Former Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali spoke at the University of Wisconsin-Madison last night ¹ calling the treatment of Muslim women "one of the world’s great inequalities."

So what can Muslim men say in counter-argument? Will they offer proof that she is wrong? Nope, all they can offer is the argument that such truths only make people distrust and hate Muslims.²

I understand - it's the same argument Nazis would use if people brought up the Holocaust - they wouldn't be able to deny it, they would simply point out that such truths only make people distrust and hate Nazis.

That's an interesting counter-argument; they can't fault her on her Islamic knowledge or on the truth of her statements, so they attack her for fostering Islamophobia.

Don't you find it odd, that in all non-Muslim countries where women are free to wear whatever they want and free from compulsion or force that none of the non-Muslim women choose to cover themselves head-to-toe? If women truly, truly wanted to wear those stifling items of clothing, then why aren't even a tiny, teensy-weensy slim minority of infidel women wearing burqas and niqabs? One could take a wild guess: because they are not compelled to do so.

If Muslim women really, truly, in their hearts desire hijabs and such, as they often claim, then why do Muslim countries need morality police to force them to do so?

For example, in the United States, there is no law requiring all women to eat bitter herbs. If you do find such an odd person, it is likely because she wants to. Now imagine a culture where every single woman without exception eats bitter herbs and that those who do not are ritually maimed, tortured, or slaughtered by their husbands or other male members of her family or neighborhood. Would any sane person actually believe that 100% of such women in that culture truly "choose" to eat bitter herbs? And if many of these females told you that they love bitter herbs, wouldn't you rightly suspect that they are deluded, in denial, or compelled to say so?

Notes

(1):

The Daily Cardinal, Controversial feminist speaks as part of DLS

Former Muslim and feminist speaker Ayaan Hirsi Ali gave a controversial lecture at the Memorial Union Tuesday night as part of the Distinguished Lecture Series.

Over a thousand people endured hour-long lines and airport levels of security to attend the highly-anticipated event in which she delivered a message critical of Muslim society and called for increased freedom for Muslim women all over the world.

Hirsi Ali said she uses her personal experiences as a former Muslim to form her views on the treatment of Muslim women. Originally from Somalia, she fled to the Netherlands to escape an arranged marriage, and began to question much of what she had been taught.

“I had wholeheartedly embraced Islam,” Hirsi Ali says of her teenage years. “And yet, there was this deep part of me that rebelled, and I had questions about things that I had no right to ask questions about.”

She said those questions included the topics of modest dress for women and the view of women as the property of their husbands. She cited cases in the Arab world and in the U.S. where violence against women was justified through the Qur’an and Islamic teachings in illustrating her argument.

(2):

Journal Sentinel, UW-Madison speaker critical of Islam, draws Muslims' criticism

Photo: Police lead Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s lecture attendees through metal detectors at the Wisconsin Union Theater on Tuesday.

...

The decision to invite Hirsi Ali and pay her $10,000 speaking fee drew criticism from both Muslim student organizations and other groups.

"I see this as people slowly becoming suspicious of Islam, and suspicion leads to hatred and much worse things," said Rashid Dar, president of UW-Madison's Muslim Student Association.

A tip of the turban to blog Winds of Jihad