For these women to act differently, I think they would need to be aware that it is possible to do so, and that it is morally preferable to do so.  I don't mean to make them sound like innocent victims, but the joy of the west is that it is easy to be good -- that the system allows people to be moral.  For these women to be moral (I almost slipped and typed "to be what we consider moral"), they would have to be able to be moral without being beaten, they would have to have others around them who expect moral behavior.

You can take a work environment, and under a particular boss and system, the workers will be rude, gossiply, and unproductive -- but if you change the boss and system, well, need I say more?

You mention Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Wafa Sultan, the former whom I greatly esteem, and the latter less so merely because my only knowledge of her comes from that video that was on LGF.  But, Hirsi Ali "stood up to her society" in Holland, and Wafa Sultan, I believe, lives in America.  I mean, come on: any woman who stands up to her society while in the society would escape being beaten into submission or paradise by quite a fluke -- I couldn't name one such woman, not that I'm an expert at all!

I completely agree with you here: "Thus I see little reason to feel optimistic about the likelihood of change coming from within the Muslim world (particularly given that an essential part of the Muslim faith explicitly condones the use of violence to suppress and eradicate any intellectual dissent)."

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Posted by One Man Laughing to Thrutch at 7/01/2006 06:43:38 PM