Good for them


A group of non-Muslim Swedish women have taken to wearing traditional Islamic headscarves in protest of the beating of a Muslim woman so attired.

The "hijab outcry" movement says that they believe that discrimination against Muslim women is "reason enough in a country where the number of reported hate crimes against Muslims is on the rise - and where women tie their headscarves extra tight so that it won't get ripped off - for the prime minister and other politicians to take action to stop the march of fascism."

While I personally have considerable difficulty with the entire concept of "hate crimes-" actions, not thoughts, ought to be the concern of the law- I very much sympathize with these women. Islamophobia has long since passed the point of rational distrust of radical Islamists in much of the Western world, and has become nothing more or less than a form of religious bigotry.

I see the "hijab outcry" movement as very much in the tradition of the Lutheran Danes during World War II who chose to wear the Star of David as a sign of solidarity with their Jewish countrymen.

HT: Drudge

ADDENDUM: I keep getting responses from people expressing completely appropriate concern about the negative effects of radical Islam, specifically in Sweden- a nation which now leads the world in rapes, apparently due to the notion certain Muslim men seem to have that "immodestly dressed" Swedish women are legitimate targets.

This, and similar anti-social expressions of Islamic extremism, need to be dealt with not only firmly but ruthlessly. But that does not justify equating Islam itself with the slime balls and nutjobs who profess it. If it did, all of us Christians would be responsible for Fred Phelps and David Koresh.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Most Muslims are peace-loving, as are most Christians, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists. Unfortunately, the Koran is the only religious book in the world that justifies killing people who "threaten" their faith--however anyone feels like loosely interpreting that, it's a ticket redeemable in the eyes of society for murder. Lets be honest, the fact is the majority of the Muslim world sees American wars in the Middle East as attacking Islam itself. Neither the Boston Marathon bomber's parents, John Walker Lindh, nor the Fort Hood Murderer are isolated cases; they were the ones discovered. Christian apologists are just putting their heads on the chopping block of White Guilt, self-loathing and "sorry about the Crusades" revisionism, and trying to drum up domestic support of their own offices by pledging support to yet another "suddenly-not-so minority". Muslims in the East have ALWAYS hated the West and Christianity (they tried for 800 years to conquer and subvert Jerusalem and Christian Europe and forced religious pledges of loyalty, long before the "evil" Crusades were even launched--as we know Christians in Europe suffered Islamic "holy wars" for almost 400 years before sending Crusaders to protect Jerusalem, the birthplace of Christ which had no importance to the Muslim faith). Recent American incursions on "Muslim" soil haven't exactly endeared us to them. Muslims are Fundamentalist, and value religious ties over political ones and routinely send eager warriors across country borders and oceans (and from the USA) to "defend their faith" by murdering others, all justifiably and unabashedly in the hearts of their own mothers. All the while their women physically conceal themselves not only to placate their jealous husbands but to ensure their own social anonymity, attracting a perfectly justified focus of suspicion in open, free societies like ours that they enjoy a foreign livelihood from, but do not truly belong to. This is not racist profiling, or religious persecution, or hate; this is "we know what you are, and that you'd rather see us dead." This is the Boston Marathon bombers' parents, and they are not an isolated case in any stretch of a hopeful imagination.
As a sometime Christian pastor, I am very far from wanting to denigrate the Bible. But there are passages in the Old Testament which also are problematic when taken in isolation from the rest of the Bible, and for the same reason. You're talking about one specific passage from the Koran which was written to deal with a specific situation. It's true that this passage is taken out of context and abused by some Muslims, but that does not justify your characterization of the Koran. Also, "fundamentalist-" a perfectly honorable word kidnapped by the secularist Left to mean "excessively and unreasonably conservative-" is a term that can be (mis)used to describe members of any religion. It is certainly not the case that all Muslims would be accurately described by that word even in its popular meaning. In its technical meaning, of course, no Muslim believes in the substitutionary atonement of Christ, His deity, or any of a number of the other "Fundamentals" which gave the original movement its name.