Islam and Women

I've read five books about Islam, Arabs and the Middle East and they all cite the mistreatment of women and the relegating them to the status of chattel as one of the prime failures of Muslim societies in the region. This piece by Pamela Bone illustrates how truly horrific the plight of women in these countries can be.

The Saudis, as the source of proliferation for Wahhabism throughout the world are no better than the Taliban. That by itself should be enough to distrust them. It's bad enough to be racist and bigoted toward religion, even toward other Muslims, but to deny half their population of even the slightest equality in this day and age just illustrates how backward and primitive they are:

[I]f there is ever going to be a peaceful world there are few things more important than lifting the status of women. The hatreds of bin Laden and his kind will not be assuaged; but in general, fundamentalism wanes as prosperity increases. And as a United Nations report notes, a large part of the reason so many countries in the Middle East are overpopulated, economic basket cases is the repression of women.