Apart from a melting pot of irrelevant reasoning and non-sequitur arguments, the book got some interesting reviews. Book contained so much venom against patriarchy and men that she became a poster-child for hate against not only men but also against the very gender she claimed to represent. Apart from being a documented supporter of Nazi ideology, pedophilia, and religion her strongest work spoke against herself.
Interestingly, as a child, she wanted to become a nun and had shown very strong inclination towards religion. Post-war circumstances had thinned her chances to get married, lack of dowry being one of the problems. Ironically same ‘mud’ is being thrown at Muslim societies today as being Islamic when it absolutely isn’t.
Her graduation from Sorbonne happened at a dramatic time in history when she became the 9th women to graduate because of the ban on women’s education in France, a concept utterly foreign to the Muslim world. Joshua Goldstein’s book War and Gender goes at great length to list women’s de beauvoirian contributions in world war I, sometimes in rhetorical and fictional manner. He states:
Suddenly, campaigners for women’s suffrage became avid patriots and organizers of women in support of the war effort. Many of these feminists hoped that patriotic support of the war would enhance the prospects for women’s suffrage after the war, and this came true in a number of countries.
Now regardless of the reason why the need for this ‘suffrage’ came from revolt against the medieval extortionist church or social desire to climb up the ladders of supposed ‘power’ that men monopolize, the important point here is the dreams women can fall an easy prey to. This supposed ‘patriotic support’ never materialized in the desired outcome of suffrage in terms of social status. Once these women stepped out of their thresholds, leaving their children and responsibilities behind, for one reason or another, they stayed out forever. Their own prestige would be the dollars they will bring home.
Economists extolled it because they needed more pair of hands to work for surplus productivity that can result in increased trade volume, roughly translated into more prosperity, mostly for the upper echelons of the society which ‘an invisible hand’ would then fairly distribute among its population. Material societies of the west having left the spiritual and psychological element of human soul could not anticipate the disaster working women could bring in terms of a child rearing, physical and physiological make-up and gender wars in workplaces.
Things deteriorated in more tragic ways than it could be said about them at the time. Along came the LGBT rights, prostitution rights, freedom of hate speech and anything that had the potential of aiding these destitute causes. The arguments border on not only pseudo-science with zero evidence like mental make-up, evolution, animal kingdom and patriarchy but on fiction as well. So the stories of the wage gap, set-up rapes and gender representation were concocted.
Milo Yiannopoulos, a gay right-wing conservative had his twitter account banned for unveiling a lot of propaganda by feminists. He debunked a lot of myths propagated by feminists on the both sides of the pond. One of them is wage-gap. Feminists argue that in western societies, women get paid less than men for the same jobs.
Facts can’t be further from the truth, however. Women tend to graduate in subjects like veterinary sciences, biology, nursing, and healthcare. Highly paid graduates have a background in engineering, technology, mathematics and business, more common among men. Statistics from feminist economics go against the wage-gap arguments. It’s simply the choice women make in terms of subjects.
If this is not the indication enough towards the female propensities when it comes to education and life in general, let us consider other problems caused by the so-called ‘suffrage’. All markets have threshold limits. There are limited number of jobs, resources, and capital. Historical analysis shows us the benefits of nuclear families where fewer resources could be utilized properly by the division of labor within the house. Men were the main bread-earners and women took care of the domestic chores. Along with it, there was huge intellectual activity among women in Islamic societies at least.
Now the sad choice western world made was to sacrifice the most subtle responsibility of bringing up an upright and moral nation and it was left for day-care schools instead of biological mothers. While they set out to compete against men for the limited resources out there. One’s gain is other’s loss in a zero-sum game. Juvenile delinquency, depression, frustration, prostitution and debauchery being some of the consequences if not all.
George Galloway’s speech at the Oxford Union had a famous joke in it. “When you go and civilize them look at yourself. These people were teaching Algebra when we were painting our faces blue and living in the forests”.
Colonized world has spawned a breed of people too hungry for fame and wealth that price of their conscience has become very low. Islamic feminists are just one of these turncoat crops. They have been invested in for years in foreign universities and lashed back onto their mother countries to recruit the ‘oppressed’ women to work for their own enslavement again. The ‘civilization’ project being the pseudonym.
Vocabulary ever since the colonization has changed. It’s now called ‘Empowerment”, “Feminism” and “Equality”. This forced equation of men and women is laughable at the least. The rage against one’s creator cannot assimilate two genders meant to co-operate and not wipe each other out in domination wars.
One of the arguments of these newly ‘enlightened’ despite its historical fallacy is how women can contribute within the boundaries of religious edicts. The quote all kind of women in Prophet SA’s time who went out and helped men and earned their livelihoods. Mostly flawed reasoning but let us analyze that further.
The argument stems from the exceptional situations when women have a melodramatic choice between starving or going out to earn. Over time these exceptional situations have been upgraded to all women in all circumstances. The Quranic injunction for women when they go out:
‘O Prophet! Tell your wives and your daughters and the women of the believers to draw their cloaks (“Jalabib”) veils all over their bodies (screen themselves completely except the eyes or one eye to see the way Tafseer Al-Qurtabi) that is most convenient that they should be known (as such) and not molested: and Allah is Oft-Forgiving Most Merciful.”
Now let us look at these feminists themselves, their followers and their guidelines for the working women. None of them are dressed like that let alone follow women of Prophet SA’s time in other aspects. Now is that a little too much to state that their original reason was never following Islamic injunctions. There was always this glitter of gold behind the theological verbosity that sometimes came from lack of understanding and at others lack of sincerity.
If there was ever a suffrage for women it came about through Islam. It shattered the chains of Hindu tradition of ‘Satti’, the Arab tradition ofburying daughters alive, the Christian denigration of ‘unclean’ women and made education obligatory for them. It elevated the status of women by giving them share in the inheritance, let them earn their livelihoods through men and entitled them the wealth of their parents and husbands. There is no wisdom outside Islam. There is no honor except Islam.
فَبِأَيِّ حَدِيثٍ بَعْدَهُ يُؤْمِنُونَ
Then in what statement after Quran will they believe?