The dualism of Islam allows for two ways to treat women. They can be honored or they can be beaten. If you’re going to study Islam you have to study women as a separate category because Muhammad had a misogynistic love/hate relationship with them. The reason for this is simple, Islamic doctrine denies that men and women are equal. Men are greater than women. The Qur’an has entire sections devoted to how women are treated inferior to men (too many to note here). On the subject of wife beating, the Qur’an is clear. It says that if a woman does not obey her husband or submit she can be beaten. Some argue that since Islamic women are beaten from an early age, by the time they are married they are used to this treatment and it does not seem to bother them. Wife beating is thoroughly entrenched in Islam. This is not a religious aberration in Islam, it is fundamental to their doctrine.
Muhammad left a great deal of information about the thrashing of women. In a hadith Muhammad is noted as saying that if hitting a woman is necessary do not strike them in the face (unsightly and unbecoming). Because Islam’s holy books are dualistic they hold contradictory positions. There are statements that says that it is proper to beat a woman, then somewhere else, in another hadith, Muhammad supposedly says: “Do not strike Allah’s handmaidens.” The truth is there are explicit rules laid out as to the gradation of how the man makes the woman submit and the final stage is a beating/thrashing. It is a form dominance through progressive punishment
Then there are child marriages and the rape of children. In 2002, research in refugee camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan found that half the girls were married by age 13 [“Violent Oppression of Women in Islam”, Spencer and Chesler, Frontpage Magazine, pg. 15.] In an Afghan refugee camp more than two out of three second grade girls were either married or engaged. Virtually all the girls who were beyond second grade were already married. This is pure Sunna or the way of Muhammad. How do we know this? When Muhammad was in his mid-fifties, he was engaged to Aisha, a child of six. At age nine he consummated the marriage with her. So, when the 60-year-old Pakistani Muslim is engaged to the 10-year-old it is Sunna, it is the way of Muhammad.
Men are allowed to perform honor killings on women. An honor
killing is when a man kills a woman because she has violated his honor. A
Muslim male must control the sexuality of the females in his household or he is
dishonored. The Qur’an speaks at great length about women’s rights (lack of
them). Among them women are to receive half the amount of inheritance of a
male. In a court of law it takes testimony of two women to equal testimony of
one man. If a woman testifies against a man and he denies the accusation, then
the testimony has no weight at all. In Islamic court this makes cases of rape
impossible to prove.
Muhammad commented that he had seen Hell and the great
majority of its inhabitants were women. Why were they there? They had not fully
appreciated their husbands. In the same hadith, it is stated that women were
spiritually inferior to men and women are not as intelligent as men. This
treatment extents to the afterlife too where men become sexual deviants and
women remain subjugated and servants of men.
Then there is the Burqa / head-to-toe covering that often
includes the face. Some Islamic women say that it is not really required.
Again, we encounter dualism (or contradiction). We know this much: Muhammad
made all of his wives wear a veil. So although there is not a universal
commandment that says women should wear a burqa, we do know that from other
precedents…Muhammad’s life and emulation of it is the highest pinnacle of
Islamic behavior. Burqa is therefore expected of obedient Muslims.
Another aspect of Islam is polygamy. The Qur’an is quite clear on polygamy. A man can have up to four wives. There is also the travesty of stoning. Sharia law is very technical about stoning. It even denotes the stones should to be chosen so they do not kill immediately. They have to be big enough so that when enough of them are thrown, they will kill the victim. Death by stoning is meant to be a torture that the entire community participates in.
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