Reddit mentions: The best women in islam books

[Continued from Part 1]

Chapter 3: Immigration & trans people

>At the end of the day muslims will pick a side and they will undoubtedly pick muslim. Their ideology is not compatible with the west.

So, not surprisingly, I disagree with everything you said about Muslims. It's too big of a subject for me to fact-check all your statements, but respectfully, you are misinformed on this issue. I'd encourage you to check out this book which has some really surprising research and statistics, such as the fact that men who become radicalized to terror are overwhelmingly from secular households. Statistically speaking, the more religious the family you were raised in is, the less likely you are to become a terrorist.

>Thier parents made a choice coming here illegally.

It is perfectly legal to seek asylum in the US. The reason the WH gets off on calling it "illegal" is because when the refugees do try to follow the rules, they get turned away, or are unable to enter for some other reason. With no options left, they cross a river or something when the government has clearly said, "please only use this road over here," and then blocked that road. The result? "Hey! You're crossing illegally!" So, just to be clear, this isn't a "law" that's being broken here, we're just talking about people not crossing in exactly the way the government asks.

Now, as for this

>My point is that I'm sure many of these kids didnt have am issue we being split up form their parents.

The American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, and the Society for Research in Child Development, and others, disagree with you. Here's a report by several experts talking about the effect this could have on children.

>We will only be allowing women/trans people to die beucase they wont be suited for the work. Furthermore we will be putting the life of our men in danger too.

So, what you kind of just said here is that women shouldn't be in the military either. If what you're saying is, yes they can be, but they should have different jobs from men, then I think you're underestimating the military's interest, for both women and trans men, in making sure each solider is fit for their work. When women go to basic, they have to be able to do the same things as the men. Why would it be any different for men who used to be women? And as for having "identity issues," every soldier also has to be found psychologically competent, regardless of who they are, so you're fretting about checks and balances that already exist.

​

Chapter 4: Political Correctness

>You and I will differ of the definition of that term most likely.

Yup.

>I dont want someone who panders to other becuase they dont want to look bad

Ok, but why? Serious question. I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that you're a decent person. Why not support politicians who speak their minds, defend themselves when questioned, but who are not being total dicks to people in the first place? (By the way, want another lie? Trump later denied what you saw happen in that clip.) You know what other politicians are really blunt, and take a lot of criticism, and refuse to back down and apologize? Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Being honest and brave with unpopular opinions is possible without being an asshole.

Here is my position on political correctness: it's a term made up to politicize something that used to be a bipartisan value: it was called, regular politeness. Common decency. Good manners.

And you know what, man? Mocking the disabled isn't brave. Insulting Mexicans and Muslims isn't brave. Calling reporters things like "racist" and "stupid" and "rude" isn't brave. It's cowardly. He's a bully, man. Not a hero.

>You have said your choices about economics and decency. I disagree. What is a society that cant sustain its self? The USSR is an example. Nazi germany is an example.

Ok...what?? It sounds like you're saying the USSR and Nazi Germany failed because they focused too much on decency instead of economics? But that can't be what you're saying.

>In capitalism there will always be a disparity of wealth. There are laws will narrow that gap.

Well, so far all the GOP has done is widen that gap.

And yes, capitalism entails wealth disparity, but I don't believe there's another country in the world that has as much of a disparity as the US does. There's no mainstream or even niche voice in US politics advocating for full-on Communism where there's no disparity at all, but it doesn't have to be one extreme or the other. The US can be a better place to live for everyone by making some changes that would put it in line with other developed, wealthy countries.

>Your quote about hitler. My rebuttle is. Dont throw the baby out with the bath water.

I'm familiar with the expression, but I don't understand how it applies here. I was talking about things not having the proper moral weight. But I think we can move past that now, because I was basically trying to say to you, if we agree on the same set of truths, then what you're saying to me is preposterous. But obviously, we are working from a polarized set of beliefs, so the Hitler example I made doesn't really apply.

>You made an allusion to space. Are you familiar with Werner von Braun? If not look him up. Should be not tall about doing to the moon anymore? Should we not be proud of it.

Of course we should be proud of it. And I am grateful for progress, which is why I fight to keep it! Look, just because America has done good things, and just because a former Nazi contributed to the space program, doesn't muddy the waters on morality that's already well-understood. Yes, people are complicated. You can be both a nazi and a brilliant scientist. Trump probably has good qualities about him too. Nazis wanted everyone to have cars!

