Coincidental to your post “Peace through Rape” I happened a few days ago to follow a lead from Politically Incorrect to this article about Alice Schwarzer, who is one of the premier feminists in Germany, a well-known leade of the New German Feminist Movement, and the founder in 1972 of the magazine EMMA.
I think of this as “Memo to NOW: not all feminists are left-wing drones.”
And the translated article from Der Westen:
Alice Schwarzer’s Discomfort With Islam
September 3, 2010 by Wilhelm Klümper
Essen. The politically correct dancing around with the dangers of Islam seems to get on Alice Schwarzer’s nerves. On September 23rd, she is bringing out an angry and rousing book with the title “The Great Cover-Up (Veiling) — For Integration, against Islamism” (Kiepenhauer & Witsch, 272 pages, €9.95) with essays by her and other EMMA authors.
For over thirty years, she says, out of false tolerance people in the West have turned a blind eye to the atrocities in the name of Islam. After the fall of the shah, she herself had spoken with representatives of the Khomeini regime in Iran. With a cold smile, they had said that sharia would be introduced with stoning for homosexuality or a wife’s adultery. “No, the Islamists made no secret of their attentions. No more than the National Socialists,” she says.
Islamic agitators, often trained in Iran, Afghanistan or Egypt and financed in Saudi Arabia have been very good, she says, at disguising their true motives. Today, it is considerably more difficult to distinguish between Islam as a religion and political Islam.
Islamization as an Objective
In Germany, the Islamists found willing listeners above all in the universities, among Protestants, and in the alternative milieu. Here the fear and guilty conscience about doing something wrong with respect toloving the foreigner was great. “And great too, was the readiness of believers of the Old Left to follow new gods after the death of their deities Mao and Che Guevara: Allahu Akbar! Presumably, the young converts of the so-called Sauerland Group had been participating in the Red Army Faction, one, two generations earlier.”
Even greater than the danger of terrorism is the systematic infiltration of our educational and legal systems by the goals of Islamization. The fact that the third generation of Turkish-Germans speaks worse German than the second is also attributable to infiltration by Islamists: “In the marginalized ghettoes, their seed of contempt for democracy and exaltation of theocracy rises.”
This process is advanced by falsely understood tolerance. Thus naive German judges have incredibly agreed to parental applications for exemption from sports training, school excursions, as well as sex education, and thereby contributed to discrimination against Muslim girls. Even the CDU-led NRW (North Rhein-Westphalia) integration ministry distributed handouts in which the Islamic laws are presented as religious duty. And in them, parents who deny their daughters swimming instruction are called “loving.” To this day, honor killings committed in Turkish and Arabic circles are blurred as family drama.
Against this kind of falsely understood tolerance, Alice Schwarzer is betting on an uncompromising anti-Islamization direction. The hijab — “the flag of Islamists” for Schwarzer — must be forbidden in German schools. “Only this logical and rigorous act would give little girls from orthodox-to-fundamentalist families the chance to move freely and equally, at least inside the school.” Naturally the “cloth prison burka” needs to be forbidden in Germany as in France.
The Mantra of Lacking Tolerance
Schwarzer also does not think much of the interior ministry’s organized conference, at which the Islamic societies — from the Turkish government Ditib to Milli Görüs, which has long been under surveillance by the intelligence services — dominated the debate on integration. The groups, in which barely 20% of the Muslims who live here are organized, reproach the German majority with a lack of tolerance and an ignorance of religious laws.
It is not surprising that Schwarzer and her fellow warriors are sympathetic to the Swiss minaret ban. Behind that is the discomfort of many citizens in Europe with theocracies, with their stonings and suicide bombings as well as the (forced) covering of women right here in Europe and forced marriages of daughters and sons who have grown up here. There is also discomfort at the proven frequent use of force in traditional Muslim families and the moral equivalency applied to emancipation, the rule of law, even democracy. “In short, the worry about the human rights fought for so laboriously and bloodily in the last 200 years in the West.”
To all the timid ones who voice their criticism of Islam quietly for fear of the reproach of racism, Schwarzer cries: “The majority of the population is speaking to you from its heart, with an open and rational criticism of this development.”
17 comments:
This is fantastic.
What has many of these identity groups lacking in enthusiasm in confronting Islam, is, and what Alice Schwarzer doesnt seem to grasp is...
For over thirty years, she says, out of false tolerance people in the West have shown Feminists(fill in the blank).
They are hesitant to defend Western Civilization, because they see it as their enemy.
By criticizing another "minority" in this fashion, it opens up the door to criticism of all "minorities." It deligitimizes Political Correctness.
