An excerpt from, "Islam's War on Women - 8 Miles from the White House" By Patrick Poole, PJ Media, April 12, 2012:
A book by a senior Indian Islamic scholar that recently prompted international outrage for directing Muslim husbands on how to properly beat and control their wives is on sale at the largest Islamic bookstore in the Washington D.C. area, just a twenty minute drive from the White House, all while the Obama campaign proclaims that Republicans are waging a “war on women” by promoting pro-life, pro-family policies, and as DCCC media strategist Hilary Rosen continues to attack Ann Romney for her decision to stay at home and raise her five sons.
The book in question is “A Gift For the Muslim Couple” by Ashraf Ali Thanvi that directs a Muslim husband “it might be necessary to restrain her [wife] with strength or even threaten her,” adding that he may scold his wife, “beat by hand or stick,” withhold money from her or “pull (her) by the ears,” but should “refrain from beating her excessively.”
Thanvi’s book was recently in the news when the Toronto Sun discovered the book being sold at a prominent Islamic bookstore in Toronto, prompting criticism from all corners of Canadian politics and society. The story was picked up elsewhere by the international press.
An excerpt from, "Islam's War on Women's Education" By Dr. Radhasyam Brahmachari, Islam Watch, March 9, 2011:
While Muslim women generally lag behind in education everywhere, they are also violently prevented from undertaking education where Islamists gain power, such as in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
As per the Quran, hadith and sira, Taliban are the truest followers of Islam; hence their deeds reflect the purest form of Islam. A press report on March 6, 2011 said: “Taliban militants blew up a state-run girls' school in north-west Pakistan today, though there were no casualties in the attack. The militants blew up the girls' primary school at Kalo Banda Shawa in Swabi district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province with explosives laid around the building, sources said. The Taliban, who are opposed to the education of girls, have destroyed hundreds of schools in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province and the adjoining tribal belt over the past three years.” As Taliban represent the purest form of Islam, one should conclude that the pure Islam is against educating its women.
. . . Schoolgirls in Pakistan face daily threats for attending schools. Pakistan is currently in crisis, because many parts of this nation are out of control, and central forces can do little to stem the tide of Islamic hatred. Given this reality, the Taliban and other radical Muslim organizations have warned young girls from obtaining education. This policy is not related to the government of Pakistan, but the government must be held accountable for not protecting female students and female teachers. Instead this barbaric policy is being introduced by radical Sunni Islamic forces who desire to rule by fear. Attacks which began to increase in 2009 have continued in 2010 and schools have been bombed by pro-Taliban forces.
An excerpt from, "Why calling for an ‘Islamic Reformation’ is lazy and historically illiterate" By Theo Hobson, The Spectator, February 5, 2015:
So the ‘Islam needs its reformation’ line makes this mistake. It supposes that Christianity and Islam are two comparable forms of religion: if Religion A adapted to modernity, Religion B can too. But Religion A didn’t adapt to modernity: it inadvertently made modernity, by trying to be more purely itself.
The game-changing idea that emerged in the wake of the Protestant Reformation can be summed up thus: down with theo-cracy! (Maybe I’m a soppy liberal patriot, but it seems to me that this breakthrough was 90 per cent English.) Let the state no longer enforce religious uniformity, but rather protect people’s freedom to choose how to worship. This revolution in theo-politics was proposed not by atheists but by idealistic Protestants. God wills this new sort of liberty-protecting state, said people like John Milton and John Locke. (Nonbelievers like Spinoza and Voltaire followed in their wake and have received undue credit.)
Why did they think that political liberty was God’s will? They had learned from earlier Protestants like Luther to distrust bossy institutions and religious rules; they now applied this to politics as well as religion. And they pointed to the New Testament, which affirms no theocratic model of politics (unlike the Old Testament, with its holy kings). The whole tradition of coercion in religion is wrong, is at odds with scripture, they said. For example, John Locke, in his ‘Letter Concerning Toleration’, claimed that toleration is ‘the principal mark of the true church’.
