The latest wave of misplaced feminist influence is about to hit our country in the month of March – yet again. The modern feminist is a peculiar creature and her comrades are a strange sub-stratum of Millennial and Generation X women and men with an odd inferiority complex. They are obsessed with picking at the corpse of ‘women’s lib’, trying to draw fresh blood, and are often seen lurking around, attempting to sniff out sexism in every nook and cranny. Theirs is an ideology based not on equality, equitability, or even ‘rights’, but misplaced victimhood.
According to the standard third-wave feminist, the most insidious issues facing women today are, ‘manspreading’, ‘mansplaining’, and ‘micro-aggressions’. Terms cooked up to keep their follower feminists in business as they steadily run out of things to complain about. In short, the feminists are perpetually miserable and seek to make other women as brutally unhappy as they are.
It has become amply evident by now to most rational humans that feminists ‘enjoy’ convenient double-standards. However, the very worst of these is, ironically, a strange form of misogyny, and is starkly revealed in their treatment of conservative and traditionalist Muslim women. In other words, feminists insist they want more female voices in the mainstream… as long as they agree with them. Worse still, they attempt to justify such despicable behavior by babbling, ‘So, does the fact that we are feminists mean that we have to support all women?’ The answer ought to be – YES – if a key point in the feminist’s manifesto and whining point is ‘the push’ to give all women a voice. But oddly enough, feminist engagements with conservative and traditionalist Muslim women never seem to move beyond personal attacks. Why? Because character assassination is the last bastion of the desperate when they are out of intellectual ammunition. It is one thing to mob and shout slogans (some of which would be X-rated in even the ‘freest’ Western nations), but an entirely different challenge to engage in any sort of intellectual debate embedded in reason. To be honest, feminists find it impossible to prove or assert that Islam looks down upon women, and consequently, their claim that Muslim women are an oppressed class is patently absurd. In the harsh light of reality, feminists actually have no argument.
Let’s now glance at some really interesting statistics, from the ‘Land of the Free’ – USA itself. According to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, six million American women experience a serious assault by a partner during an average 12-month period. On average, more than six women are murdered by their husbands and boyfriends every day . . . that is more than 18,000 women battered to death since 9/11. The cases of violence against women, particularly domestic violence, increased in the US by a staggering 75% during Covid lockdowns (a trend mirrored in the entire West)… Some might say that is a shocking indictment on such a ‘civilized society’, but the reality is that one out of three women around the world, especially in the ‘civilized West’ has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused during her lifetime. Violence against women transcends religion, wealth, class, skin color, and culture, yet the feminist points her finger at Islam and Muslims only. Such biased attitude is probably due to indoctrination, the demand of the paymaster, the urge to be in the limelight, or a combination of all.
The fact of the matter is that Western women are still treated as commodities, where sexual slavery is on the rise, disguised under marketing euphemisms, where women’s bodies are traded throughout the advertising world. As mentioned before, this is a society where rape, sexual assault, and violence against women are commonplace, a society where trust and equitability between men and women is an illusion, a society where a women’s power or influence is usually only related to her outward appearance. It was true in medieval Europe and true in the modern West of today. What a shame! However, what the feminist forgets is history… Before Islam came on the scene, women were treated as inferior beings.
We believe that this charade of feminists demonizing Islamic moral and social norms and values is part of a sinister plan and with all the Western think tanks working on various aspects of the lives of Muslims, their core beliefs and value sets, all in order to figure out new ways to wound Islam and the Muslim Ummah, it becomes extremely difficult to pick one and make an in-depth analysis of the damage being done by it. We have, however, chosen a U.S. think tank named Pew Research Center (a.k.a. PEW) for our current discourse. It has to be noted that PEW is not an acronym. It takes its name from the Pew family, an American libertarian and pro-feminist clan that started its work in the 1940s as a “nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes, and trends shaping America and the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research.” There is more to the stated goals of PEW, however, as it provides analysis and strategic solutions to the West regarding the cultural and moral values of the Muslims in its reports and paves the way for the West to chalk-out plans in order to sabotage the social fabric of the Muslim Society, at its weakest. At present, that happens to be the unit of ‘family’ and the simultaneous indoctrination of ideals such as ‘liberalism’, ‘secularism’ and ‘feminism’ to try and break it apart.
The website of Pew Research Center and its affiliate institutes gives a clear picture of the agenda of this “non-partisan” fact tank. Almost all research and reports published or posted on the internet are related to the moral and cultural values of Muslims, with not a single research or report about the cultural norms of Christians, Jews, or any other religious group.
Just take the example of a report published in 2014 by PEW entitled “The Birthplace of the Arab Spring: Values and Perceptions of Tunisians and A Comparative Assessment of Egyptian, Iraqi, Lebanese, Pakistani, Saudi, Tunisian, and Turkish Publics”. The report is a partisan analysis and evaluation of the cultural norms and acceptance of ‘the most appropriate dress code for women’ as seen in the countries stated above. While most of the report consists of gibberish, the most important fact highlighted is that the public of these countries sees ‘more progressive women’ as the ‘driving force for development and change’. The report ties this to the ‘positive effects’ of the so-called Arab Spring. The most astonishing factor of the report is the criterion upon which the sample size has been selected for the so-called poll (or research), where not more than 4000 persons are asked about their opinion on the issue in countries that have populations in hundreds of millions. In simple words, the selected 4000 people are considered to be ‘representative’ of the many hundreds of millions that live in these countries, and the findings are presented as “accurate results”! This statistical dishonesty goes unnoticed because the name “PEW” is supposedly well respected and considered an authority on social research. We have provided a brief synopsis of the Pew research on this issue in order for our readers to understand the intellectual dishonesty been perpetrated by these ‘think-tanks’. We also ask of our readers to reflect on the sheer nostalgia that these so-called non-partisan ‘fact tanks’ have against the dress code for women prescribed by Islam, simply by considering the names assigned to each group in the ‘research’. (Note: The report can be found on the website https://www.pewresearch.org/)
Coming back to the conservative and traditionalist Muslim women of Pakistan and the target being painted on the Islamic moral and social fabrics, yet again, in March; while the seed of engineering the Islamic values of our society to fit Western standards was sown decades ago, massive acceleration of this iNGO-led and secular/liberal sponsored ‘feminist’ agenda in our society is visible today more than ever before. The conservative and traditionalist Muslim women of Pakistan (who outnumber the ‘feminists’ by more than a million to one) are being targeted through decadence in culture and society promoted by the media, the shenanigans in educational institutions, and purpose-specific-funded NGOs, with the handful of elitist ‘feminist’ women and men, who are privileged enough themselves, used as foot soldiers for this sinister cause.
Finally, the message, for all mankind, by the Creator (SWT) of the Heavens and Earth is simple and sufficiently clear: “O mankind, eat from whatever is on earth [that is] lawful and good and do not follow the footsteps of Satan. Indeed, he is to you a clear enemy. He only orders you to evil and immorality and to say about Allah what you do not know.” (Surah al-Baqarah, Verses 168-169)
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect The Asian Mirror’s editorial stance.
