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Peter Brimelow writes:
I repeatedly say that
VDARE.COM is a coalition. Our writers differ on many
things; they need agree only on the need for patriotic
immigration reform.
VDARE.COM Editorial Collective member Brenda Walker
regards herself as a feminist,
environmentalist and as a
Democrat. Here she uses the anniversary of the
February 15, 1820
birth of suffragist icon
Susan Brownell Anthony to reflect on the
situation of women in America today. Hint: immigration
is a problem—something I myself realized back in 1995
after the publication of
Alien Nation. I was contacted by several women
academics, orthodox liberals in every respect but
distressed that no-one else would listen to their horror
stories about maltreatment by fellow faculty members
from the
Third World. Brenda`s 2007 Susan B. Anthony
reflections are
here.)
Here in the United States,
there`s little public concern that women`s rights and
safety could be eroded. Under ordinary conditions,
women`s social position as equal members of society
appears assured after a century and a half of struggle.
And huge progress has indeed been made since the
Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, when a small group
began to organize for suffrage.
But these are not normal times. Nearly all of the
millions of post-1965 legal immigrants and illegal
aliens come from
cultures where women are
by no means equal, either
under the law or
within society.
Are
women in America already on a downward arc because
of
misogynous immigration and multiculturalism? I think
so. But there`s no recognition of the problem, much less
help in the offing, either from Washington or from
Establishment feminists, who remain strangely attached
to multiculturalism in spite of the ideology`s innate
conflict with women`s rights.
One official feminist who should know better is Katha
Pollitt, an opinion writer at
The Nation.
On one hand, she wrote a
sensible response to Susan Okin`s question (later an
anthology),
"Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?" Pollitt
directly criticized
cultural relativism: "You could say that
multiculturalism demands respect for
all cultural traditions, while feminism respects
only traditions that indeed deserve respect." Yet
Pollitt recently
endorsed Obama, giving as one reason being his
support for
illegal aliens receiving driver`s licenses, and she
criticized David Horowitz for his interest in
women`s rights in Islamic countries. She
dogmatically refused to believe a conservative would
care: e.g.
"David Horowitz, Feminist?", The
Nation, Nov 1, 2007. (See
JihadWatch.org`s Robert Spencer
commenting on YouTube about this matter.)
However, given the precious little attention given to
the issue of
Third World brutality against
women in general, why didn`t Pollitt welcome any
publicity, no matter the source? (Ask her at
kpollitt@thenation.com)
There is plenty of reform needed in many places—lots
to occupy people of every political persuasion. In fact,
the overall world scene shows little sign of improvement
for women`s issues. Instead, we see the same dreary and
accepted misogyny that is part and parcel of the
cultures we are daily urged to celebrate.
The worst places in the misogynous Third World revel
in cruelty and discrimination. In 2002, 15 schoolgirls
in Saudi Arabia
died in a burning building when religious police
prevented their escape because they were not properly
veiled according to Islamic standards. Police from the
Commission for the Prevention of Vice were seen beating
girls trying to escape the flames.
- In 2002, 15 schoolgirls in Saudi Arabia
died in a burning building when religious police
prevented their escape because they were not
properly veiled according to Islamic standards.
Police from the Commission for the Prevention of
Vice were seen beating girls trying to escape the
flames.
- More recently, fundamentalist Muslims in Basra
have used increased freedom in a
campaign of terror against women. More than a
hundred women were murdered last year, 79 for
violations of Islam and 47 in honor killings,
according to a UN humanitarian group.
- And just when many thought that the absolute
rock bottom of Islamic depravity had been reached in
the daily
murders, two
women with Down`s Syndrome were used as
mules to carry suicide bombs into a Baghdad
market Feb 1, killing around 100 people. The bombs
were detonated remotely and certainly the women did
not understand the purpose of the explosives. And
to top it off, the
director of a Baghdad psychiatric hospital was
arrested for supplying al Qaeda with the impaired
women. (Remember
America is welcoming
thousands of Iraqi “refugees“, even while
our soldiers are still dying there.)
Not only is immigration the
new way of war, it is also the spearpoint of the
attack on Western civilization`s tradition of liberty
and individual freedom.
Geography is a lovely antidote to diversity. If
members of backward cultures would stay put we would all
be better off, but they don`t. The
worst of the worst are headed this way due to the
multicultural ideology underpinning US immigration
policy as well as the
Refugee Industrial Complex maintaining itself.
In fact, diversity is so extreme that Washington
doesn`t even bar criminal cultures like that of Somalia,
where
98 percent of residents practice a form of child torture
which is a crime in this country—female
genital mutilation (FGM).
The State Department supposedly endeavors to keep out
individual
criminal refugees, but
entire societies that normally
brutalize children are welcomed. Go figure.
One of the most worrying trends is how quickly
women`s rights are discarded by host First World
societies in the name of multiculturalism. The recent
British
dust-up when the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan
Williams urged implementation of Islamic sharia law in
order to
"maintain social cohesion" in British`s rapidly
diversifying society is a sad example of the willingness
of Establishment elites to eliminate western legal
protections for women in order to appease Muslim
immigrants.
For all the weakness in Britain`s cultural resolve in
recent years, however, the reaction to the Archbishop
has been surprisingly
intense and widespread. Perhaps the slumbering
British people have finally
awakened to the threat within. We can hope. (Contact
the Archbishop yourself
using this page.)
