While it is possible that he was mistranslated, his reference to being sentanced to jail appears to make it clear that he is referring to non-consensual sex.

I live in Australia and am fairly sure he references a particularly vicious (comparatively speaking, I mean) gang rape that occurred in a Sydney public toilet (by, yes, Muslim men) that was in the news a little while ago.

There is massive public outcry, and outcry from the Muslims in that particular community and over Australia (his mosque is one that reaches the most of Australia’s Muslims), yet what I love is those who defend him: “he’s just an old man, leave him alone”.

I also love that in his eyes, and in many people’s eyes, women are such objects that they are, quite literally, meat, incapable of moving or controlling themselves. And yet, when society makes women vulnerable and makes them such objects, it’s still women’s fault if they are victimised.

I’d love to have his comments turned about on him: if this analogy follows (and it doesn’t, even forgetting the sheer hatred in that speech), then his fellows must be alley cats, mangy, irresponsible and vile.

Incidentally, he has also claimed to have been ‘misinterpreted’, just as the Pope was misinterpreted when he made inflammatory comments. It was right up until that comment that the Sheik insisted that these were an attack upon Islam, etc, etc - yet he is willing to say the opposite if it is for his own benefit.

Another interesting, though perhaps slightly tangential, read would be Rachel Biale’s Women & Jewish Law, which gives a really thorough treatment to the idea in Judaism that women are supposed to be that which circumscribes the wild and potentially uncontrollable force of male sexuality. If I remember correctly, there is also an interesting, but brief, comparison to the view of women’s sexuality in I-don’t-remember-which-sect of Christianity, where it is women’s sexuality that is perceived as wild, chaotic, etc. and it is male sexuality that is supposed to accomplish the circumscription. It would be interesting to add to these two a third book dealing with Islam, but I don’t know any off the top of my head.

If men can’t restrain themselves because women are so overpoweringly sexy, why don’t we have widespread daylight rapes on every block? Why do they wait for dark, pull a woman into a hiding place, and then run like heck?

Obviously men have discipline and self control, so they must be choosing not to exercise it when they choose to rape.

it looks like men in that culture feel that they are the dominate ones, but undeservedly tho, simply because they are stronger and can force their views on woman. Maybe if they would let the truly mature ones (both men and woman) run the country and maybe they can get somewhere.

So it is the woman’s responsiblity to control men. that is a new thought. I didn’t know men were that easily led. Maybe they need to take classes on self control and being human first. Then woman wouldn’t have to dress like walking tents.

And are men that afraid of woman they need to oppress them? I read that people who are afraid of something try to keep it suppressed as much as possible, so rather than showing their moral superiority over woman their idea of how woman should act shows they are afraid of woman.

Cowards.

RR

A biologist named Robert Sussman has written a book, Man the Hunted, which maintains that rather than fierce and manly hunters, we evolved as prey animals - lunch on two feet to leopards and the like. Sussman traces the “myth of man the killer” to the Judeo-Christian concept of original sin. I wonder if this same concept of original sin, as well as Eve the Temptress, lies behind the rape myths so many conservatives subscribe to. Even nonbelievers who cloak their misogyny behind evo-psychological rationalizations (”Darwin made me do it!”) ultimately derive this viewpoint from original sin and the myth of Eve, as we do live in a Christian-based culture in the US, much of Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Even if we’re nominally secular, the foundation of these cultures are Christian.

And if you carry the analogy even farther - I don’t think we could convince four other non-food-stealing tom cats to tell on the one cat (Caroline, one of ms_xeno’s former hm’s cats, did tell on the other cats for misbehaving, though.)

Fundamentalist religion of any kind is evil. It puts its followers at odds with both societal and scientific progress, whether it’’s a Muslim cleric saying that women who don’t wear a burqa or hijab ask to be raped, or Christians who want to ban the use of embryonic stem cells for research into curing degenerative diseases.

Their attitude is “I can’t help acting this way, so the world has to change to suit me!” It’s all about them, and you could replace women with any other group and rape with any other immoral act and they’d make the same arguments.

If men were automata, brainlessly responding to stimuli like a computer program, then Nick Archer and Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali would be right (do you touch a hot stove, knowing you’ll be burned?). But that kind of world is not the kind we live in, and would be entirely abominable if it was true.

What kind of spiritual vacuosity could produce such a low view of humanity? If we don’t assume that people can control their own actions, then law, philosophy, and all of society is pointless.

2) I’ve always felt the “desirable women as an ‘attractive nuisance’” theory of rape as implying men are too immature to be given responsibility. The “attractive nuisance” doctrine applies to things like putting fences around swimming pools, which form an irresistable temptation to young children not mature enough to be held responsible for their own actions. Thus, we make pool owners take precautions to ensure young children don’t trespass onto the pool owners’ property and drown in the swimming pool by calling swimming pools an “attractive nuisance.” It is easier to fence in the pool than the children…

However, this sets up an interesting paradox: The “foxy lady” defense implies that many men are too irresponsible and immature to control themselves around women. Doesn’t this imply that men are in general “too emotional” and “lacking in self-control” to be allowed any voice in running businesses, farms, countries, etc.? Shouldn’t we leave these things to the more mature, responsible female gender?

What it really boils down to, of course, is power and control. Societies allowing the “she tempted me” defense use rape against women in the same way the KKK used lynchings against blacks: it demonstrates the perp’s dominance and power while serving as a threat to the victim class to “not get uppity” and remain property. Terrorism, pure and simple.

oh wait. under that system of morality, this is the right of the men in the household, and even then the woman probably did something to deserve it.

have a nice day!