Islam, 'Honor' Violence, and the Silence of the Progressives
By Jeff Jacoby
TownHall.com
"HONOR DIARIES" might not be
coming to a theater near you, at least not if CAIR
gets its way. The award-winning
documentary about "honor" violence against girls
and women in much of the Muslim world was released
last month in honor of International Women's Day,
and it didn't take long for the Council on American
Islamic Relations to slap its
all-purpose "Islamophobic!" label on it. The
film has been shown in dozens of venues, but CAIR
has raised enough of a stink to get screenings
cancelled on several college campuses, including
the University of Michigan and the University of
Illinois.
CAIR — a
front group for Islamist extremism that
masquerades as a civil rights organization (its
first executive director, Nihad Awad, was an open
supporter of Hamas) — is good at raising stinks.
Last week Brandeis University caved in to demands
that it
rescind its offer of an honorary degree to Ayaan
Hirsi Ali, a heroic defender of women's rights in
the Islamic world. With
a life story
that reads like a screenplay, Ali has personally
experienced many of the evils she fights, including
genital mutilation, forced marriage, and savage
"honor" crimes. Her remarkable accomplishments
should easily merit the honor of any university that
upholds reason and intellectual diversity. But
Brandeis apparently has different priorities now,
like giving
CAIR and the Islamophobia-phobes a veto over
honorary degrees.
Ali was involved in making "Honor Diaries," which
goes out of its way to convey respect for moderate
Islam. It spotlights
nine eloquent women with roots in the Islamic
world, several of whom are devout Muslims — "Islam
is my spiritual journey," says one — and all of whom
are passionate about exposing the terrible abuses
women and girls in many Muslim cultures suffer in
the name of family honor. None thinks such horrors
should be excused or neglected out of a misplaced
cultural sensitivity or political correctness.
But it happens routinely. People prepared to label
opposition to employer-paid contraceptives a "war on
women" are generally much less willing to channel
their outrage at the savagery of honor killings or
child marriages in non-Western societies. "They fear
treading on cultural toes," saysJasvinder
Sanghera, one of the film's featured advocates.
"We're constantly having to remind them that
cultural acceptance does not mean accepting the
unacceptable."
For Sanghera, who fled a forced marriage as a young
teen, this is no abstract theory. She is haunted by
the memory of her sister, Ravina, who committed
suicide rather than "dishonor" her family by leaving
the husband she was forced to marry. Also
highlighted in the film is
Raquel Saraswati, who embraces Islam as a source
of strength and peace in her life, yet feels "afraid
all the time" of the backlash against those who
challenge "honor-based" violence against women.
Efforts by CAIR and its ilk to squelch honest
discussion of such grave human-rights issues — and
to demonize as "haters" and "Islamophobes" those who
do — encapsulate the very perversity "Honor Diaries"
seeks to expose: valuing the honor of a community
more than a woman's life or voice. But does CAIR's
shrill protest reflect what average citizens in
Muslim countries think of such a documentary? Or
does the
"Honor Diaries" Arabic Facebook page, with
95,000 "likes" — and climbing?
Why aren't more progressives passionate about these
issues?
I put that question to
Nazie Eftekhari, an immigrant from Iran and
another of the women "Honor Diaries" focuses on. A
successful Minnesota health-care entrepreneur,
Eftekhari unhesitatingly describes herself as a
"bleeding-heart liberal" and a longtime Democratic
Party voter, loyalist, and fund-raiser. She is as
mystified as I am.
"The biggest human-rights crisis of our generation
is the treatment of women in Muslim-majority
countries, and we've applied a gag order to
ourselves," she replies with unmistakable distress.
"We won't talk about it. Where are my fellow
liberals? Where are the feminists?"
In theocratic Iran today, Eftekhari says, the legal
age of marriage for girls has been
lowered to 9. Men can now marry their
adopted daughters. "How can President Obama, who
has two young daughters, not be making a huge issue
of this?" she wants to know. "It's not marriage,
it's statutory rape."
Eftekhari can't understand why so many progressive
voices fall silent on an issue she thinks they
should be raising the loudest. And she has only
contempt for anyone who thinks it progressive to
snub those — like Ayaan Hirsi Ali — who so bravely
speak out: "Ali needs no degree or honor from
Brandeis; she is a guiding light for the women who
respect and honor her. But where will Brandeis go to
get its respect and honor back?"