Ok, but so what? One thing doesn't cancel out the other. They just exist side by side as a testament to how complex human beings are.

>There is good and bad everywhere and sometimes it occupies the same place, it's our job to separate it properly.

Which is what I've been patiently trying to do throughout this response. I hope you get something out of it. I know I threw a lot of links at you, but I'd like to especially highlight the NYT piece on Trump's tax fraud, which is a pretty huge deal: it's settled the question of whether Trump's a criminal, but it doesn't sound like you're aware of it. And if you don't want to read the whole thing, especially after reading my ~3500 word reply to you, just google the keywords and you'll find dozens of summaries of that piece from other news orgs.

But /u/hitomieyes is talking specifically about dictionary definition feminism and how that fits with the Catholic worldview. The YouGov link that you provided above explicitly states that '11% of non-feminists are not feminists because they believe men and women are not equal'. That means that 89% of those surveyed think that men and women are equal, just that the current feminist movement is not achieving that. For example, there is a sizable secular radical feminist group that has currently undergone a schism about abortion inequality; half of whom believe that men should also have a form of 'termination rights,' as child support payments are mandatory if a woman chooses to go through with an abortion and is therefore not true equality, and about half of whom are vehemently anti-abortion because they believe that it unfairly targets poor and non-white women and enables sex-selective abortion, as seen in China during the years of the one child policy. Feminism is not cohesive about abortion, although currently there is a large narrative that suggests that it is. That narrative is also very Anglosphere-centric; there are a lot of feminists in many Nordic and East Asian countries that have very different perspectives on feminism, and I recommend looking into a more global perspective on the movement.


Secondly, many men and women have spoken out against hijabi practices in Muslim countries; when the Tehran protests were at a high point, an image of a woman removing her hijab in front of Iranian officials went viral. Many tweeted about it with the hashtag "#IStandWithHer, and the original tweet has been retweeted over 15,000 times and liked more than 32,000 times. The response among social media users was overwhelmingly positive. "This woman is brave," one woman wrote, while others called her a "real hero" and said "her bravery is to be admired." Look at writers like Mona Eltahawy, who explicitly defines herself as a feminist author based in Cairo and New York. She's written “Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution.” and launched social media campaigns to draw attention to the sexual assault problem from an international perspective, sharing facebook posts and tweets that have since been retweeted thousands of times and in over half a dozen languages, including English, Indonesian, Arabic, Turkish, French, German, Spanish and Farsi.


FGM is also widely spoken against by some of the largest organisations on the planet; look at this document cosigned by WHO, the UN, and UNICEF that explicitly declares it a fundamental violation of human rights. In addition to that, there is a powerful grassroots movement, headed by the founder of the Desert Flower Foundation, Waris Dirie, that speaks out for the right to all women and additionally draws attention to the greater risk of migrant communities in Europe. Here are 16 of the most prominent charities against FGM.


There are dozens of feminist movements all over the globe that have a wide variety in their agenda, and simply because one small faction of that movement has garnered a lot of media attention does not mean that it is the sole focus of that movement. Additionally, one of the best things about the 'intersectionality' focus of third wave feminism, as pointed out by Eltahawy, means that movements focused on global rights like anti-hijab movements and FGM are getting more attention, especially on more private and grassroots platforms like social media. Regardless of your thoughts on the validity of the reasoning behind these protests, as I saw farther down thread that you align yourself with the alt-right on the political compass, many protests like the women's march, gun control march, anti-Brexit march, and counter-protest to Charlottesville began as organisations hosted primarily on social media before they garnered national news attention.

But one of the biggest overlaps between these converging feminist movements, between the domestic focus on a second sexual revolution headed by the Me Too campaign and a more international focus on women's right to bodily autonomy, as with the FGM counter measures, most feminists, as defined by Webster or the OED, or equalists, as has become the new terminology for those 89% of people who disagree with the specific term, as you pointed out above, is the frustration with the idea that women are somehow predisposed to not want to work or to becoming stay at home mothers. A lot of that is turning out to be untrue. In a slight majority of countries, parents are unhappier than their childfree counterparts.. There are entire groups designed to support women who hate motherhood. Some studies have found that there is a greater discrepancy in unhappiness in a marriage with children; women are more likely to be unhappy with the relationship after children. More women are also feeling empowered to enter careers that they might have been dissuaded from; more women are entering STEM fields and choosing academic tracks that enable them to succeed in those fields as early as ages 11 or 12. Rising in corporate fields has been slower, but still has noticeably shifted from 26% to 27.7%. We're also witnessing a faster level of greater parity in some of the world's fastest growing economies, most noticeably India.


