Why Feminists Largely Ignore The Insane Misogyny In ISIS

NationalPost.com:

A year ago this week, time stopped for most of the million people living in Mosul, the second city of Iraq, when the Islamic State took control.

As one of the residents said, there was suddenly nowhere to go home to. Fear paralysed every move. American-trained Iraqi soldiers hid their uniforms and their gear while the rest of the people resigned themselves to their new status as prisoners. Their enemies had become their jailers.

They often call the invaders Daesh, an unflattering Arabic acronym for “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.” Overwhelming Mosul was the biggest Daesh victory so far and the worst loss of the U.S.-led alliance. It won’t soon be reversed: Washington’s most optimistic plans call for an offensive against Mosul sometime in 2016.

This week the BBC and other news services marked the anniversary of the conquest by releasing interviews with refugees from Mosul who have provided moving accounts of intimate life under Daesh. And Phyllis Chesler, a feminist psychologist and author in the U.S., has responded by lamenting the fact that Western feminists have offered no support to the women who are Daesh’s victims.

This is not a new theme for Chesler. A few years ago, in her book The Death of Feminism, she argued that feminism had abandoned women in Muslim-majority countries. Kate Millett said that Chesler was “sounding a warning to the West that it ignores to its peril.” But it was largely ignored.

Chesler now says, in a statement issued by the Middle East Forum, that feminists have lost their way. They need to rekindle their original passion for universal justice. Fifty years ago, they launched a campaign for freedom and equality. That inspired a revolution in the West and a fresh vision for girls and women everywhere.

But today feminists ignore the ISIL crimes against women. “An astounding public silence has prevailed,” Chesler says. “The National Organization for Women (NOW) apparently doesn’t think ISIL is a problem.” NOW’s upcoming annual conference doesn’t list ISIL or Boko Haram on its agenda. The most recent conference dedicated to women’s studies dealt with foreign policy but considered only Palestine.

Today’s feminists, she adds, are disproportionately focussed on Western imperialism, colonialism and capitalism while ignoring Islam’s long history of imperialism, colonialism, anti-black racism, slavery and forced conversion.

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