It also establishes the defense of Western Civilization from "the Other" as legitimate and necessary. Establishing intolerance in service of that goal as legitimate.
Which then can be applied to any and all "minority" groups.
It really is opening a Pandora's Box of horrors as they see it.
Of course Christian Europe is quite a tolerant lot, it just doesnt allow for the promotion of Leftwinger Utopian Visions.
I agree with you EV. There is a lot that is good about what Ms. Schwarzer is saying.
All the same, I can't help but point out why I disagree with her. She is, after all, a feminist, which is just another expression of the same falsehood that informs those weakling Protestant enablers she despises: equality. And equality just isn't true.
For example, she says she is for "integration" and implies that if only the Turks would shed Islam, they would become indistinguishable from the Germans. Problem solved.
But I'm not convinced. She notes that third generation Turks speak worse German than their parents...because they're Muslims. But so were their parents.
Could it be that they're rejecting German not because they're Muslims but because they're failed Germans? What if these youths are admitting what the leftists deny: They'll never become just like the Germans.
Why pretend to be what you aren't--isn't that kind of pathetic? I don't fault the Turks for speaking bad German. I fault them for remaining where they're not wanted.
But now that I re-read your comment, EV, maybe you were making a similar point. Sorry, if I missed it.
For example, she says she is for "integration" and implies that if only the Turks would shed Islam, they would become indistinguishable from the Germans. Problem solved. --- bartholomewscross
Similarly, if you just shed your Feminism, then you can be good Germans/Christians (fill in the blank).
No we were making different points.
Yours is stated plainly in this conclusion..
"Why pretend to be what you aren't--isn't that kind of pathetic? I don't fault the Turks for speaking bad German. I fault them for remaining where they're not wanted."
My point is that Feminists and other minority ideologies, behaviors, etc can likewise be given the same treatment by the majority.
Which is why I think we see a lot of feminists silent on Islam.
Schwarz is stating that moral and cultural relativism is bullshit, and that Islam is inferior to Western Civilization. Which opens up the Pandora's box...for the advocation of Universal Truth, that some cultures are objectively superior to others.
This Feminists remarks reminds me of the infighting that went on after the Russian Revolution by the varying strains of Communism and Socialism. The closer they became to accomplishing their power grab the more vociferous their attempts to eliminate their rivals.
Now that the Feminists see their allies getting closer to success the more they see they won't be dineing at the table of leadership.
So now the claws come out. Only fools in the anti-islam movement would offer a hand in friendship to these cultural deconstructionists. If and when the Civilized world deals with islam in the way it deserves the Feminists would predictably go right back to destablizing Civility for delusionally percieved wrongs.
I suggest they all go to the palistinian territories, I've read in a earlier posting that the Jihad Jivers treat them like Amazonian queens. They've drank deep and long from the poison chalice of multi-cult humanism. Along with all the other "most favored minorities"allied to the religion of peace they now get to choke on their success.
EV stated,
"My point is that Feminists and other minority ideologies, behaviors, etc can likewise be given the same treatment by the majority."
Got it. Yep, I agree. I wonder too whether Schwarzer has ever considered the danger the truth poses to her own feminism. Of course, if she ever got that far, she might ask herself what kind of position she's in if truth looks dangerous...
@bartholomewscross:
All the same, I can't help but point out why I disagree with her. She is, after all, a feminist, which is just another expression of the same falsehood that informs those weakling Protestant enablers she despises: equality. And equality just isn't true.
You could not be more wrong. We feminists are perfectly aware that equality does not exist. People are taller, shorter, fatter, thinner, more/less: talented; intelligent; educated; pleasant etc.
This is not about people being equal, it is about people being treated equally as opposed to gender apartheid.
In many muslim families, the purpose of the women is the same as it has been for hundreds of years. It is the same as it was in the west, back when this was a christian theocracy.
The women's liberation movement has given us our lives - literally: we own ourselves - we are consenting adults, independent and responsible for our own lives. Free people not slaves.
In many islamic societies it is illegal for a woman to do anything without the permission of a male guardian. A woman who disobeys is beaten. There is no equality of ownership, she is owned: a submissive slave to the men in her family, he is a submissive slave to allah.
These things we abolished in Europe, misunderstood PC is bringing them back.
There are many things worse than death, slavery is one of them.
Torture and marital rape are two more.
[Don't let me even start on the Aisha was 9 and the prophet was perfect... ]
EV: that Feminists and other minority ideologies
So we are minority ideologies now are we?