To summarise, as I know this reply has gotten very long: yes, third wave feminism, as it is currently defined, is probably incompatible with your Catholic teachings. However, there are many, many components to the feminist movement, including advocacy for education and corporate advancement, the right not to want children, and the right to bodily autonomy. Users like /u/hitomieyes wish to draw attention to those areas of feminism that aren't incompatible with Catholic social teaching and carve themselves out a space where they are respected as equals and have ample opportunities for self-advancement without either prejudice or violating their morals. Given that the current third wave feminist movement started out primarily on twitter and instagram, including body positivity, Me Too, and the women's march, the rising trend of this more global perspective on feminism on social media shows great potential to exert a more powerful influence over perspectives on equality in the coming months or years.

How much of my response did you read? I thought I made it clear that 1) I am not the author 2) I don't think these similarities definitively prove anything 3) I make no claims, I simply take issue with your "rebuttal" which accuses the blogger of "grasping at straws."

Again, my point is this: parallels are being drawn between diverse cultures and civilizations on account of similar symbolic imagery all the time. This doesn't prove anything as far as the Book of Mormon is concerned, but connections are there and some may be worth exploring for other reasons.

Scholarship:

For starters, I already referenced the mythologist, Joseph Campbell. In "The Mythic Image," Campbell briefly examines parallels between this "Rattlesnake Disc" and Tibetan imagery.

Amira E. Sonbol is a professor of Islamic history at Georgetown. She wrote a book called, "Beyond the Exotic: Women's Histories in Islamic Societies" where she links the Hamsa to the Hand of Fatima, to the Mano Pantea (which I referenced before) and other ancient representations of the symbol from remote cultures.

Charles Orser explored the connections between the Spanish "figa," Victorian good luck fists, and plantation slave charms... arguing that they are likely descendants of the hamsa or Hand of Fatima.

Dagmar Painter, the curator of Gallery Al Quds at the Jerusalem Fund in Washington DC, has discussed hand iconography in the Middle East and even in Native American cultures. See a video of her discussing these links.

Again, this doesn't prove anything. But given some of the examples I provided above, I think it's safe to say that your dismissal is too heavy-handed. So the hand in the "Rattlesnake Disc" doesn't hold the Eye in its palm... The Mano Pantea often doesn't hold the Eye at all... the Figa is merely a fist, and the hamsa (which is undoubtedly an earlier form of the Hand of Fatima), often looks nothing like a hand... but by your standards and lack of expertise, these connections would be disregarded on grounds of "pseudoscience."

Two of my favorite anthropology books situated in Pakistan have been Transforming Faith by Sadaf Ahmed and Migrants and Militants by Oscar Verkaaik. Transforming Faith is an exploration of why urban, educated and relatively affluent women are turning to conservative religion, in this case a Muslim revivalist movement headed by Farhat Hashmi, a woman. It's also gives you a good idea on the limits of 'Islamic Feminism'. Migrants and Militants studies the MQM, a very unique political party with a very unique history based in Karachi and their rituals, language, myths and history.

Most of her interactions seem to be with the Salafi women groups in the Brixton mosque along with a few other female Salafi groups, which disproportionately consists of Afro-Caribbean Christian and non-Salafi Somali converts to Salafism, along with South Asian, Middle Eastern, and white converts. Her ethnography only consisted of Salafi women, not men. It looks like this is one of the groups, and they have publications on why terrorism is against Salafism.

http://www.salafipublications.com/sps/

I haven't read her book yet, but I was able to look through the preview on Google Books and there are sections that briefly talk about groups like JIMAS (of which former leader, Abu Muntasir, advocated for his followers to fight in Bosnia, Kashmir, Chechnya, etc) and Hizb-ut-Tahrir, but the preview didn't cover all of those pages, so I don't know what exactly she wrote.

Apparently, she also talks about how, ironically, a lot of British Salafi groups in recent years have been involved in counter-extremism, handing out leaflets like the ones in Salafi Publications. British Salafi groups in recent years seem to be more quietist and are more into proselytizing to non-Salafi Muslims and advocating for a peaceful separation from non-Muslim society like Orthodox Jews or fundamentalist Christians, although there are apparently more "liberal" Salafi groups and competing factions of Salafis. But she mentions how, at least for Salafi women, there is a gap between the theory/ideology and the lived practice.

https://www.amazon.com/Making-Salafi-Muslim-Woman-Conversion/dp/0190611677

That verse is highly debated, and is subject to translator bias. I use a different translation which reads as thus

> The men are to support the women by
what God has gifted them over one
another and for what they spend of their
money. The reformed women are
devotees and protectors of privacy what
God has protected. As for those women
from whom you fear disloyalty, then you
shall advise them, abandon them in the
bedchamber, and separate them; if they
obey you, then do not seek a way over
them; God is High, Great.

