Islamic Oppression of Women: A Hot New Market

by Giulio Meotti • December 28, 2017 at 5:00 am

Unfortunately, for most of women in the Middle East, veils are not an "exciting development", but an imposition by an obscurantist ideology. After the Islamic State was defeated in Raqqa, Syria, many women took to the streets to take off their veils and were filmed burning them.
"The enemies of freedom are first recruited from the free societies, from some of the enlightened elites who deny the benefit of democratic rights to the rest of humanity, even to their own compatriots, if they have the misfortune to belong to another religion, to another ethnicity." — Pascal Bruckner, author.
Instead of embracing these veils, a true feminism should defend the rights and freedoms of all women. It should not be ideologically submissive to those who repress women.

A model wearing a hijab and full-body covering walks the runway for the Anniesa Hasibuan collection at New York Fashion Week, February 14, 2017. (Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for Anniesa Hasibuan)

We are not talking about the dreary type of Muslim garment of Raqqa or Kabul, but a global market that is a Westernized, colorful, supposedly joyful Islamic enterprise.

First it was a Muslim woman wearing a hijab in Playboy. Then Nike released a "performance hijab" for athletes. Meanwhile, last spring, Aab, one of the world's leading Islamic clothing retailers, opened its first boutique in London, just in time for the annual London Fashion Week. Vogue Arabia published its first-ever print issue. Last month, Mattel unveiled, so to speak, the world's first hijab-wearing Barbie doll, who is apparently part of a new series dedicated to women "breaking social barriers".

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Pakistan: Blasphemy Laws, Human-Rights Abuses Deepen

by A. Z. Mohamed • December 28, 2017 at 4:30 am

The Pakistani parliament is becoming increasingly radicalized -- as the results of a local by-election in Lahore in September demonstrated.
In such a political climate, and with a new prime minister who refuses to criticize his country's blasphemy laws, let alone work to repeal them, Pakistan's already fragile "democracy" is on a steady slide backwards.

Pakistan's Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi addresses the UN General Assembly on September 21, 2017 (Image source: (United Nations/Cia Pak)

In late September -- less than three weeks after newly instated Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi attended the 72nd session of the UN General Assembly in New York -- two Christian boys employed as cleaners at a hospital in Pakistan were arrested for violating the country's blasphemy laws. According to the complaint lodged with police, the boys had swept up and burned strewn pieces of paper on which Quranic verses happened to be written.

At around the same time, a Pakistani court sentenced a Christian man to death for insulting the Islamic Prophet Muhammad in a poem he sent to a Muslim friend on the WhatsApp messaging service. This came two months after a young Muslim Pakistani was sentenced to death for "blasphemous" posts on Facebook.

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ISIS Takes Hold in Pakistan

by Kaswar Klasra • December 28, 2017 at 4:00 am

In February 2016, the director general of the Pakistani Intelligence Bureau warned the government that ISIS was emerging as a threat, with Pakistani terrorists providing a foothold for the group, whose Pakistani branch is called Walayat-e-Khurasan.
ISIS also enlists "partners of convenience" in Afghanistan and "outsources" terror attacks to Pakistani organizations -- such as Lashkar-i-Jhangvi and Jamaat-ul-Ahrar -- a recent UN Security Council counter-terrorism report revealed. In addition, as many as 100 Pakistanis left the country in 2015 to join ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
The most vulnerable victims of this threat are Christians, who make up a mere 2% of the Sunni Muslim-majority state. ISIS is only the latest terrorist group to have attacked Christians in Pakistan.

(Image source: Fox News video screenshot)

Concern over the extent of the presence and power of ISIS in Pakistan resurfaced on December 17, when a suicide-bombing at a church in Quetta left at least nine worshipers dead and more than 50 seriously wounded.

Had Pakistani security forces not responded swiftly to the attack on the Bethel Memorial Methodist Church -- where 400 men, women and children were attending Sunday services – the assailants "would have managed to reach the main hall of the building, and the death toll would have been much higher," Sarfraz Bugti, the provincial home minister of the Baluchistan province, where Quetta is located, told Gatestone Institute.

Responsibility for the attack -- in which two terrorists, clad in explosive vests and armed with AK-47 rifles -- was later claimed by ISIS, which has an impressive record of honesty in taking credit for attacks, in a statement published by the Amaq News Agency.

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