Damnation to those who think otherwise:
"It is necessary to control women's sexual urges," says Hakim, a stern, bespectacled man in a fez. "They must be chaste to preserve their beauty."
I had hoped that Islam was moving beyond this.
But I was wrong.
Oh, come ye, ye apologists for toleration, who insist:
It is well established that female genital mutilation (FGM) is not required in Muslim law. It is an ancient cultural practice that existed before Islam, Christianity and Judaism. It is also agreed across large swathes of the world that it is barbaric.
Islam has failed to forbid and condemn this practice. Therefore, it is complicit.
And, Goddess bless Bill Maher below:
The proper response to religion, riddled as it is with absurdities, is, thus, laughter, either of the belly-slapping, table-pounding kind or the pitying, head-shaking sort. ... Facing such a task, a desire for comic relief is only natural. Bill Maher is where anger, outrage and religion meet – in humor. (This essay will address only his stance on religion.) There is nothing un-American about his faith-bashing – far from it. Thomas Jefferson, who denied the divinity of Jesus, wrote that, “Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions” – and what is religion but a jumble of unintelligible propositions about our cosmos and its origins? Yet Maher has incited no small amount of ire among both the faith-addled masses (fully two-thirds of Americans believe Jesus actually rose from the dead, and almost half expect him to return in the coming decades) and their muddleheaded sympathizers for his brutal broadsides against religion, and Islam in particular.
The Salon essay cites a recent fray between Maher and Fareed Zakaria where Zakaris stupidly invokes Indonesia:
Following this, Zakaria slips off the rails, adducing Indonesia (where female genital mutilation is rife and spreading) as a Muslim land where “women are given respect.”
Unfortunately, I cannot laugh. I am very angry:
Jakarta, 2 September 2010 (IRIN) - Though the Indonesian government banned female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) four years ago, experts say religious support for the practice is more fervent than ever, particularly in rural communities.
A lack of regulation since the ban makes it difficult to monitor, but medical practitioners say FGM/C remains commonplace for women of all ages in this emerging democracy of 240 million - the world’s largest Muslim nation.
Although not authorized by the Koran, the practice is growing in popularity.
With increased urging of religious leaders, baby girls are now losing the top or part of their clitoris in the name of faith, sometimes in unsanitary rooms with tools as crude as scissors.
Frankly, if I were younger and fit, I would run away to fight beside Kurdish women warriors against ISIS and I would take care to ceremonially mutilate the bodies of ISIS men so that they would spend eternity (if there is an eternity after death) as eunuchs.
Cross your legs, boys, tightly. I am pissed. And you are damned lucky that I am old and walk with two canes.