'End of virginity' if women drive, Saudi cleric warns

Do you agree with the cleric?

 

Let's not forget that this "cleric" was invited by the government to give his "expert opinion" - we are not talking about some outsider here who randomly contributes his craziness.

Standard excuse. You should read some of Necla Kelek's work.

8 shopkeepers killed over 10 years by two lunatic outsiders who were sought by the police

as opposed to

Thousands of people killed within a few minutes by trained Islamist terrorists and more than 15,000 Islamist terrorist attacks since then. Hmm.

One is not better than the other, they are both despicable, but it's funny how you "scream at the top of your lungs" at something that is a much smaller and more isolated phenomenon.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necla_Kelek

(...)

Kelek's family belonged to the Circassian minority in Turkey. Necla Kelek came with her parents from Turkey to Germany at the age of 11 in 1968. After her parents had maintained a western, secular lifestyle in Istanbul, they turned toward religion in Germany. Once, when Kelek dared to contradict her father, he threathened to kill her with an axe. Her father forbade her to participate in school sports, in order to protect her virginity and to preserve the honor of the family.

(...)

Kelek's research subject is the parallel society characterized by Islam in Germany. In 2011, she said, "Being a Muslim is becoming a self-sufficient identity. And this identity consists only of being different — different from the Europeans, different from the Africans, different from the Indians. And this frightens me. [Others] do not state their difference in terms of an utter rejection of the society that hosts them, preparing to take over one day. I often hear those Muslim youngsters bragging that one day this country will be theirs."

[Note: I have seen Muslim youngsters say things like that first-hand several times, and I could find you several Mathloom quotes that point in the same direction, e.g. here:

]


She also criticizes those who see themselves as victims, saying "Today, the Turks, or Muslims, are given full access to civil rights, to democracy and liberty — and they reject all that. They have access to good education, healthcare, social welfare, but they voluntarily choose to keep out, to stagnate in parallel worlds. [...] How can they still consider themselves as victims, as the Jews once were in reality?"[1]
She rejects toleration of the repression of both girls and boys in orthodox Islamic families as a misunderstood tolerance.

(...)

Similar to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Dutch politician of Somali origin, or the Egyptian feminist, Sérénade Chafik, Kelek opposes the repression of women in Islam. She is strongly criticized by Islamic organizations for this, especially since she is convinced that there is very little compatibility between Western and Islamic ideals.

The Turkish press, especially, attacks Kelek again and again: feminists like Kelek, Seyran Ateş, Sonja Fatma Bläser and Serap Çileli are accused of "exaggeration". Most women are supposedly not exposed to male control and live in freedom.

(...)

Necla Kelek backed the misgivings of Ralph Giordano about building a mosque in Cologne-Ehrenfeld. She argued, among other things, that an Islam is practiced in Germany which has proven to be a hindrance for integration. These mosques are nucleii of a counter-society. They teach the philosophy of another society and practice a life in the spirit of the sharia. Already, the children would learn the separation from the German society

-------------------

(...)

When a broader German public began concerning itself with the parallel Muslim world arising in its midst, it was primarily thanks to three female authors, three rebellious Muslim musketeers: Ates, who in addition to practicing law is the author of "The Great Journey Into the Fire"; Necla Kelek ("The Foreign Bride"); and Serap Cileli ("We're Your Daughters, Not Your Honor"). About the same age, all three grew up in Germany; they speak German better than many Germans and are educated and successful. But they each had to risk much for their freedom; two of them narrowly escaped Hatun Surucu's fate. Necla Kelek was threatened by her father with a hatchet when she refused to greet him in a respectful manner when he came home. Seyran Ates was lucky to survive a shooting attack on the women's shelter that she founded in Kreuzberg. And Serap Cileli, when she was 13 years old, tried to kill herself to escape her first forced marriage; later she was taken to Turkey and married against her will, then she returned to Germany with two children from this marriage and took refuge in a women's shelter to escape her father's violence. Taking off from their own experiences, the three women describe the grim lives and sadness of Muslim women in that model Western democracy known as Germany.

(...)

It is encouraging that some Muslim residents of Germany are forcefully calling on Germans to defend our democratic achievements against Muslim traditionalists and fanatics who incite hatred of democracy under the banner of respect for cultural difference. "What I am asking of the Germans," Necla Kelek says, "is nothing more and nothing less than equal treatment. I'm entitled to the same rights as any German woman."

Merely citing "lessons from the German past," as Germans tend to do, does not guarantee that these lessons are correct. It is a perversion when, out of respect for the "otherness" of a different culture, Germans stand aside and accept the fact that Muslim women in Germany are being subjected to an archaic code of honor that flouts the fundamental human rights to dignity and individual freedom. This has nothing to do with Germany or the "guiding German culture" that German conservatives want to put through; it has simply to do with humanity, with the protection of basic human and civil rights for all citizens of all ethnic backgrounds.

Politicians and religious scholars of all faiths are right in pointing out that there are many varieties of Islam, that Islamism and Islam should not be confused, that there is no line in the Koran that would justify murder. But the assertion that radical Islamic fundamentalism and Islam have nothing to do with each other is like asserting that there was no link between Stalinism and Communism. The fact is that disregard for women's rights - especially the right to sexual self-determination - is an integral component of almost all Islamic societies, including those in the West. Unless this issue is solved, with a corresponding reform of Islam as practiced in the West, there will never be a successful acculturation. Islam needs something like an Enlightenment; and only by sticking hard to their own Enlightenment, with its separation of religion and state, can the Western democracies persuade their Muslim residents that human rights are universally valid. Perhaps this would lead to the reforms necessary for integration to succeed. "We Western Muslim women," Seyran Ates says, "will set off the reform of traditional Islam, because we are its victims."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/04/magazine/04berlin.html?pagewanted=all

 

One thing we agree on...in principle.