“Why don’t feminists fight for Muslim women,” asked the courageous champion of women’s rights, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a few years ago. Hirsi Alis’s word ring just as true today, and as the situation is in Norway today, those who fight for equality whitewash Islam and help normalize the oppression of women in the Muslim religious community.
One of the funniest scenes in Woody Allen’s film “Bananas” is when he tells his psychologist about his childhood and relationship with his parents. Allen’s character, Fielding Mellish, describes it best:
– I had a good relationship with my parents. They very rarely h-… I think they hit me once, actually, in my whole childhood. They, they, uh, started beating me on 23 December 1942 and stopped beating me in the late Spring of ’44.
In American slang, Mellish tried Churching it up – by portraying childhood as something better and nicer than it was. There is uncertainty about the phrase’s origin, but some say it relates to the idea that the Church is the place to go if you want to hear the truth or learn something positive.
Islamo-leftists in Norway, as an Ex-Muslim of Norway, described them – are constantly Churching up Islam, but in their world, it is Mosque it Up.
The latest survey from the Institute for Church, Religion, and Philosophy Research (Kifo), is just another example of liberal Norway whitewashing Islam by declaring that more Muslims than Christians want equality in the home. As many as nine out of ten agreed that partners should share responsibility for housework and child-rearing equally.
The survey made headlines in liberal media. However, after contacting Kifo for a copy of the poll, we were informed there was no published data on their findings.
They don’t scold their wives anymore
Linda Noor, the managing director of the minority political think tank Minotenk, says she has observed significant changes since she started getting involved in Muslim communities and believes that nothing in Islam conflicts with equality. For example, 15 years ago, Muslim men in Norway could talk in all seriousness about scolding their wives, which she claims is entirely taboo today.
Of course, it should be totally taboo. But if Muslim men allegedly do not chastise their wives at home, they do so in public – and what we see – clashes with what Norwegians associate with equality between women and men.
We don’t have to go far back in time.
Muslim feminists want female imams, wrote Kilden at the Research Council of Norway in February. The debate started on 12 March 2020, when the government closed down our society, including mosques.
The Islamic Council of Norway published a prayer guidance poster on Facebook to guide Norwegian Muslims to perform communal prayer at home. However, there were many angry and tearful faces when several people found the advice discriminatory against women.
Among those who reacted were several Muslim women. Others believed the guidance was “like taken out of a textbook on patriarchy,” according to an article in Vårt Land.
Guidance from the Islamic Council (Could they make the women more microscopic?)
Islamic Council of Norway guidance
Three years later, Muslim women want to become imams, a discussion that has been going on for a long time, according to Kilden. Knowing Islam, it will probably go on for many years to come.
In an anonymous comment on Ex-Muslims of Norway, the person writes that they reacted to the fact that some Norwegians were surprised by IRN’s advice as they have now had Islam for almost 50 years in the country and have helped minimize criticism of Islam:
“The Islamic Council did not know how ignorant some of these Western Islamophiles are about Islam and the status of women in Islam.”
It is troubling that the ex-Muslim must be anonymous, but the Islamophiles in Norway don’t care about that – in the world’s most equal and democratic country. For them, the ex-Muslims are like annoying mosquitoes that should disappear forever—a bit like us reporters at Document.
– We stand together, said Jan Tore Sanner
“We stand together,” said Integration Minister Jan Tore Sanner to Norwegian Muslims during the Friday prayer in Oslo’s largest Mosque, Central Jamaat-e Ahl-e Sunnat, in Grønland, Oslo.
Politicians Sanner, Pia Farstad von Hall, and Eirik Lae Solberg were there in connection with the terrorist attack in New Zealand that claimed 50 lives.
They showed sympathy for the victims, their relatives – and their fellow believers in Oslo, the Norwegian News Agency (NTB) wrote at the time. As practice dictates, there is a separate prayer room for women in the Mosque; we learn in a byline from left-wing NTB.
However, von Hall, a member of her party’s Woman’s Forum, took part in the main room reserved for men. The politician was wearing a head scarf in respect.
The sympathy and solidarity did not apply to the Muslim women in the Mosque, so no, Sanner, you did not stand together or stand up for the oppressed women. Not even you, Pia Farstad von Hall. Shameful.
As the Muslims bow in prayer, the Islamophiles bow before them.
Screenshot, Our Oslo.
As the ex-Muslim writes, they minimize criticism of Islam. In addition, they glorify the ideology by publishing surveys that do not mirror reality. If it is true that nine out of ten Muslims believe there should be equality in the home, then it is positive for Muslim women. But something does not add up, and we see with our naked eyes that many Muslim women in Norway are treated as second-class citizens by their men.
– We are tired of cleaning and cooking
Only three years ago, there was a women’s uprising in the Somali Mosque in Grønland, a borough in Oslo heavily populated by immigrants: “We are tired of cleaning and cooking,” read the headline in Aftenposten.
On this Saturday in August 2020, several tried to enter an extraordinary annual meeting at the Tawfiiq Islamic Center, where a new board was to be elected in which the women were not allowed to participate. When they arrived at the Mosque, the women’s entrance was locked, and the guards did not let them enter through the main door.
The woman Aftenposten spoke to did not want to use her full name for fear of the consequences of coming forward. Imagine that! After reading the story, it is a scandal that the Tawfiiq Islamic Center is still in operation. The women’s uprising is not the only problem at the Mosque.
But it is not just the Grønland mosque that excludes their women. In 2019, a survey by NRK showed that Norwegian mosques receive nearly 170 million in state aid, while over 70 percent do not have a single woman on the board.
In 134 Muslim religious communities with 140,303 members, 96 mosques had no women on the board.
In 64 Christian denominations outside the Norwegian Church, with 133,440 members, 123 out of 140 board members are women.
Almost 85 percent. But the left wants us to believe that more Muslims than Christians want equality in the home.
In the Christian newspaper Vårt Land’s publication about the survey, there’s a photo of Arshad Jamil, Hamad Iqbal, and Ahmed Daud from the Islamic Cultural Center Alna mosque (ICC). They discuss the findings from the survey after Friday prayers.
However, the Mosque they are members of does not practice equality. The photo of the Islamic Cultural Center Grønland from an article in Aftenposten during the lock-down is proof:
“Between 800 and 1,200 people are present in the ICC in Greenland during the Friday prayer. Tomorrow it will be empty here.”
Finding a woman in the picture is like looking for Waldo.
Screenshot: Aftenposten
ICC Norway’s website also gives us an insight into equality between men and women in the Muslim religious community. Muslim women must wear the hijab to show their obedience to the Prophet and their husbands. Polygamy is legal, but only when the state allows it, and in Norway, it is prohibited (so far).
A young girl cannot be forced into marriage against her will, but the parents traditionally present the young person with a possible partner.
And so it goes.
“Why don’t feminists fight for Muslim women,” asked the courageous champion of women’s rights, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a few years ago.
Feminists in Norway and the rest of the Islamophiles on the left would benefit from hearing Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s brave words. As the situation is in the Scandinavian country today, they all help normalize the oppression of women in the Muslim religious community.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Why Don’t Feminists Fight for Muslim Women?
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