Politics

Though a recent Gallup study is an important one which illustrates the diversity and spirit of America’s Muslims, The Washington Times frames the findings to suggest that the study zeroed in on Amercian Muslim women and proved that America has liberated this otherwise repressed population – a result that fits this publication’s ideology a little too snugly.

What is most disturbing is that criminal behaviors are being cloaked in religious terms and there seems to be no credible voice challenging this gross violation of Islamic law. As a result, criminals continue to go about terrorizing with impunity. The continued silence of scholars is deafening.

Recently, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood claimed to be in favour of “complete equality” between men and women while preserving their different social roles. But two years after this stated vision of gender equality, the current status and role of women in the Muslim Brotherhood’s organizational structure remains lacking.

As much as we’d like to deny it, sex trafficking and forced prostitution of women and children is rampant in the Muslim world – in large part because Muslim men demand these services. The fear of discussing sexual relationships openly and constructively may explain the unwillingness to rout out these evils. What will break the silence?

One example of the trend in journalistic circles to overreach when discussing Islamic extremism is that of The Washington Post’s Jim Hoagland, who casts an illustrative net so wide in his reporting of the Taliban that it catches all Muslim and Southwest Asian men, dehumanizing all instead of only a few.