Meat
Okay so what’s the big deal. Everybody lighten up a little. So the guy compared women to uncovered meat, so what – it’s his sincere opinion, and that’s his culture, so take a chill pill. Anyway is he wrong? Is he?
If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside…without cover, and the cats come to eat it…whose fault is it, the cats’ or the uncovered meat’s? The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred.
Obviously he’s not wrong. Come on, be honest – you know he’s not. The analogy is watertight. If you take out a piece of chicken, and put it outside stark naked with nothing on top of it, and the cats sashay over and eat it – it is of course the piece of chicken’s fault. Who would say otherwise? No one! Not the most Eurocentric Westoxic secularized modernized colonialist heretic infidel would say otherwise. There lies the piece of chicken on its plate, swaying seductively back and forth, twitching its hips, flicking its hair, pouting its lips, goggling with its eyes, rubbing its thighs together, waving its legs in the air, showing off its cleavage – doing everything it can to seduce those innocent honest godfearing hardworking cats to come over there and nibble and suck and lick and eat. That piece of chicken is a harlot, that piece of chicken is out to ensnare and deceive cats and distract them from their duty to Allah. That piece of chicken should be beaten by its brothers and then stoned to death, not pleasantly gobbled up by cats.
So, of course, it’s exactly the same with women. Identical. Because they’re like meat. Cat smells meat, cat wants to eat it; man smells woman, man wants to fuck it. It’s exactly the same. A woman outside is exactly like a plate of chicken with nothing on top of it: wide open, smellable, unprotected, rape bait. Who can deny it? No one. So if the woman is outside and some men come along and rape her, it’s her fault – because she’s not supposed to be outside any more than the meat is, is she! Meat belongs inside the house, inside the fridge, or inside the stomach of the men who have eaten it; it’s not supposed to be outside, walking up and down and doing whatever it likes. It’s only men and cats that are allowed to be outside doing what they like. Meat and women are supposed to be locked up. Got that? Of course they are. Women are supposed to be in their rooms, at home, in their hijabs, just as Sheik Hilali said. Each woman is allotted a room, in a home, where she is supposed to spend her entire life; if she comes out, she does it to entice rapists, and she deserves everything she gets. Am I right? Okay I know it’s not popular, but you know it’s true.
Oh, Ophelia. You are just a Western Colonialist Imperialist picking on the innocent other (I’ve spent time…ick…reading arguments of this ilk over at Le Colonel Chaubert. Yipes…if that’s “The left” today, then I guess I’m a conservative!
Yes; nice how he managed to utterly objectify woman and at the same time entirely remove agency from men where they’re concerned.
I presume he also argues against all possessions? By his impeccable logic, owning possessions is positively inviting others to steal them from you.
Why stop there? By his impeccable logic, being alive is positively inviting others to kill you. Which raises the interesting metaphysical question of whether being alive is an invitation to kill oneself?
I suggest that this eminent religious leader be kidnapped, and given the “snip, snip, and Bob’s your auntie” treatment!
He is, just the same, a really good example of a religious leader, after all ……
Cleary, this imam is not the Ibn Khaldun of the third millennium. Now, if I were a ‘moderate’ Channel-4 Muslim cleric, I might argue as follows:
“The way one dresses (or undresses) in public may constitute an act of aggression or provocation. A woman who dresses like a harlot (e.g. ultraminiskirt plus tanktop) is after all statistically more likely to be molested than a woman who dresses like a woman (e.g. maxiskirt plus jacket). It is as despicable for a woman to play the cock-teaser and lead men into sexual temptation as it is to eat a chicken in front of a starving cat. Such women deserve some sympathy if raped, but they deserve less sympathy than women who do not initiate the encounter by sexually harassing vulnerable males via ‘photon invasion’ of their visual privacy.”
