Bending the Mind

A friend sent me the link to this fascinating post at Gene Expression. The too-short article should be read in its entirety. An excerpt:

A few years ago a cousin of mine invited me over to his place and asked me to indulge myself in the pornographic films in his collection of DVDs as I sat under a wall poster of the Kabba on his couch. Later he told me luridly about how he had sex with a woman in his bedroom while our other cousin listened to their grunts. At this point he offered me a beer, and waxed eloquently about how "our women" are not "like that" and are "pure." He has a daughter now (with one of "our women"), and of course he would fly into a rage if anyone treated her as an object purely of sexual gratification at some point in the future. This sort of behavior is not unknown amongst Muslim males, indulgences in the pleasures of the flesh with "kuffar" women is within the bound of acceptability because questions of honor, shame and virtue are irrelevant when it comes to those outside of Islam.

Razib then goes on to describe similar behavior he witnessed among his Christian schoolmates. Though in one major way, the "Islamic conduct" has a very different effect on "their" society: Muslim women are practically caged.

Here in the West it's an ordinary sight to see single women walking about, going shopping, coming back from work, etc. But such is not the case in Muslim-majority nations. In fact, in Saudi Arabia the muttawa (the religious police) will take a young woman to jail for being out alone in public.

This also reminds me of a story from the defunct blog Terrorism Unveiled. Athena, the female blogger, narrated this incident:

Today I was visiting the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan and my roommate, we’ll call her Sally, went with me because she had to meet with the same professor as I.

She started crying in the taxi on the way back home telling me about her experience the other night with her Jordanian boyfriend, we’ll call him Malik.

Sally and Malik haven’t been dating for very long and I won’t go into the details of their relationship, but she really did like this guy, and I liked him as well. He seemed very Western, spoke English well, acted respectably, dressed nice, came from an affluent and well-off family. He even lived in Europe for two years and had relationships with girls there.

They went out to eat last night and she brought up the subject of honor killings. Malik nonchalantly said that he would be willing to kill his sister or support his uncle or dad if they killed her if she had sex.

Sex for Malik is, however, perfectly halaal.

Comments

[Josh Scholar]

I think I'm getting to the point where I understand the "thinking" of people like Malik. But the better I understand Arabs, the more disgusted I feel and the more I wish I hadn't tried to understand them.

[kettle]

life isn't fair. Men arn't women. It makes sense that there are different rules for the sexes (but not slavery for one and freedom for the other.) All of liberalism thinks treaty each religion like another flavor of ice cream is fair. If we have strawberry, then we must have chocolate. (in our libraries, schools, etc...)

[Classical Liberal]

Umm, Kettle, what is your point?

[Josh Scholar]

Kettle means that it's perfectly natural for men to have sex with any infidel women they want and still slaughter all female relatives who try to have some control over their own genitals. Men are from mars and women from Venus, Muslim style. Killing your sister is one of those "circle of life" things that Disney animal characters are always talking about, I guess.

[David Boxenhorn]

What I thought was interesting is that while human psychology is the same everywhere, and even the form of social institutions are often very similar (Islamic law greatly resembles Jewish law in form) actual values matter - in both senses of the word "values".