Check out this piece from Laura Ingram's producer, Lee Habeeb in the National Review:
The Islamist War on Women
Typical neo-con -- faking concern for women's rights to stir up anti-Muslim bigotry and promote an agenda that has nothing to do with women's rights. I'll believe these conservative hacks care about women's rights as soon as I hear them repudiate misogynists like Rush Limbaugh.
Below is my response to the friend who sent me the link to the Habeeb article in question:
Lee Habeeb is an intellectually dishonest person. It is not hard to see what his agenda is and what role articles like this serve. That agenda has nothing to do with helping oppressed women.
The overall agenda, in which conservative propagandists like Habeeb play their role, is to convince Americans to go along with U.S. imperial interventions and wars abroad, voluntarily submit to a less free security state here in the U.S., and to support the Republican Party. This article furthers that agenda by conflating Islamist fundamentalists with the larger Muslim population and the religion as a whole. Now that the Soviet Union has collapsed, Muslims provide a new boogie man in the world that inspires fear and leads Americans to support right wing policies, parties, politicians, and media figures.
"Islamists" are radical fundamentalists. Most Muslims are not Islamists. The defining characteristic of an Islamist is the desire to run one's country according to one's specific religious beliefs. This is a characteristic they share with Christian "dominionists" (who make up a big part of the Tea Party movement) and Zionists.
Let's take a look at Habeeb's article:
“The Salafi TV preachers advocate restrictive views on women, railing against female protesters and even advising audiences of what they see as the Islamically correct way for a husband to beat his wife.”
Sounds to me a lot like American conservative talk radio personalities like Limbaugh who spew hatred against women, call women "feminizes," called Sandra Fluke a "slut" and say things like this about Hillary Clinton: "I want to shoot her right in the vagina and I don't want her to die right away…" Most Americans don't listen to that trash but it's all over the radio dial. I see no reason to assume that the "Salafi TV preachers" are endorsed by most of the populations in which they broadcast either.
“Not the Child My Grandmother Wanted.”
That is horrible. It is a single anecdote, but it is terrible, nonetheless. To the extent that is representative of Somalia, I don't think you can ignore the 19th century colonization of that Muslim region by predominantly Christian European nations. It is easy to see how a Muslim struggle against Christian invaders can strengthen the hand of religious hardliners within a culture in a way that can last for generations. That sucks. A lot of feminists, like Hillary Clinton, speak and attend conferences and try to promote women's rights around the world. I completely support that.
Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan
The Islamist fundamentalists in both those countries were funded, armed, trained and empowered by the U.S. government as part of the overall Cold War strategy. That Habeeb mentions these two countries without acknowledging this fact indicates that he is not really serious about women's rights. If he were, he would look at this integral piece of the puzzle. Habeeb is part of a conservative institutional infrastructure that stirs up and exploits anti-Muslim bigotry in order to gain more popular support for these types of foreign interventions that have contributed to this very issue that Habeeb pretends to care about.
I am not going to fall prey to religious bigotry against Muslims because of the worst behavior of a segment of that religion - a segment that has consistently been supported and empowered by my own government. And I am not going to be manipulated into supporting the U.S. institutions that are responsible for empowering the worst Islamist fundamentalists.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/...
P.S. This comment:
"And Sandra Fluke thinks America is hostile to women because many of us don’t want to pony up for her birth control?"
is a prime example of Habeeb's intellectually dishonest hackery. Sandra Fluke doesn't want Habeeb and whoever he considers "us" to "pony up" for her birth control. She wants it to be covered by medical insurance as it should be. It actually saves insurance companies money to cover birth control, because it is a lot cheaper than covering a pregnancy, so it doesn't cost Habeeb or anyone else anything. It saves money overall.