Okay, let's get this straight: There's nothing intrinsically Islamic about oppression of women. Muhammad was surrounded by strong women all his life and the Qur'an actually has a relatively progressive attitude toward women. Up until a century or so ago, women in the West were far more oppressed than women in the Islamic world. Subjugation of women is not a religious policy but a cultural one, one that's specifically found in poor, uneducated countries. The Mideast has a lot of oppression today, not because of Islam, but because of poverty, ignorance, and cultural disintegration. And that disintegration happened mainly because Europe and America spent a couple of centuries relentlessly meddling in local affairs, overthrowing governments it didn't like, allying with brutal dictators because they claimed to embrace Western modernism, and so on. Like I said, imposing your will on other cultures in the name of your short-term interest always backfires on you in the long run.
(And in case anyone mentions veiling, that custom actually originated in the Byzantine Empire. Again, it's a cultural thing rather than a religious one. True, some extremist Islamist sects have adopted it as a means of oppression, but they're no more typical of rank-and-file Islam than David Koresh and the Branch Davidians were typical Christians. The Qur'an says nothing about veiling except that women should keep their breasts covered.)
And let's be clear, also, that there's a big difference between Islamic nations or groups and Islamist ones. Islam is a religion and a culture. Islamism is a political ideology asserting that government should be based upon Islamic law. The only actual "Islamist nation" is Iran. Every other government in the Mideast is essentially secular; though Islam may be their state religion, their actual leaders are not Islamic clerics.
And one could argue that Islamism is not very Islamic. By a strict reading of Islamic doctrine, government shouldn't even exist, because no one has the right to intercede between the individual and God. For over a thousand years, Islamic philosophers have struggled with the question of the legitimacy of their rulers. The general conclusion is that there needs to be leadership and organization to see to the needs of the people, and that it's okay so long as the government doesn't try to meddle in individuals' religious practices. Which means that the Islamist notion of Islamic clerics ruling directly over the people, the idea that people need religious scholars to intercede between them and God and tell them what to do, is... well, highly revisionist. So it's important not to confuse a modern political ideology with a far older, extremely diverse religion.
...How the heck did Benedict Arnold get into this discussion? Ah, well....
My apologies if I misused terminology upthread. It seems I used "Islamist" when I should have said "Islamic". Thanks for the correction.
