...born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad

 Chick “power”: Sharia decrees a second class status for women, who must submit to the authority of both man and Allah. At the moment, though, there is one area in which Muslim women are accorded equal status: the “privilege” of being a mass-murdering "martyr". Phyllis Chesler, a long-time feminist and critic of Islamic doctrine pertaining to women, explains why an increasing number of women are becoming shahidas:

…And, we are used to hearing that women in the Third World, including the Islamic world, are victims, not killers. How can they be both? They can.

According to the U.S. Military, in the last five years in Iraq, 43 women carried out suicide bombings.Women hide their explosive belts and bombs under their flowing black abayas–one more reason that such outerwear should be banned in the West. Actually, Muslims kill more Muslims than anyone else does. This latest attack was apparently launched by Sunni Muslims against Shiite Muslims. It might be in the interests of Islam to ban such clothing which has been used to disguise both male and female terrorists.

Of course, The New York Times suggests that “despair” and “spousal grief” drives women to become suicide terrorists.

Not so fast.

Women who have been despised and abused since birth may be especially vulnerable to the kind of ideological and religious entrapment which promises them glory (and their families money). Also, due to inbreeding/first cousin marriage and family violence, they may be mentally retarded, already terrorized, or prone to depression and therefore easy to manipulate. Or, female suicide killers may be filled with rage–enough rage so that they want to scapegoat strangers to avenge themselves against family intimates.

True, some women are mourning the loss of brothers, fathers, and sons but what about Islamist ideology? What about al-Qaeda handlers who tempt women with glory just as they tempt men? What about the Palestinian members of Islamic Jihad, Al-Aqsa Brigade, Hezbollah and Hamas (al-Qaeda does this too), who exploit depressed, mentally ill, and mentally retarded women into strapping on an explosive belt and blowing themselves up? What about a culture in which being born female is often a capital crime, a culture in which girls and women are honor murdered for the slightest, alleged infringements of the patriarchal rules? If someone feels she is already a marked woman, why not redeem her shame by going out in a blaze of glory and taking some infidels along with her?...

Glory? Money? Surely there has to be some bigger enticement than that. But it seems that, in death as in life, the chicks get stiffed. For while the lads are promised scores of luscious vixens and untold delights forbidden them during their corporeal existence, women are promised…dwarfs?  Now, if the payoff was said to be an eternal spa staffed by Cary Grant and Brad Pitt look-alikes, then maybe one could understand the allure.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:55 | link | comments (1)

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