“Rape is an outrage that cannot be tolerated in civilized society … yet feminism, which has waged a crusade for rape to be taken more seriously, has put young women in danger by hiding the truth about sex from them.” [Camilla Paglia]
Cathal –
They may well put it like that. They’d still be wrong, of course – less entertaining than the guy who’s shouting “scarfless harlots!”, but it’s still a poor argument. Since the mode of dress described is one worn by hundreds of thousands (millions?) of women in the UK every week, the “harlot” comparison is purely subjective. How about rape statistics for public beaches, hmm? And any argument failing to examine the role of alcohol rather than clothing would be pretty pointless, no? One thing does puzzle me – the Prof. Paglia quote doesn’t support anything – all she’s doing is making a claim that there is a single, golden “The Truth” about male/female sexual behaviour, which clearly only she is aware of, not her academic competition…so classic Dame P. tactics, but ultimately – why did you bother to use it?
I must apologise, Mr. Copeland, but in all your posts you do a great impression of a professional fence-sitter, who is determined to carve their identity by finding a “middle ground” even where there is barely a square inch to hunker down on.
Ah well, as long as you’re happy. :-)
Anyway, back to the real substance – Interesting parallels between this charming gentleman’s opinions, and the collected views of the British justiciary regarding rape victims who were “provocatively” dressed over the last 50 years or so…
Mind you, their only excuse was collective near-senility.
“Why stop there? By his impeccable logic, being alive is positively inviting others to kill you. Which raises the interesting metaphysical question of whether being alive is an invitation to kill oneself?”
Or would walking around in breezy clothing in front of a shop-store window be an invitation to rape oneself?
Anyway, Harry’s Place links to the imam’s wiki entry. Barrel of laughs, this man. Here’s the good imam on (*drumroll*) the Jews:
“The Jews struggle with humanity is as old as history itself; the present continuing struggle with the Islam nation is a natural continuation of the Jews enmity towards the human race as a whole. Judaism controls the world by…secret movements as the destructive doctrines and groups, such as communism, libertinism, Free Masons, Baha’ism, the Rotary clubs, the nationalistic and racist doctrines. The Jews try to control the world through sex, then sexual perversion, then the promotion of espionage, treason, and economic hoarding.”
Women as uncovered pieces of meat, Jews controlling the world through sex… Bit of a one-track mind at work here.
More power to the guy, based on the comments from his co-religionists he has articulated the issue in a clear and helpful way.
More such clergy, please. Spit it out, man.
OB: “Am I right? Okay I know it’s not popular, but you know it’s true.”
I’m just going to take a little space here to say, OB, great comment!
The great (in the wrong sense) thing about this guy is that every “clarification” he has come out with so far has only made things worse: “he only meant to refer to prostitutes as meat, and not any scantily clad woman without a hijab”. Or, it only applies to those who commit adultory.
BTW, the Australian Lebanese Muslim Association has stated that “it believes Sheikh Al Hilaly’s comments have been misinterpreted”.
This is a common, pathetic response.
I went from reading this disgusting story (on timblair.net) to my son’s high school graduation, held in the stunning Winthrop Hall of the University of Western Australia.
The Head Girl, a Muslim, gave a beautifully inspiring speech. I was sitting near her family, and though her mother wore a headscarf.
These young people, are a future to be proud of.
I don’t know many Muslims in Australia (I have met many in Morocco, Kashmir and Iran). This young woman shows that fantastic people are growing, young muslims who will be our neighbours. Comments like that of the idiot sheik, brought to the public, will lead ordinary people including muslims to reject the fascistic values of the haters.
More power to the translators!
Thanks for that, Merlijn. What a guy!
To take just one fragment from his long litany of drivel…
Freemasonry is controlled by Judaism???
Eh? eh? Whit?
Has anyone checked to see whether he’s functionally illiterate, as well as deeply irrational?
Of course, we shouldn’t be mocking his declaration of “faith”, because that’s provocative, divisive, insulting to Mohammerheadshark, etc,etc, and clearly shows us to be deserving of retribution. After he’s finished with the women, naturally…and had a little rest. He’ll be tired after all that castigating…
:-)
I am surprised that so many commentators on this naively accept the supposed innocence of the cats. They know what they are doing, those bastards. If they take MY chicken (and, yes, I do like to keep it uncovered near public thoroughfares) there will be no mercy.