In 2001,
Oslo professor Unni Wikan lectured her fellow
Norwegian women that the
"Muslim rape wave" against them was their fault.
She said that “Norwegian women must take their share
of responsibility for these rapes”. The professor
did not call for violent criminal aliens to shape up.
Instead, she said that “Norwegian women must realize
that we live in a Multicultural society and adapt
themselves to it”.
(Honest observation reveals the burqa is a cloth
prison designed to erase the individual personhood of
women. If the all-encompassing garments were designed
merely to enforce an extreme level of modesty, burquas
would not need to be
identical. And the
lack of an opening for the mouth suggests
disapproval of speech and
eating.)
If I may
misquote the Simpsons, Prof. Wikan for one
welcomes the new Muslim overlords!
By a happy coincidence, a British study has just been
released that opens a window on the stunning extent of
Islamic violence against women.
“It warns that the number of girls falling victim
to forced marriages, kidnappings, sexual assaults,
beatings and even murder by relatives intent on
upholding the "honour" of their family is up to 35
times higher than official figures suggest.” [A
question of honour: Police say 17,000 women are victims
every year, The Independent, February 10
2008].
(You can download the 160-page report,
Crimes of the Community; Honour-Based Violence in the
UK in PDF from the
Centre for Social Cohesion.)
The Daily Mail profiled one young woman who
wants to lead an ordinary life as an individual of the
West, Britain-born Khadeda Begum:
I was forced to marry my cousin—it`s normal in my
culture, but SO WRONG, [By Alison Smith-Squire,
February 12, 2008. ]
“And according to Khaleda—who today, having
escaped `the marriage from hell,` lives in hiding with
her British partner, Phil—she is far from alone.
“She says: `Virtually every Asian girl I have ever
met has an
arranged marriage and the vast
majority of them are to their cousins.
“`It is well known within the community that such
marriages do produce
deformed babies. No one talks about it, but it is
one of the reasons why I found such a marriage to
someone so closely related to myself to be so very
repugnant. `”
Islam and Western civilization do indeed
clash, because of the many irreconcilable cultural
differences.
The truth is that spineless Western leaders fear
violence from
perpetually offended sons of Allah. They ate likely
intimidated the worldwide swath of rioting that
killed over 100 during the infamous
Danish cartoon jihad. If Muslims become so angered
at a few drawings, imagine the results if they couldn`t
batter their wives.
And Islamic scripture approves of abusing women. As
Jihad Watch`s Robert Spencer observed in his online
Blogging the Qur`an, "Wife-beating exists in all
cultures, but only in
Islam does it enjoy divine sanction."
Add the failure of Muslim societies to achieve
anything of value in the modern world—such as the
famously
sparse level of books published in Arab
countries—and social frustration can become
personal. Muslim culture around the world may appear
pitiful. But in the castle of the home, a Muslim man can
beat the tar out of his wives and feel both powerful and
virtuous.
Is this the kind of diversity we should welcome?
Whenever sharia law
pops up, as it increasingly does where there are
Muslim immigrants, Muslim women are often the ones who
beat it back because they have the most to lose. In
2003, Muslims in Ontario tried to get sharia law
into family law courts, in an
incremental stealth strategy. At first, the
liberal tolerance police thought incorporating other
legal systems would be a
fine idea. But women and
others organized and were successful in defeating
the proposal—after a struggle lasting a couple of years.
Britain has been a poster child for the
unwise choice of immigrants, and then coddling them
rather than insisting on
assimilation. But America is
not far behind, though we are
somewhat luckier in geography—if being the neighbor
of Mexico can ever be called fortunate.
The same crimes and social pathology are beginning to
appear here as in
Eurabia, because
Muslim immigration is on the upswing:
- Two bright high school girls were murdered in
Texas last December by their Egyptian father in an
apparent
honor killing.
- In New York City, an estimated 80 percent of
Pakistani marriages are determined by parents, with
young girls
"violently forced to return to their homeland for
arranged marriages".
- An Ethiopian man residing in Georgia,
Khalid Adem, was found guilty in 2006 of
committing FGM on his baby daughter. He was
sentenced to two concurrent terms of 15 years in
prison.
Of course, only American women foolish enough to
become personally involved with Muslim males are likely
to face culturally-approved violence.
But many American women have to interact with such
unpleasant characters on the job and in classrooms. Why
should any American be saddled with this
unnecessary the aggravation?
Is this the future we want for America—Londonistan-style
gender segregation, violence and murder? A
"Muslim rape wave"
like Scandinavia?
And guess what? The same general group that is bad
news for women is often a national security threat
consisting of persons who have come not to embrace
American values but to
overturn the Constitution and replace it with
Islamic sharia law.
Sadly, even many who recognize the Islamic threat
often don`t connect the dots of causation. So I`ll do
it: if these culturally inappropriate immigrants
remained at home, a lot of trouble could be avoided.
In short: It`s the immigration, stupid.
Susan B. Anthony didn`t spend her entire life in
struggle for equality to have it undermined by an
immigration policy that completely disregards women`s
rights and safety.
But her achievements can be sustained only if today`s
feminists wake up to the threat
posed by multicultural immigration.
Brenda Walker (email
her) lives in Northern California and publishes
two websites,
LimitsToGrowth.org and
ImmigrationsHumanCost.org. She thinks that you can
believe in multiculturalism or women`s rights—but not
both.
