Daniel Greenfield article: Sharia's Sticks and Stones

Posted: 09 Apr 2013 11:33 PM PDT

The BBC's Panorama series has gone undercover at Sharia councils where Islamic law is doled out in the state within a state within the multicultural bureaucracy to discover that the dispensers of Islamic law have failed abused women. Failing abused women is the nice genteel way that lefties use to mean that the judicial system of a religion built on abusing women is perpetuating those abuses in the UK.

Similarly Comrade Delta failed the woman he raped. And the Socialist Workers Party failed her by putting the rape to a vote. Jimmy Savile failed a great many children and Islam has failed to uphold the standards that the defenders of multiculturalism somehow expect from religious leaders out of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

According to the head of the UK's 'Equality and Human Rights Commission', Muslims "are doing their damnedest" to develop an Islam compatible with liberal democracy. And if you don't believe him, then just ask Tony Blair who not only reads the Koran every day but also marvels at how progressive it is.

Forget all the fussing over Muslim immigration and terrorism. The future looks bright for Britain. We're probably only a short while away from the first female Imam and drive-through abortion clinics in local mosques. Mecca is going to host its first swimsuit competition on its black rock and Ramadan will unite with Gay Pride Day for a parade that no one will ever be able to forget.

At The Guardian, where left is always right, Musleh Faradhi assures us that Sharia courts are not about to displace English law or flog Prince Charles as an adulterer in front of Buckingham Palace. "Women who come to this country with little or no English and are then discriminated against by their own husbands or relatives has nothing to do with sharia, but rather with traditions and culture," says Faradhi. "This should not be used as a stick with which to beat sharia councils."

That sounds fair enough except when you remember that Sharia councils are usually the ones who beat women with sticks, rather than the other way around.

The reasons why the organs of Islamic law beat women with sticks have nothing to do with Islam, but with tradition, culture, the equinox, the price of tea in Shanghai and how many Djinns can dance on the head of a stickpin. And it would be a real shame if Sharia's habit of beating women with sticks were to be used to beat Sharia councils with sticks. When it comes to Muslims, turnabout is never fair play. Even when the sticks are metaphorical ones and the ones that they use are all too real.

According to Tony Blair, the Koran is, "ahead of its time in attitudes to marriage, women and governance". This claim might only be true if the Koran had been written in the stone age and even then the educated Cro-Magnon would have taken one sniff at the Koran and opted for something more progressive. Like the Daily Mail or Benny Hill.

In the progressive words of the Koran, "Men have authority over women because Allah has made the one superior to the other." (Koran 4:34). It's hard to argue with that. At least if you're a Muslim and your idea of superiority is all about how fast you can behead someone who disagrees with you. Bring enough people with superior beheading skills together and then good luck arguing with their take on Allah's Theory of Gender Evolution without getting beheaded. Or at least beaten bloody with sticks.

"Good women are obedient," says the Koran. "They guard their unseen parts." Which in the Muslim world often includes their faces, their voices and themselves. "As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them."

The liberal Britain which long since disavowed, "A woman, a dog and a walnut tree; the harder they are beaten, the better they be", has welcomed it back in as, "A woman, a dog and a palm tree." It is easy to argue with the practices of beating a domestic walnut tree, but who are we to argue with the cultural tree harvesting methods of an ancient belief system which must be superior to ours on account of it being practiced by the people we once colonized after they tried to colonize us which left them holding the victim card.

And the verse finishes, that having beaten them "Then if they obey you, take no further action against them." This must be the part that Tony Blair finds so ahead of its time in its attitude toward women. That once having beaten a woman, if she complies, then you should stop beating her. The nobility and generosity of these words should touch the heart of even a Germaine Greer.

