speaking out

I tip my hat to those who dare to speak out against tyranny, oppression, and stupidity.

The Big Pharaoh reports and comments on the controversial remarks made about the veil by Egypt’s culture minister:

The uproar that followed the culture minister’s comments on the hair cover summarizes everything wrong with the current version of Islam being practiced today. Unreformed religious leaders, currently maintaining a monopoly over the Islamic discourse, attacked Farouk Hosni as if he blasphemed the Prophet himself. And when people who follow a certain religion get all excited over a piece of cloth that they say should be on a girl’s head then you know something is definitely wrong with how this religion is interpreted and preached, and that it’s in dire need of reform.

First, it is important to note something. If you are living in the West, you probably have heard all sorts of explanations and justifications from hijab advocates as to why Muslim women are required to wear it. The most cited justification is modesty. Muslim women (god, why does it always have to be women!) are required to be modest in their dress and not reveal too much flesh. Now that’s an absurd excuse because you can dress modestly without essentially covering your hair.

The other justification that really blows my brain off is this: the hijab protects women against evil things such as rape. This argument is even more absurd since a woman is raped every two hours in Pakistan and the gangs who harassed women in downtown*** Cairo did not differentiate between the covered and the uncovered. …
Proving that God is not stupid will only be realized once Islam meets reformation, when Muslim scholars and thinkers decide the time is ripe to dig into their holy and history books and come up with a version of the religion that is compatible with the age of space tourism and genetic engineering. Judaism, an Abrahamic faith that is close to Islam, had done it. +++ Why can’t Islam?

Read the whole thing.

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***BP is referring to a horrifying incident of “wilding” (mass sexual harassment of women in public on the streets) that occurred in downtown Cairo some weeks ago.

+++In fact, Judaism has its own fundamentalists (of varying degrees), and its own probems with its fundamentalists both in Israel and in the Diaspora.