On Friday, February 8th, I wrote about Professor Noah Feldman’s op-ed piece in the New York Times in which he viewed a long-standing Turkish ban on the wearing of headscarves in universities as a ban against religious “freedom.” On Saturday, February 9th, I noted here that on the very next day, February 9th, the New York Times (page A4) featured an interview with a Turkish woman lawyer, Fatma Benli, titled: “Under a Scarf, a Turkish Lawyer Fighting to Wear It.”
Why is the New York Times so invested in securing an Islamic religious right in Turkey?
Here’s an idea: In a gesture towards even-handedness, perhaps The Paper of Record might consider agitating for the right of European Jews to wear headcoverings (kipot or yarmulkes) without risking being cursed, beaten, or knifed to death? Better yet: How about some even-handed agitation for the religious rights, not only of Muslims in Turkey, but of Jews, Christians, Hindus, and Ba’hai, to practice their religions openly in places like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Indonesia—without being arrested and stoned to death?
Today, yet again, the New York Times, (page A3) featured another article about the Islamic headscarf in Turkey. Granted, this time they quoted some Turks who oppose lifting the ban. These secularists point out that “a woman’s right to resist being forced to wear head scarves by an increasingly conservative society–was under threat.” (I made this point in my blog here on this subject and would welcome Noah Feldman’s response to this point).
Further, today’ s piece, written by Sabrina Tavernise, quotes a member of the TUrkish Parliament. “This decision will bring further pressure on women…it will ultimately bring us Hezbollah terror, Al Qaeda terror and fundamentalism.” Finally, a former Turkish Justice Minister, Hikmet Sami Turk, says: “(Lifting the headscarf ban has) been presented as a liberty to cover the head, but in practice, it is going to evolve into a ban on uncovered hair.”
Noah Feldman, our Paper of Record: I implore you to listen to such voices. They know something about the Islamic headscarf, namely, that it is an augur of coercion, punishment, and the further subordination of women. Taking a “neutral” position, quoting both sides of the issue, is ultimately tantamount to siding with coercion.
The Islamic headscarf is the not the same as the Jewish kippah or wig or headcovering although I agree that there are troubling signs among a handful of religious Jews in Jerusalem in which the women are being coerced into wearing burqas! and in which long, wide, heavy, dark, and completely unattractive clothing is being forced upon Jewish women in certain ultra-religious sects, both in America and Israel. I view this as an Islamification of Judaism and I fear it both among Jews and among our Muslim cousins.
Speaking of cousins: When Muslim girls refuse to marry their first cousins they are usually honor-murdered. Ditto, when they refuse to wear the veil. The information coming out of the UK about this sets the number of honor murders yearly at 17,000 world-wide. (5,000 was the long-time number suggested by the United Nations).
As I’ve written before: I believe that mosque and state, church and state, synagogue and state should be separate and that religious women should be allowed to practice modesty and to wear the sign and symbol of their religion at home, and at worship. On the job, in the streets, and in the classrooms are more problematic–not because there is anything intrinsically wrong with wearing a headscarf or a religious headcovering but because of the unique and specific nature of Islam. (Christians do not kill their own who convert to another religion. Jews do not kill their own who break certain commandments). Muslims do.
Islam is a political ideology, not a religion, and should be treated as such–at least until such time that the moderates, reformers, and peace-loving Muslims have silenced the aggressive terrorists and haters of freedom who now speak for them.
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9 Comments
Tom:Excellent idea and potentially good publicity for your cause!
Feb 10, 2008 - 1:19 pm George Jochnowitz:Noah Feldman seems to suffer from
“Western Suicide Syndrome”, the etiology of which has not yet been discovered.
Here we have Noah Feldman, a professor at one of the most prestigious centers of higher learning in the world. He evidently feels an obsession with perfecting political ideals of civil and human rights on a global scale. Wonderful.
So…why is he going out of his way to promote a symbol of oppression used by a genocidal ideology?
Hasn’t he done any research, as a professor at Harvard Law School should?
What is going on when a presumably intelligent, sophisticated, rational champion of the very highest humanitarian ideas suddenly takes a position which encourages the spread of one of the most backward, hate filled, oppressive, demonstrably predatory and genocidal military/political movements in history? (Islamic Fundamentalism)
Even more puzzling and bizarre: the fact that if this ideology wins…that he and his whole civilizaiton will be wiped out.