The Koran may tell you to beat women, but it doesn't tell you to keep beating them once they're cringing on the floor. This generosity extends not only to women, but to all sorts of beloved infidels. Once he surrenders, and pays Jizya, accepting his role as an inferior, the well-behaved Muslim is not supposed to keep beating him, though he usually does anyway. Women, Dhimmis, slaves and other people whom Allah hath made inferior are not to be beaten so long as they obey you.

You can see why Tony Blair might consider this attitude ahead of its time. Anyone who has had contact with the British bureaucracy should be able to appreciate a form of governance that stops beating you once you're finally lying prone on the floor.

"The Koran strikes me as a reforming book, trying to return Judaism and Christianity to their origins" says the former Prime Minister. "Rather as reformers attempted with the Christian Church centuries later.".

The inability of the former Prime Minister to tell the difference between the Anglican Church and a wife-beating manual is a sad testament to many things. Not the least of which is his illiteracy.

If Islam were trying to return to the origins of Judaism and Christianity, it took the wrong road around. Mohammed's GPS may have told him he was headed to Jerusalem, but instead he ended up in Mecca. That is what happens when you attach a GPS to a flying horse and religious ideas to petty banditry. Jewish and Christian scriptures were not obsessed with the need to compel their wives to cover their faces to avoid being raped on the spot by their own cousins. That is the tradition and culture which originated Muslim modesty among bandit camps where some captured women were held as captive slaves and others were held as the property of their husbands and telling them apart was handled in the crudest way possible.

When your wedding canopy is a knife at her throat, and your "meet-cute" was burning her village, there's good reason to fear her disobedience. And when your relationship is based on being the first man to grab her as she made a run for it, there is good reason to keep her inside or cover her from head to toe. You may be her first rapist, but your cousins and friends will have no objection to being her second and third. When rape is legal, and every adult male around you is a potential rapist, then purdah and headbags are a natural way for fathers and husbands to protect their investment.

There is nothing spiritual about Muslim modesty. It is, as Blair said, "Practical". In a society of rapists, women had better remain at home, cover up, or end up like Lara Logan. But you don't have to be a blonde at a celebration of Egyptian democracy to be assaulted. It happens just as often in the UK now. Take Abul Malik of Trafalgar Road, who raped a female passenger when she couldn't cover the full fare. And why not. Back in Pakistan, rape is a time honored means of restitution. And now so it is in the UK.

We can of course go on pretending that all this ugly and sordid stuff has nothing to do with the high-minded ideals of the Koran and go on cheering the Sharia councils who "are doing their damnedest" to make Islam compatible with liberal democracy. Except it isn't Islam that they are making compatible with liberal democracy, rather it is liberal democracy that they are making compatible with Islam.

Lord Phillips, the Lord Chief Justice, has explained that equality before the law now means that some people will be governed under the law, and others under Sharia law. There will be no beating of women with sticks. Yet. For now it will have to be the metaphorical sticks of a legal system which is under the impression that women are an inferior form of life and that beating them is one of the hobbies their unemployed husbands sitting on the dole with fake back problems are entitled to do in between listening to the greatest hits of the angriest sheiks of the internet.

How much justice can women expect from divorce proceedings that take place under the authority of the Koran which says that, men have authority over women because "they spend their wealth to maintain them" and denies that domestic abuse and marital rape are wrong?

Baroness Cox introduced the "Arbitration and Mediation Services Equality Bill" which puts forward the controversial idea that no mediator can operate on the belief that a woman has fewer rights than a man. That such a bill had to be put forward ninety-three years after the triumph of women's suffrage, is outrageous. But what is even more outrageous is the opposition to it.

The Islamic Sharia Council's Suhaib Hasan replied that, "It is indeed a crime that Lady Cox has made no attempt to understand the workings of the shariah councils." Of course that isn't an actual crime that she can be beaten with sticks for. Yet.

The media's message is don't worry. Every day Muslim immigrants are adapting to the new way of life. But who is really doing the adapting? The real message of don't worry, is don't worry and be Muslim. And if you can't, then keep to the floor and hope that they don't keep beating you once you're down.