Phyllis Chesler, Veteran American Jewish Feminist and Author of "An American Bride in Kabul", Weighs in On Behalf of That Much-Maligned Executive Order on Immigration

Her article – which appeared in “Israel National News” on 17th January – makes a nice companion piece to that which has already been written by “Brian of London”.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/20108

“Trump’s Executive Order is Quite in Order.”

‘As a feminist, scholar, and activist I think this Order is long overdue”.

‘Feminists, Hollywood celebrities, and Democratic legislators have denounced President Trump’s Executive Order titled “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States”.

‘Demonstrators have surged at airports, class-action lawsuits have been filed, judicial restraining orders have been issued.

‘I do not view this Act as a “Muslim Ban” since 49 other Muslim-majority countries are not specifically excluded here.  Only seven failed Muslim states, well known for training jihadists, as well as Iran, are named.

‘But I want to focus on something else that no-one has mentioned.

Or no-one in the mainstream media, at any rate. – CM

‘As a feminist, scholar, and activist, I think this Order is long overdue.

My emphasis.  – CM.

‘As the author of four studies about honor killing at “Middle East Quarterly”, I especially welcome this Section:

“The United States must ensure that those admitted to this country do not bear hostile attitudes towards it and its founding principles…. or those who would place violent ideologies above American law.

“In addition, the United States should not admit those who engage in acts of bigotry or hatred (including “honor” killings, or other forms of violence against women, or the persecution of those who practise religions different from their own)

My bolding.  Nota bene: if applied with care by the well-informed, this would neatly exclude the Abominable House of Saud, and Qatar, and Erdogan’s Turkey, and would indeed exclude all Mohammedan states, since all of them engage in varying degrees of official discrimination against non-Muslims and do little or nothing to prevent, deter or punish unofficial acts of persecution carried out by their Muslim citizens against non-Muslims, acts of persecution up to and including rape, kidnapping, extortion, forced ‘conversion’ and outright murder. El-Sisi’s Egypt would fail that test, too; the lot of the Copts continues to be very, very bad. – CM

“or those who would oppress Americans of any race, gender, or sexual orientation.”

‘Not all honor killers are Muslims.  This is a tribal custom, which neither HIndu, Sikh, nor Muslim clerics have chosen to abolish.  Hindus, also, perpetrate honor killings – but they confine this barbaric practice to India. Those who emigrate to the West do not bring this custom with them.  Only Muslims do. I n fact, 91 percent of the honor killings committed in the West are Muslim-on-Muslim crimes.

As are the majority of honor killings carried out in non-Western countries.  And it is far more probable that honor killings will, eventually, be stamped out in India, among HIndus and Sikhs, than that they will ever be abandoned or actively stamped out, by Muslims, anywhere. – CM

‘Not all honor killers are male.

‘Since women internalize tribal practices too, they also play a role as collaborators or as hands-on perpetrators int the honor killing of their daughters and daughters-in-law.

As was seen in one case in Israel where an Israel-resident Arab Muslim woman attempted to murder her own daughter in order to erase the stain upon the family ‘honour’ occasioned by the poor child’s having been incestuously raped by her (the girl’s) brothers. Rather than denounce her sons as rapists of their sister, the Muslim mother tried to destroy the victim, her own daughter.  If I recall correctly, the daughter somehow survived; and because Israel is not a Muslim country, the case came to the attention of the law, and the mother was prosecuted and punished. – CM

‘Mothers were involved in at least three high-profile honor killing cases in the United States.

‘In 1988, in St Louise, Missouri, Palestina Isa’s mother, father and sisters (that is: her Muslim Arab mother, father and sisters – CM) all conspired against the sixteen-year-old.  Her mother joined her father (an Abu Nidal terrorist from the West Bank (no: ‘from Muslim-occupied Judea and Samaria’ – CM) in brutally stabbing her to death.

‘Palestina’s crime?

‘She was academically gifted, full of life, and, although her family hated “blacks”, Palestina was friendly with an African-American boy.

