OPINION:
Gotta love the Sharia. Our good friends in Saudi Arabia, the ones we dare not criticize for human rights issues because of strategic national security reasons, have launched a girls’ council to help on the women’s rights’ public affairs front — but unfortunately, it’s Wahhabi style.
And Wahhabi, as any good linguist will tell you, is translated to “we be anti-women.” Loosely, of course.
In greater detail, Wahhabism is a type of Salafism — a belief in Islam — that wants a return to the religious purity days of Mohammed, the Muslim prophet. It takes its dictates from the Koran and the Sunnah, the book of stories about caliphs that aren’t included in the Koran, and from there, voila, we have Sharia law.
And with Sharia, as we all know, females are still making the climb to second-class status, stymied as they are by males’ still-higher regard for things like dogs, and desks.
So how that plays in modern day: That means the Girl’s Council can’t have any girls. At least publicly.
The Daily Mail puts it bluntly: “Saudi officials have been mocked for launching a Girls’ Council without any girls at the launch. It was meant to be an initiative to show the world the kingdom had moved on from oppressing women’s rights, but when the Qassim Girls’ Council was formed, the authorities appeared to have omitted a key ingredient at the launch event.”
By now, you may have guessed: It was the girls.
“Instead [of girls], 13 men introduced the initiative on stage,” the Daily Mail said.
The females were reportedly safely out of sight, hidden in another room, watching in via live video link.
And here’s what Prince Faisal bin Mishal bin Saud said during the launch: “In the Qassim region, we look at women as sisters to men and we feel a responsibility to open up more and more opportunities that will serve the work of women and girls,” the BBC reported.
Seriously, folks. You cannot make this stuff up.
Social media was quick to comment.
“This is not a joke,” wrote one Twitter user, alongside a photograph of the 13 men as they presented the Girls’ Council. “I repeat, not a joke. The first meeting of the first ’Girls Council’ in Saudi Arabia.”
And another, posting alongside the same picture, wrote this: “Saudi Arabia’s Qassim Women’s Council … Wait a second.”
Wait a second, indeed.
But there’s a deeper message, and it’s this: Liberals love to talk about the moral equivalencies of Islam and Christianity, and Islam and any other religion. In fact, the entire immediate past White House administration made a major U.S. policy out of it, with not-so-subtle messages about terrorism offered through then-President Barack Obama, who could never string together a sentence placing “radical” next to “Islam” and terror, facts to the contrary.
Failing to see what Islam teaches is a danger, though. And it’s a danger that in this day and age of spreading Islamic thought, and spreading Muslim population — as ISIS drives refugees farther and deeper West — is one that can’t be ignored, at least in America. Is Islam compatible with the Constitution? Is Sharia an ideology that works within the laws of our republic, and within the free principles of America and Christianity and our Judeo-Christian founding?
How about within our understanding of equality?
This story of the no-girls Girls’ Council — while on surface, humorous — nonetheless says no.
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