Us poor week little wimmin', a cooking an a scrubbin' in the kitchen unable to think for ourselves and just waiting for some macho-muscle to protect us from these nasty, misguided feminist women (who probably just cannot get a man?)
Is this really what you think?
Are you a theocrat or just ignorant?
Hi, gsw, thanks for responding.
You wrote,
"Us poor week little wimmin', a cooking an a scrubbin' in the kitchen unable to think for ourselves and just waiting for some macho-muscle to protect us..."
It's interesting that you complain about that we men see you as "weak" and desperate, but how do you see us men? Doesn't the tone of your response betray you? Don't you see us as domestic thugs, tyrants and rapists, made to behave only by the "macho-muscle" of the State, as it were? And is the irony of your reliance on a macho State rather than a macho man completely lost on you?
You say,
Feminism "...is not about people being equal, it is about people being treated equally"
In other words, it's against treating people as they really are. I've never seen that work out too well in practice.
Look, one of the reasons the West is so weak and your daughters might well ultimately be in submission to shari'a is because things aren't too good between Western men and women these days. You think we men are a bunch of club-dragging cavemen and we think you're a bunch of back-stabbing harpies (at least that's the official version; results may vary from home to home). That doesn't strike me as a very good recipe for things like families, a positive birthrate, happy women or confident men.
None of this is to say, by the way, that Muslim men don't treat their wives terribly. No doubt many do.
But the problem isn't that they lack a macho-State (can you imagine what an all-powerful Saudi Arabia would look like?). The problem is that they believe in a religion of domination and hatred of weakness. Men are taught to prey on whomever they please, and that's exactly what they do. Kind of like how Western women are taught (by Feminism) to prey on whomever they please, which is exactly what they do.
Only because women are physically weaker have the results of Feminism in the West been less physically dangerous to men than the results of Islam have been to women.
Plummeting fertility rates, the desacredation of sexual relations, the break up of the family, the rise of the Welfare State to replace fathers and husbands as the providers. Those fertility rates combined with the Welfare State, led directly to mass immigration, to keep the ponzi scheme afloat, after the bottom dropped out, lack of children.
The list of damage that Feminists have done to Western Civilization is too great to expound upon in this little box.
The original feminists fought to get women the vote, to pass prohibition (because drunk men were abusing their wives and children), to make divorce easier (again because drunk men were abusing their wives and children), to give women reproductive rights such as birth control (to keep poor abused women out of terminal poverty), to allow women to work for money (so that abused women could support themselves after divorce), and to allow women to achieve higher education (to lead more fulfilling lives and obtain better-paying jobs).
When men have all the power, women and children are ALWAYS the victims of tremendous abuse.
If men treated women and children fairly in the first place, feminism would have been irrelevant.
It is precisely BECAUSE men were fundamentally unfair to women and children that feminist ideals and ideas gained traction.
Indeed, one can only hope that Islam will become feminized - with women being able to vote, escape abuse, divorce unfair husbands, and stop having an average of eight babies - that (generally) their neither their families or societies can support.
It's more likely that Europe will be Islamized.
There is a reason that that their are no major Matriarchal Societies on this planet. They are Darwinian Failures.
It's not about fair treatment, it's about Darwinian success.
Of course claiming that women treat children better, as they advocate their legalized wholesale murders, based upon the willy nilly mood of women, aka abortion on demand, is the height of incredulity.
Some treatment that. The unborn children are loving women's empowerment no doubt.
Feminism long ago quit being about fairness anyways, it is about power. Its not about equality, but about women's power.
You dont see Feminists talking about the unfairness that men endure, in the custody of their children, you dont see them fighting for equality of women in the garbage collection field. Men dont live as long, but breast cancer is funded all out of proportion with its impact on society.
The list is literally too long for this little box.
Egghead wrote,
"The original feminists fought to get women the vote, to pass prohibition (because drunk men were abusing their wives and children), to make divorce easier (again because drunk men were abusing their wives and children)"
This is a lie. If men were so evil and so intent on oppressing their wives, why would they ever have agreed to give them the vote? The feminists seem to forget that it was of course the men who extended women the vote.
"It is precisely BECAUSE men were fundamentally unfair to women and children that feminist ideals and ideas gained traction."
So you think that men agreed to give women the vote because they considered themselves untrustworthy and unfair?
Even if you believe that, you are obligated to credit men with at least the fairness and trustworthiness necessary to see their own faults and vote (voluntarily!) to give women the power to "fix" them via divorce courts and a police state.
But you don't: You consider men so wicked that nothing less than their emasculation before the State will satisfy you. You are driven by resentment against our fathers. Unless you repent, resentment shall cloud your reason, as it already has, and ruin you.
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