In all fairness women have had the short end of the stick with most religions. St. Paul, who perverted the original Christian message with overlays of hate (versus Jews, gays, and women, etc.) even suggested that young women should be barred from the church as trouble-makers. Plato granted equal rights and full-participation to his guardians (rulers in a ideal republic), but Aristotle, who became the philosophic foundation of the three Western religions (Judaism/Maimonidies, Islam/Averroes and Avicena), and Christianity/Aquinas et al) subordinated them to the masters of the household, viewed them as not acquiring souls until 80 days after conception (vs men at 40 days) and we are still emerging out of the subjection of same (to use Mill's image: http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/m/mill/john_stuart/m645s/
The situation of women in mid 19th century Britain was even worse than in America. In either they had no rights apart from father/husband dominated ones. In Britain a husband could make away with a woman's inheritance simply by divorcing her. The situation of them as factory workers was grim. In Puerto Rico in this past century young women were forced (mainly unknowingly) into sterilization by American corporations hiring them there -- a large percentage of the female population there:
http://www.surfingtheapocalypse.net/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?noframes;read=326
http://www.library.wisc.edu/libraries/WomensStudies/bibliogs/puerwom.htm
http://www2.hu-berlin.de/sexology/IES/puertorico.html
http://www.puertorico.com/forums/showthread.php3?threadid=5486
I am posting multiple sites here to ensure that this not be taken as a conspiracy theory thing. It was brought to my attention about a decade back in a faculty women's rights seminar at CUNY by my then John Jay College of Criminal Justice wider colleague, Altagracia Ortiz:
http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/1150_reg.html
So getting off at Muslims now neglects the fact that we are not far away from comparable abuses. And as noted, female circumcision was a pre-Islamic and a not uniquely Islamic practice today. And while we are at it, circumcision of males . . . ? Been to a Bris recently?
http://www.torahview.com/bris/html/the_bris.html
IMHO all our religions have some pretty barbaric hangovers. Now on to executing kids -- only in America and a handful of Islamic states.
As Jesus said: "First cast out the beam in your own eye...."
Ed Kent
WEBMASTER wrote:
Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is carried out among Muslims in Egypt, the Sudan, Saudi Arabia, South Yemen, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Oman, the Philippines, Malaysia, Pakistan and Indonesia. Some apologists point out that it is not performed in Iran, Iraq, Algeria, Libya, Morocco or Tunisia. [snip]
-- "A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy) -- Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty http://groups.yahoo.com/group/440neighborhood http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentConcerns http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
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