groups go crazy.  Yet, though outraged by a Christian position of complementarian functions, these same women’s rights groups are strangely–even absurdly–silent about the oppression of women in Islam. 

I have linked a terribly sad–even sickening–article here from the Jerusalem Post, telling the story of prison guards who were offered to “marry” virgins so they could be executed.  One guard confesses his grief after seeing the response of these women.  Such violations of women are not uncommon in Muslim countries or under Shariah law.  These seem to me much more heinous examples of the oppression of women.  If women’s rights were the real issue, then we might expect feminist groups to sound the alarms about Islam.