A quick google reveals that he was a non-Muslim African American boy.  It is less important that he was black – although Arab society is deeply racist against blacks – than that he was an infidel.  A friendship with any Infidel American boy – of whatever ethnicity, and of whatever non-Islamic belief system – would have been regarded with just as much disfavour. – CM

‘In 2008 in Dallas, Texas, seventeen-year-old Sarah and eighteen-year-old Amina Said were lured by their mother and then shot to death by their taxi-driver, gun-toting, domestically and sexually violent Egyptian-born father (that is: Egyptian-born Muslim father – CM), Yaser Said.  

‘Their crimes?

‘Wanting to lead a western-style life, refusing an arranged marriage, and having boyfriends (that is, INFIDEL boyfriends – CM) who tried to protect them.

And the really interesting thing here, too, is that their mother was not ethnically middle eastenr, nor was she raised Muslim. She was a Euro-American woman, brought up in a nominally Christian family, who married a Muslim and, so far as one can tell, converted to Islam. – CM

‘In 2010 Iraqi-American Noor Almaleki, 20 years old, raised in the United States, left the Iraq-based husband her parents had insisted upon, returned to Arizona, and to an American lifestyle. She had a boyfriend. She lived with her boyfriend’s mother, also an Iraqi woman, who tried to protect her from her parents’ rage.

‘Her father (that is: her Muslim father – CM) ran her down, driving a two-ton Jeep Cherokee, and her mother helped him make his getaway to England.  Faleh Almaleki was extradited back to the United States, where he stood trial.

‘Because there are many more Muslims in Europe, there are significantly more honor killings there.

‘Feminists insist that some American men are also domestically violent, and view focusing on honor killings as “Islamophobic”.

‘But honor-killings are not the same as Western-style domestic violence.

Note: click on the link to read Ms Chesler’s article in its original location, for she has a number of links embedded within it that will take you to some of her very important articles on ‘honor’ murders that will be useful to have up your sleeve when you encounter people who try to claim that these killings are no different from the domestic violence that, alas, does happen in Western countries. – CM

‘American fathers do not routinely kill their young daughers; [whereas] a tribal honor killing primarily targets teenage girls and young women.

‘American batterers are not assisted by their families of origin.  

‘[Whereas] an honor killing is always a planned family conspiracy.

If a married woman suffers an ‘honor’ murder it is frequently both families – her husband’s and her own – that condemn her to death and then carry out the sentence.  In the West, if a husband kills his wife, it would be pretty much unheard of for either his family, or hers,or both, to have proposed, planned and/ or participated in the murder.  – CM

‘American batterers do not usually murder their victims.

Although men in the West do murder women who are or have been their wives, or girlfriends, or de factos, and when they do, there is usually a prior history of domestic violence. – CM

‘With rare, lucky exceptions, an honor killing always ends in a murder.

‘Domestic violence is not glorified in America (nor in other Western countries, such as Australia – CM); however imperfectly, it is prosecuted.

[Whereas] ‘In a classic honor killing, the perpetrators are often seen as heroes who have rescued their families from being “dishonored”.

‘In most cases, especially in rural and agricultural areas, the families of rebellious girls may have a hard time attracting mates for their sons and daughters, and may suffer social and economic ostracism.

‘Here’s why I also welcome this Executive Order.

‘In my opinion, forced face-veiling [see original article for link to a related article on the topic – CM] constitutes gender-based violence.

To repeat, the Executive Order besides specifying ‘honor’ killings, also speaks of ‘other forms of violence against women” as grounds for exclusion. This could cover forced veiling, Quranically-commanded-and-approved wife-beating, forced marriage, child ‘marriage’ and FGM (which is held to be obligatory, by the Shafiite school of Sharia law that predominates in, inter alia, Egypt, Somalia, Sudan, and… supposedly modern and moderate majority-Muslim Indonesia) .  And now, having shown us that honor murder comes into the west primarily as part of the “cultural baggage” of Muslims, with examples drawn from three families, ‘Palestinian’ Arab Muslim, Egyptian Muslim, and Iraqi Arab Muslim, Ms Chesler proceeds to ‘unpack’ why any society where women are pressured to wear either niqab or burqa, should be viewed as practising gender-based violence, and why, therefore, persons from that society should not be viewed as suitable additions to the American polity. –  CM

‘Wherever we find women in niqab (face-veiled) or wearing burqas, we must assume that they are living in families in which daughter- and wife-beating, as well as forced marriages, are normalized.