Andy,
I reckon this imam is just the extreme end of one Islamic continuum – or perhaps not even the extreme end, in that what he is saying out loud is what many Muslims are no doubt saying privately to themselves.
I don’t see myself as a ‘fence-sitter’, BTW, it’s just that I like to try on the cultural anthropologist’s hat occasionally, rather than restricting myself to the ‘yuck’ reaction of the standard-issue Western liberal.
Personally I think he’s a dangerous loony who should be forced to watch Life of Brian ten times if he ever wants to visit the UK
He might actually enjoy part of TLOB. What if were forced to watch the Monty Python version of ‘The Life of Abdullah’?
Of course this version doesn’t exist and never will.
Remember what happened to Theo van Gogh for being ‘disrepsectful?
Thanks, Keith!
And thanks for wiki thing, Merlijn.
Interesting (in a morbid way) that (according to news sources anyway) the guy is mufti of Australia. Funny choice.
On the other hand;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4453820.stm
Cathal, you don’t know what’s hopeless and what isn’t. Humans are unpredictable. It was unpredicatable that young women whose mothers and grandmothers had never worn any kind of veil would start wearing it; it’s also unpredictable what will happen next. You don’t know.
And what’s the point of pretending you do know by way of dismissing encouragement? It’s a mug’s game. What does it accomplish? People could have (and did) tell the students in Montgomery that the sit-down campaign would never work; people told Mandela it was hopeless; there are always people around to say it’s hopeless; but what’s the point? They’re not always right; sometimes it’s not hopeless, sometimes good is done. Why try to strangle the attempt in its cradle?
OB claims that I am too pessimistic about what the future holds in store for us, since the future is unpredictable.
It’s a question of probabilities. For example, the likelihood that within the next 20 years young Muslim women will switch en masse from the hijab to the g-string bikini is pretty close to zero. It’s possible, of course – in the sense that it’s ‘possible’ that the proverbial monkey could type a Shakespearian sonnet.
It’s not so much a matter of ‘hopelessness’ as of ‘tragic realism’ and the avoidance of wishful thinking. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
Except that you said (granted, after a conditional clause) “it’s hopeless”.
Imagine moving to a stereotypical south pacific island society where the women go naked most of the time. So as a western woman, you might feel uncomfortable going naked and you might wish to wear at least a miniskirt and top. This would especially be the case if you are living in a “western neighborhood” in that south pacific village where you will meet western men who might think you to be immodest for going naked and who might say tasteless things to you and stare at your bare flesh. Then, the south pacific village elders announce that they don’t like the fact that you won’t go naked because they feel uncomfortable talking to anyone’s whose genitals they cannot see.
“For example, the likelihood that within the next 20 years young Muslim women will switch en masse from the hijab to the g-string bikini is pretty close to zero.”
Maybe you would like to come over to France and ask the topless Beurettes on the breakwater at Gruissan what they think!
“I don’t see myself as a ‘fence-sitter’, BTW, it’s just that I like to try on the cultural anthropologist’s hat occasionally, rather than restricting myself to the ‘yuck’ reaction of the standard-issue Western liberal.”
Actually, CC, you are just plain unpleasant.
Your attempt to justify your defence (assuming it is a defence) under the cultural relatvism umbrella is all very well …..
BUT
If cultural relativism is valid, then so is racism in “Western” societies, and suutee and Thugge, and enslavement, and enslavement of women, and …..
Oops…
Are were you:
A) Bullshitting us?
or
B) Unable to think straight?
GT, I am not defending extreme cultural relativism — I don’t believe in laying relativism on with a trowel.
Just that one should occasionally try to think outside the box of conventional universalist values.
And no, I am not trying to bullshit you — unless by ‘bullshitting’ you mean expressing views that do not fully coincide with your own.
kinder: one can always find extreme examples. There is a difference between being able to see one’s face and genitalia. Or, can you not see the difference?