What twisted, labrynthine, psychological short circuits are at work here deep in the good professors brain?
It can only be yet another manifestation of “Western Suicide Syndrome”.
Islam in its current radical version is a blind faith. It is anti-political. Although it has a political agenda, it is based on the assumption that faith supersedes politics.
Islam nowadays resembles Marxism, but that’s because Marxism too is a blind faith, albeit an atheistic faith. Mao, Pol Pot, and the Kims crushed politics. Chavez is trying to do the same thing but has failed, so far.
Jews and Christians today no longer have blind faith. The Bible commands us to execute witches (Exodus 22:18) and homosexuals (Leviticus 20:13), but you cannot easily find a Christian or a Jew who will advocate a return to the days when people accused of witchcraft and homosexuality were hanged or burned.
Feb 10, 2008 - 1:27 pm Tom:Professor Feldman is perhaps an example of how real world experience trumps academic credentials. The guy’s background looks very impressive on Wikipedia. Yet he seems very naive about the core nature of Islamism and it’s essentially predatory and genocidal nature. He states:
Feb 10, 2008 - 1:59 pm David Thomson:“The rising global Islamist movement is embroiled in its own epochal debate about whether an authentically Islamic government can and must respect individual freedoms and the equality of all citizens”.
Excuse me? Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and Osam Bin Laden are debating about “respecting individual freedoms and the equality of all citizens”?
Debating?
Is that why Iran hasn’t murdered the two young women yet by stoning? The Mullahs must be engaged in a thoughtful debate about women’s rights and liberal democracy!
Professor Feldman continues:
“The best possible refutation of the claim that Islam and democracy are incompatible would be to point to an existing government where liberal and Islamic values work together”.
Really??
Bin Laden will be so relieved to hear this! “Thank goodness, we can have liberal democracy AND Islamic Fundamentalism!”
If he had known this, there might have been a vote to decide whether to cut off Daniel Pearl’s head while he was alive, or would it be more humane to knock him out first?
Mr. Feldman must be brilliant, looking at his long list of academic accomplishments. But when you listen to what Walid Shoebat, Tawfik Hamid and others who have actually lived in that world say, he is DEAD WRONG.
They all say that the head scarf is a symbol of Islamic superiority and power. They all say the west is making a suicidal error in thinking that Islamic Fundamentalism is just another religion like Methodism or Quakerism or Hindusim that should be accomodated and respected.
That’s like confusing the Peace and Freedom Party with a regiment of Nazi SS.
Little Red Riding Hood showed better sense and wisdom than Professor Feldman. She knows a wolf when she sees one.
There is something else that one should know about Professor Noah Feldman: he is the type of legal scholar most likely to be appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court by a Clinton or Obama administration. Do you want folks like him interpreting the laws of the United States? Many of you were thrilled concerning the Roe vs. Wade decision. The fact that it was logically incoherent was deemed irrelevant because it legalized abortion. The end presumably justified the means. Oh well, the stuff is now really starting to hit the fan. Radical legal scholars like Noah Feldman and Harold Koh will literally destroy the country. And no, I am not speaking rhetorically. I indeed do mean literally.
Feb 10, 2008 - 2:59 pm TomG:Prof. Feldman’s crackpot political theories do not surprise me. A few years ago they would have, but not now. I’ve listened to and read too many anti-Israel Jewish academics for too long to be surprised by much at this point. (Though I was taken aback by the Bishop of Canterbury’s recent condoning of certain aspects of Sharia law in England.) It is hard to believe that there are, in fact, a number of anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian Israeli academics, such as Ilan Pappe, but, indeed, such people do exist.
Feb 10, 2008 - 5:01 pm 4infidels:My take on this kind of thinking is that it is a neurotic attempt to be fair to the less fortunate. On another level, it is old lefty thinking habits that are hard to break, and are a faith in and of themselves. Unfortunately those habits are being taught and codified daily in our centers of higher learning (e.g. Israel stole the land). The Western apologists for Muslim and Islamic terror can take such positions because they are protected by a set of rules and beliefs (and democratic governments with armies) that radical Islam would tear asunder and replace with tyranny. But because they are protected from the dire consequences that would result if their theories were put into action, they can pretend they are fair minded, working for peace, and holy, so to speak.