And that, by the way, would mean that if the Order, with its reference to gender-based violence, is followed to the letter, persons from Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, where the wearing of niqab or of the burqa is well-nigh universal, would have to be denied entry to the USA. – CM

‘Although the Quran does not mandate face or body veiling (it mandates only “modesty” for both men and women) (but for another viewpoint, on the truly sinister meaning of the Islamic female cover-up in all its forms including the seemingly innocuous “headscarf”, one may consult Daniel Greenfield’s article on the burkini,  “Free to Molest”, 

http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/263991/burkini-about-sexual-violence-against-women-daniel-greenfield

in which he ‘unpacks’ the real significance of the ‘veiling’ verse, Koran 33:59 – “O Prophet! Tell your wives and daughters and the women of the believers to draw their cloaks (veils) all over their bodies, that they may thus be distinguished, and not molested”.  It’s not about modesty… It’s about putting a “Do Not Rape” sign on Muslim women.  And putting a “Free to Molest” sign on non-Muslim women.…. The existence of these garments gives license to Muslim men to target non-Muslim women.  They allow Islamists to impose them as a standard by singling out women who don’t wear them. And they encourage Muslim men to carry out assaults on non-Muslim women who don’t comply with Islamic law..”.   Now, back to Ms Chesler. – CM

‘such families are more likely to follow a fundamentalist form of Islam (sic: traditional Islam – CM) and thus might be more susceptible to being radicalised against infidels and Western ways.

Translation: “Members of such families are more likely to Go Jihad.” – CM

‘I do not oppose head coverings – hats, caps, kippahs, wigs, a Catholic nun’s traditional headgear, etc – because one’s identity is not concealed, and the wearer is not trapped inside an ambulatory sensory-deprivation isolation chamber.

Ms Chesler’s description of the effect, on the wearer, of niqab (with abaya) or of burqa is deadly accurate. “An ambulatory sensory-deprivation chamber”.  She had to wear one, in her foolish youth, in Afghanistan, whither she had gone as the naive young wife of a charming and plausible upper-class Afghan Muslim man (whom she had met and married while both were at university in America) and from which she barely escaped with her life.  She knows. – CM

‘However, I fear that today, hijab (the Islamic headscarf) advertises one’s acceptance of Islamic supremacism, and women’s subordinate status.

Indeed it does. For a full discussion of the subject , see N. Maruani’s summary of the work of Iranian-French writer Chahdortt Djavann, in a classic article entitled “Outlaw the HIjab” that appeared in Jerusalem Post seven years ago.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/Outlaw-the-hijab

Maruani quotes Djavann – “The veil has never been innocent or innocuous.  It has always signified the submission of women to men and the denial of legal rights to women in Islamic countries…. The political, ideological and psychological impact of the veil goes far beyond its appearance… If this weren’t the case, why would the Islamists make it their main focus?… It constitutes a constant call to order by Islamic law.“

And – “the veil is the symbol, the flag, and the keystone of the Islamic system”.  Djavann, who experienced forced veiling as a young girl and woman in Iran after Khomeini came to power and reimposed the sharia, argues that the veil is “an attack on the woman’s body…. The act of burying the body of a woman under a piece of cloth is extremely serious, similar to genital mutilation.  Veiling a minor is abuse… There is a need for legistation to ban the veil, at least in schools..”.

‘Contrary to the recent Women’s March against President Trump in Washington, D.C., where non-Muslim women donned hijab, I view doing so as a form of appeasement, not as a sign of political resistance to racism or totalitarianism.

‘The same feminists who’ve betrayed Muslim feminists, dissidents, and gays who are fighting Islamist totalitarianism, are the very feminists who are proudly donning hijab and vowing to register as Muslims.

‘They are sadly misguided.

Understatement of the year… – CM

‘Anti-Islamist vetting and complying with Constitutional limitations will not be easy, but this Order is a necessary first step in that process.”