I never use Islamqa so I can't tell you. I read books put together by scholars whose research and credentials I can research, not an anonymous gaggle of website developers and content creators.

I find Islam to be very empowering to women, more so than Muslims are. Try reading this or this.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean when you say "emotionally not critically".

I did some digging, which I should have spent more time doing before I asked for help, and found some things that I think look interesting (here they are in case you are curious):

http://www.amazon.com/Questioning-Islam-Questions-Answers-Religion/dp/1500336203/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1416328416&sr=8-1&keywords=questioning+islam

http://www.amazon.com/Why-I-Am-Not-Muslim/dp/1591020115/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1416328436&sr=8-1&keywords=why+I+am+not+a+muslim

http://www.amazon.com/Leaving-Islam-Apostates-Speak-Out/dp/1591020689/ref=pd_sim_b_16?ie=UTF8&refRID=18AP881NZ4JVSDVSR2V5

http://www.amazon.com/Leaving-Islam-Apostates-Speak-Out/dp/1591020689/ref=pd_sim_b_16?ie=UTF8&refRID=18AP881NZ4JVSDVSR2V5

The last one might be especially relevant to this sub (self explanatory).

Thanks for the response either way

I also read an ethnography about Women and Islam in Africa. Also, the librarians of Timbuktu are interesting. We studied them in an international preservation class along with Mali.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-the-city-of-mud-stays-standing-meet-the-masons-of-djenne-mali-224225/

https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Ass-Librarians-Timbuktu-Precious-Manuscripts/dp/1476777411/ref=pd_sbs_14_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1476777411&pd_rd_r=5d933a81-e534-11e8-8667-6f762af60b71&pd_rd_w=m6uCP&pd_rd_wg=2UjhG&pf_rd_i=desktop-dp-sims&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_p=7d5d9c3c-5e01-44ac-97fd-261afd40b865&pf_rd_r=91ZQ5QYFEVQM1DRDM67G&pf_rd_s=desktop-dp-sims&pf_rd_t=40701&psc=1&refRID=91ZQ5QYFEVQM1DRDM67G

https://www.amazon.com/Book-Smugglers-Timbuktu-Storied-Treasures/dp/0008126658/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1541887366&sr=1-1&keywords=9780008126650

https://www.amazon.com/Women-Islamic-Revival-West-African-ebook/dp/B003AKZRTQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1541887003&sr=1-1&keywords=9780253003461

Try reading it and maybe you will understand.
http://www.amazon.com/Leaving-Islam-Apostates-Speak-Out/dp/1591020689

BTW, this is called a book, and it contains useful information that isn't made of ignorant reddit comments made by nirods such as yourself.

>who will demographically over take them and change the nation


http://www.amazon.com/The-Myth-Muslim-Tide-Immigrants/dp/0307951170

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07R9QP25X

I recommend "Headscarves and Hymens" by Mona Eltahawy, an Egyptian feminist who explains the problem of hijab and sexism in Islam from an unequivocally leftist point of view. The book is short and reads well which is a plus: https://www.amazon.es/dp/0374536651/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_IQjUCbEVAV125

Another good feminist who advocates against hijab is Nawal El Saadawi. A classic leftist feminist, also Egyptian, has written novels and feminist work, anti FGM and anti hijab advocate. So when people accuse us of Islamophobia we can just point them toward the Muslim feminist authors who are at the front lines. More: https://theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/apr/15/nawal-el-saadawi-egyptian-feminist

My real beef is with rad-fems, those women are the most destructive and vile force to dismantle the good both sides do, I simply cannot abide it and fiercely go to mat against them.