Noah Feldman said: “The best possible refutation of the claim that Islam and democracy are incompatible would be to point to an existing government where liberal and Islamic values work together.”
And the overwhelming evidence supporting the claim that Islam and democracy are incompatible: There are no societies in which Islamic values and democratic values work together.
All 57 nation-states of the IOC provide evidence that refutes Mr. Feldman’s baseless optimism. The degree to which any of these states embody democratic values is directly related to the degree to which they suppress the influence of Islam in public life (Turkey throughout much of the 20th century) and/or the degree to which those countries have non-Islamic religious and cultural influences, either from minority populations or from their pre-Islamic traditions that still have an effect on local attitudes (Indonesia and Malaysia).
In both Turkey and East Asia, the trend is toward more Islam, which will lead to the loss of rights and freedoms for religious minorities and women and further limitations on free speech and free expression of religion.
Nothing more clearly depicts Mr. Feldman’s foolishness than the constitutions of Afghanistan and Iraq that he played a major role in drafting. By including a provision that no laws can be made that contradict Sharia (Islamic) law, Mr. Feldman effectively nullified the entire democratic, egalitarian and pluralistic wording in those constitutions. Thus it is consistent with Sharia law that apostates and critics of Islam receive death sentences as we have seen recently in high-profile cases in Afghanistan. The only reason those harsh judgments have been overturned or commuted is the desire of Kabul to continue receiving American aid, not because the rulings are contrary to the Islamic values of the Afghani constitution.
Simply put, core Islamic values such as jihad, the status of the dhimi, the role of women, the superiority of Islam over all other faiths and Sharia law are completely incompatible with Western notions of democracy.
That the New York Times gave Mr. Feldman space in its Sunday Magazine to turn a personal slight or misunderstanding regarding his Jewish high school into an indictment of Orthodox Jewish values is highly irresponsible. That Mr. Feldman then chose to tie his perceived rejection by his high school alumni newsletter—not having his picture with his non-Jewish wife published (or was the crime disrespecting a Harvard Law professor who has the power to use the Times for payback)—to an alleged relationship between Orthodox Jewish values and the rare act of terrorism committed by an Orthodox Jew (Baruch Goldstein) and the assassination of Rabin certainly makes him unfit to practice law in any legal system in which evidence and logic are required.
However Mr. Feldman, who can portray two high-profile incidences of barbaric political violence in the mid-1990s by Jews—notable at least in part because these types of acts by Jews are so rare—as arising from Orthodox Jewish values, cannot seem to make the connection between the many thousands of terrorist acts committed by Muslims since Sept. 11, 2001 with essential elements within Islam that are fundamentally at odds with Western values. He goes to great lengths to convince his readers that the Muslim clerics he talks to are struggling with the relationship of religion and democratic politics just as are Rabbis and other spiritual leaders…and he cheers the election of Rep. Keith Ellison, whom he compares to a Muslim Joe Lieberman.
Pretending that Islam as it has been understood, interpreted and practiced by Muslims throughout the past 1300 years is compatible with democracy doesn’t make it so. Much work has to be done—by Muslims themselves—beyond setting up elections, introducing parliamentary government and writing constitutions to transform Islamic politics, religious practice and attitudes into something that is democratic in nature and can peacefully co-exist with non-Muslims.
Pretending that a marathon is only one yard long doesn’t mean that after a few steps you are close to the finish line. As long as Mr. Feldman is considered a serious voice on Islamic issues, his fantasies regarding Islam will continue to endanger women, non-Muslims and Muslim apostates living in Muslim-majority countries while preventing the Western nations from taking the necessary steps to protect itself from those it should rightfully view as posing a threat to its core values.
Feb 10, 2008 - 8:45 pm PCM:You wrote:
“The information coming out of the UK about this sets the number of honor murders yearly at 17,000 world-wide.”
You are wrong.
The report states that up to 17,000 women in Britain are being subjected to “honour” related violence, such as kidnapping, beatings, and sometimes murder.
Feb 13, 2008 - 11:03 am pixologic:Hijab isn’t really a big deal, since it only covers your hair. It’s the burkas that are problematic.
Feb 15, 2008 - 6:22 pm