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Why liberals don’t object to misogynist Muslims
Here, for anyone who is interested, are some further tentative thoughts on the puzzling question of why liberals and feminists don’t object to the mass immigration of misogynist Muslims. Let us start with the idea that liberals simply apply the “script” of oppressor/oppressed to each situation to suit their purposes. Thus liberals view the Muslim’s mistreatment of women as his “culture,” which must be protected from Western oppression; indeed, the very fact of a Westerner objecting to the Muslim treatment of women is an instance of such oppression. At the same time, any failure by a Westerner to follow some minute feminist protocol is seen as an instance of oppression that confirms the guiltiness and hatefulness of our whole society and the need to remake it from top to bottom. Further, liberals are not concerned about the Muslim immigrant’s anti-woman behavior because he has nothing to do with them, he’s in his own community, his mores do not affect those of the mainstream society. (It doesn’t occur to the liberals that the mores of Muslims will eventually affect the mainstream society, but that is different matter.) To put it another way, the liberals seek to create an equal world. Bringing Muslims into the West breaks down the exclusiveness of the West and helps advance an equal world. The actual sex oppression within the Muslim culture does not concern the liberals, because Muslim culture seems foreign, weak, and marginal, it is not an obstacle to the construction of an equal world. The inequality that concerns liberals, because it does stand in the way of an equal world, is that of the West. Liberals’ differential treatment of Muslim oppression and Western supposed oppression is itself a consequence of the liberal replacement of the belief in right and wrong by the belief in oppressor and oppressed. A Western man’s anti-feminist or anti-immigrant attitudes are associated with the largest power in the world, the power of the white West. Therefore such attitudes are dangerous and must be attacked. But the cruel power exercised by Pakistanis over their women is NOT associated in the liberal mind with any “larger power.” Therefore it doesn’t matter. Underlying this is the dirty secret of liberals, their condescension toward non-Western peoples. Liberals at bottom do not take nonwhites and non-Westerners seriously as human beings; they see them as objects upon which the liberals can practice (or rather conscicuously display) their good intentions. To sum up, the liberals are not concerned about the actual inequality practiced by Muslim culture because (1) the inequality of the West is the inequality that matters and is the one that must be destroyed; (2) to take note of the inequality within Muslim culture would simply be to strengthen the exclusiveness and power of the Western culture that thrives by putting down Third-Worlders; and (3) to the extent that the liberals do take note of the Muslim inequality, it is not a threat to the liberals in any case, since it only affects Muslims, and Muslims don’t count as human subjects in their own right. What it’s all about is the liberals’ display of their own virtue through their commitment to equality.
The above analysis is just one of many that are possible. But the closer we stay to the idea of the liberal belief in equality, the better handle we have on the incredible behavior of liberals. Email entry |