The build-up to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan brought images of burqa- and abaya-clad women to the American TV screen. Suddenly, Muslim women were at the centre of political debate in a country where people have little knowledge about Islam, and Muslim culture remains largely represented by stereotypes such as Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. The Bush Administration used real accounts of the subjugation of Muslim women by the Taliban as instruments of war propaganda meant to justify their expansionist military agenda under the dubious and supposedly noble guise of "liberating" Afghan women.

Few in the Muslim world, least of all women, are strangers to the debilitating cost that these wars have imposed on the struggles of Muslim women. Indeed, these wars have done much to set Muslim women's struggles for equality back hundreds of years. What Muslim woman will arrange rallies and protests for women's rights when her house is being bombed and her husband or brother being carried away by US forces?

Despite this, there are people in the American neo-conservative camp who would like to paint themselves as the "great friends and allies" of Muslim women. One of them is Christina Hoff Sommers, a researcher at the neo-conservative think tank The American Enterprise Institute. In a recent essay dramatically titled "The Subjection of Islamic Women And The Fecklessness of US Feminism", Ms. Sommers takes on the task of telling Muslim women that their real friends are not on the war-opposing American Left, but on the family-loving, morality upholding American Right.

Glossing over the fact that she shares office space with increasingly vocal supporters of "regime change" in Iran, supporters of torture of the prisoners in Guantanamo, and the very architects of the invasion of Iraq, Sommers sets out to convince Muslim women (which she incorrectly and condescendingly refers to as "Islamic" women) that it is in fact not her camp, but rather feminists on the American Left who must be chastised for their pre-occupation with flighty concerns, while Muslim women like Pakistani Minister Zille Huma are paying with their lives in their struggle for women's equality.

Sommers strategy is simple. Harnessing the reality that Muslim women in countries like Pakistan and Iran are unlikely to sympathise with relatively trivial concerns of Western feminists such as focusing on issues like excessive dieting and plastic surgery, she tries to attract them to the fold of the American Right.

Feminists on the Western Left, Sommers argues, are unconcerned with the plight of their sisters in these foreign countries and uninterested in upholding family values or religious faith - all of which are so important to Muslim women. She capitalises on the dubious reputation of the concept of "feminism" in the Muslim world and, fully aware of the imperialist allusions that accompany the term in post-colonial societies like Pakistan, praises Muslim women for "not waiting for Western feminists to come to their rescue". Generously patting Muslim women on the back by praising reform initiatives like those headed by the American Society for Muslim Advancement, Sommers imagines her new friends, Muslim women, to be some sort of hapless fools desperately hungry for a few lines of glowing admiration in an American periodical.

And indeed, it is a few lines. For all her sly argumentation and the title of her essay, Sommers spends pathetically little time either quoting Muslim women or the writings of women activists from countries like Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq etc. Only one Muslim woman's writings (Fatima Mernissi) are quoted in the essay, and Sommers fails to provide even a single quote from women's rights activists actually working in the Muslim world. The bulk of her essay is devoted to a deconstruction of feminists on the Western Left. Indeed, for all her concern about "Islamic" women, Sommers does not seem to consider them worthy enough to actually incorporate their perspective in any significant way into the debate. Their voices are relegated to the margins of the essay, engaged with only when they support Sommers' own agenda against Western feminists on the American Left.

It is in this last fact that the biggest caution must be asserted. Arguments like Sommers follow the condescending strategy that na�ve Muslim women, beguiled by all the flattery, will suddenly forget the tragedies unleashed on them by the devastating wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the oppressive tactics of the war against terror.

Her argument erroneously assumes that Muslim women have singular identities interested only in gender equality and unaffected by the ravages of war and persecution. A Pakistani or Iranian woman, struggling for gender equality and against religious extremism, would never support an invasion of her country by neo-conservatives who use "women's liberation" as an excuse to invade other countries. The fact that the neo-conservative project has imposed this choice on Muslim women - one in which they must either accept the risk of having their struggles for justice and equality be used as war propaganda or remain silent about their suffering - has been a major setback to the cause of women's rights in the Muslim world. Indeed, any debate on the issue is incomplete without addressing it.

Ultimately, "The Subjection of Islamic Women" is yet another illustration of the American Right's tendency to use Islam and Muslim women in an argument that has little to do with them. It is obvious, given the time she spends criticising them, that Sommers has serious political misgivings against those on the American Left. Dragging Muslim women into this fight on the back of the premise that Western feminists have not done enough for them seems little more than a ruse to strengthen her own agenda against the American Left.

It's far easier to use the plight of certain Muslim women to avoid dealing with one's own problems- i.e. differences of opinion over the progress of American feminism. It's also easier to blame Islam and Muslim men for all Muslim women's problems than to take a good hard look at what makes many Muslim women's lives harder- poverty. For middle-class and wealthier women, religiously justified sexism does figure large in their plight- but these women aren't in Afghanistan or Iraq, for the most part. For the women in the countries recently attacked, the lack of rice is just as central to their woes as the lack of rights.

One way of targeting a culture for destruction is to aim for the woman of that culture. The obsession with Muslim woman I believe is a cynical colonial ploy to disrupt local family structures. I read an article yesterday that many female Iraqi refugees in Syria have to resort to prostitution to survive after losing everything in Iraq. Is this the "liberation" these evil policy makers intend? Woman and children suffer the most from war. May God(if there is one) make those who have brought so much misery on so many people, suffer.

The sad reality is that most Muslims are looking the other way or have become apathetic to the oppression and subjegation of women under the guise of Islam.

..and the men buying Iraqi womens' sexual services are most likely Muslim Syrians...surely we cannot overlook the moral corruption that creates a demand for thier services. Apparently, charity is in short suppy in Syria.

>..and the men buying Iraqi womens' sexual services are most likely Muslim Syrians...surely we cannot overlook the moral corruption that creates a demand for thier services. Apparently, charity is in short suppy in Syria.<

Don't manipulate the misery of others. According to the article, roughly half of the clients are rich Saudis, but this in no way reduces the responsibility of the Anglo-American terrorists who invaded the country and created the conditions which forced so many woman into their present circumstances.

News flash! Rich Gulfies have been getting sex from disadvantaged Muslim women for years, even centuries if you count the sexual slavery known as concubinage. But, since the blame for that can't be pinned on "The West" (tm), then self-hating Westerners don't want to know about it or care about it...just stand in the way of Muslims who want to put and end to the demand side. Demand will always be there and it has always found sources of supply. Reverse the invasion of Iraq does NOT reverse the supply of Muslim women being herded into sexual servitude. To you, this sounds like just a self-hating Westerner's talking point against the invasion rather than any concern for Muslim women!

You are being very manipulative, OmarG. Prostitution has been around since the dawn of civilization, I never disputed its presence anywhere. As much as an evil practice as it is, those who created the conditions which have lead so many woman into it are responsible. If not for the Anglo-American war of terror, all those woman would never have made the exodus out of Iraq and be forced to make a living through prostitution.
What is this nonsense about "self-hating westerner"? Are you going to call me a non-Muslim communist again? I thought you said you would refrain from personal attacks and debate the arguments. Seems like you have reneged on that. It doesn't matter, I understand colonial mentality very well. You can murder with a suit on and it's still brutality.