There is a fantastic book if you're interested about Muslim Feminists and how the western feminists undermine their struggle because they are not as far along, and for the life of me I cannot find it in my 3 book cases of texts. This is what happens after 2 years of a degree, your room gets taken over by books. I BELIEVE it's this one: http://www.amazon.com/Search-Islamic-Feminism-Womans-Journey/dp/0385488580

they mainly attack those girls they see as "not real Muslims", which means not of their specific faith. this does mean that many "asian" girls who don't share the specific type of Islam do become victims. this is also echoed in the Belgium report i linked.



it is the case that these crimes are motivated by some type of xenophobic or racist motives, however this never gets reported or recorded.


so don't confuse it with the identity politics narrative of white vs Muslim or whatever. it's more some group of Muslims of some type preying on everybody else who does not fit their ideas of how a woman should behave, aka are referred to as not real Muslim. if you want to know more about it read https://www.amazon.com/Caged-Virgin-Emancipation-Proclamation-Women/dp/0743288343.

> if it didn't go down well with your family and friends

The internet is funny. I respect your position in the above kerfuffle, and I was appalled enough at your opponent's intransigence, ignorance and intellectual dishonesty -- enough to comment at the end of your feud. I spend a fair bit of time thinking and researching these ideas. I am becoming increasingly disappointed by the hordes of vociferous people who think they are virtuous culture warriors, but who are so low on information about Islamic texts, sociology and anthropology, that they have no business talking about it.

Unquestionably, aside from reading both the Koran and the Life of the Prophet (preferably together, so you can read the Surah in chronological order, which are otherwise mixed up and unintelligible in the Koran as it is by itself), the most important thing any non-Muslim can do to learn is to read the sociology of Islam and most importantly, listen themselves to what Muslims and exMuslims actually say. Unquestionably, r/izlam and r/exmuslim, respectively, are the best places to do that. The religious supremacism and backwardness on display in r/izlam is just as astonishing as the endless horror stories in r/exmuslim. Lurking in these subs (along with r/islam and r/progressive_islam) has provided me with endless insights into Islamic religious culture -- frankly, most of them far more depressing and pessimistic than most Western people could even imagine.

The funny part is, I am a culturally Christian atheist, raised in a secular household in the US -- a household which celebrates Christmas by giving each other books by Dawkins. It is embarrassing the way people make assumptions about other's cultural and ideological background on Reddit. Don't worry about it in this case.

I do hope you continue your study. The intellectual rhetorical landscape has been badly confused by social science's erroneous notion's about cultural relativism, colonial guilt and the rejection of universalist epistemology (ideas about knowledge that apply to everyone in the world). As such, many extremely vocal people are incapable of understanding that the Arab cultural imperialism that is the world-wide Islamic Revival is a pernicious vehicle for some of the most harmful and retrograde elements of Arab culture. I highly recommend the book Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution to illustrate this, although the author is annoying with her fashionable identity politics.

My point is that things have gotten so bad rhetorically, that the very real problem of huge, insular, communities of Muslims with retrograde values in Europe (I now live in Wales, in the UK, and I live a couple of blocks from a Mosque which since opening, has visibly spawned a culture of niqab wearing religious supremacists I see in my own neighborhood every day) -- is being bizarrely ignored. The very idea of concern over the proliferation of what is essentially an Arab version of the Ku-Klux-Klan, has been demonized as an irrational "conspiracy theory", currently marginalized as "The Great Replacement". Those of us -- even die-hard lefties like me -- wishing to mobilize civil society to oppose community groups that flagrantly reject human rights, beat their children if they don't pray, commit honor killing, FGM and form sex-grooming gangs literally everywhere they form -- are marginalized by this idiocy.

It is important that you keep fighting. But it is wildly more important that you keep learning -- as we all must.

EDIT: a word

As a European also myself, I'm waiting to see how long it would take before another European was to call you out on your nonsense, but it seems that's not going to happen.

For those who want a bit of context, the views held by /u/bjarkebjarke represent the nationalist segment of Europeans, in a continent where literal Neo-Nazi groups like Jobbik and Golden Dawn (before they got arrested) - whose active role is to march in groups and physically attack minority individual citizens who are simply living their daily life - are prevalent.

To give context, PEGIDA is one of these groups, stemming from a part of Germany known for its Neo-Nazi population, and found containing a large number of Neo-Nazis and football hooligans. This explains why the counter-demonstrators outnumbered the demonstrators - because no rationally-minded person wants violent groups legally condoned to attack people on the streets and create division.

This situation in Europe is exactly why Singapore, with its lack of violent mobs roaming the streets and stupid people preaching hate being given a voice, is a better country at the moment than European countries to reside in.

As for the anti-Muslim claims, almost all of which are false and/or misleading, have a vast amount of reputable academic literature - such as this - opposing such nonsense claims.