Women in Islamist Movements

[FascistLibertarian]

There is nothing, I suspect, that strikes deeper fear in this enemy's heart than the emancipation of women in their world. I suspect that our advantage is primarily in the battle of ideas, and that a really good grand strategy will do everything it can to make that the main battlefield.

But who should do the emancipatin? Should we go over there with force and tell them what to do? That causes all sorts of problems.
Egypt banned FGM on their own.
I think the issue of rights for minority groups will only improve. The issue is education not force.

The idea of having the advantage in the battle of ideas.
We had it during the cold war. Everyone could see we had the moral high ground.
We still do have the high ground I feel. A lot of people dont feel like me.

[Nat Wilcox]

I'm not culturally relativistic enough to regard what is basically chattel bondage of women in much of the world as simply somebody else's business, though I realize that we in the West have deep disagreements about these sorts of things in these postmodern times.

Force isn't working, and banning groups is counterproductive.

I would say that the issue is not so much education as aggressive, well-thought-out subversion. For instance, the Israeli childcare subsidy mentioned above almost certainly wasn't conceived as cultural subversion, but getting the women out of the house is going to have some consequences that the enemy really doesn't want to see. Economic empowerment and, in general, economic change are profoundly disruptive of social and cultural norms. We want that--lots of it. We want to think about how to make it happen without force, banning and so forth.

[SteveMetz]

I'm not culturally relativistic enough to regard what is basically chattel bondage of women in much of the world as simply somebody else's business, though I realize that we in the West have deep disagreements about these sorts of things in these postmodern times.

Force isn't working, and banning groups is counterproductive.

I would say that the issue is not so much education as aggressive, well-thought-out subversion. For instance, the Israeli childcare subsidy mentioned above almost certainly wasn't conceived as cultural subversion, but getting the women out of the house is going to have some consequences that the enemy really doesn't want to see. Economic empowerment and, in general, economic change are profoundly disruptive of social and cultural norms. We want that--lots of it. We want to think about how to make it happen without force, banning and so forth.

I agree with your thinking. I believe the major shortcoming of our current security strategy is that we've put so many things "off limits." And those are the very things that represent the solutions. This is just one example.

Others are ones that I've mentioned in here (and am weaving into the monograph I'm writing): control of visitors and immigrants from states which tolerate the ideology of Islamic extremism; aggressive measures against ISPs which host sites or transmit messages for violent Islamic extremists. Etc.

[Nat Wilcox]

am weaving into the monograph I'm writing

Steve, if you wish to cite (as an example) the research I was talking about, the paper is by Analia Schlosser, and you can get it here in manuscript:

http://pluto.huji.ac.il/~ani/PublicP..._Schlosser.pdf

[Tacitus]

I'm not culturally relativistic enough to regard what is basically chattel bondage of women in much of the world as simply somebody else's business, though I realize that we in the West have deep disagreements about these sorts of things in these postmodern times.

Force isn't working, and banning groups is counterproductive.

I would say that the issue is not so much education as aggressive, well-thought-out subversion. For instance, the Israeli childcare subsidy mentioned above almost certainly wasn't conceived as cultural subversion, but getting the women out of the house is going to have some consequences that the enemy really doesn't want to see. Economic empowerment and, in general, economic change are profoundly disruptive of social and cultural norms. We want that--lots of it. We want to think about how to make it happen without force, banning and so forth.

Nat: I don’t really know how you could emancipate women in the Middle East by force, anyway. Unlike our Civil War, where emancipation of those in bondage could occur through just walking off the plantation when a Northern army showed up, that just isn’t going to happen in the Middle East. They aren’t going to throw away the burka just because some Gis show up in town, if for no other reason than they have nowhere else to go. They have to live in their society, whether we are there chasing around terrorists or not.

The cultural subversion plan seems very interesting. Change the economic component of a society, and then you change the cultural norms. I just wonder if this can be imposed on a whole population. I am reminded of the Soviets in their efforts to create “The New Soviet Man.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Soviet_man

Just free mankind from his oppressed economic relationships with men who have the power to oppress him, and then you have a selfless man who will labor for the common good.

Are we making a similar assumption about Muslim women? Free them from their oppression at the hands of their male relatives, and we will see a more enlightened Muslim civilization, at peace with the world?

[Nat Wilcox]

"Soft as the earth is mankind, and both need to be altered
(intendant Caesars rose and left, slamming the door)."

--W. H. Auden, from In praise of limestone

I am not one of Auden's "intendent Caesars." Do not worry.

When I have read about the intellectual roots of radical Islam, it seems clear that it stems from a revulsion toward, and terror of, Western modernity on the part of what were essentially devout fundamentalists (of course, highly intellectual and very smart devout fundamentalists...I do not view this as a contradiction in terms).

If you look around the world over the last couple of centuries (but particularly in this century), once the balls of modernity, individualism, sexual liberation and consumerism have gotten rolling almost anywhere, they are very difficult balls to stop. Remember that the attempt to build socialist man was in large measure an attempt to stop (some of) those balls from rolling as well (individualism and consumerism in particular). It didn't work. I think this was also crystal clear to the intellectual forebears of the enemy.

They plan on building "Islamic man" just as devout communists tried to build "socialist man." They are not interested in an insipid, moderate version of Islamic man, any more than communists had any patience with insipid liberal welfare states. (I remember a chant at my left-wing alma mater: "2-4-6-8, smash the liberal welfare state.") I think the comparison is apt.

Islam is not some automatically totalizing ideology. In Afghanistan and Pakistan's Pushtun regions, Islam and Pushtunwali have been "at war" with one another as systems of cultural norms for something like four centuries. If a sort of "totalizing Islam" never even won any sort of complete cultural victory in and around the mountains of Tora Bora, I don't see why we treat it as some kind of totalizing, strong cultural system which is very tough, or that automatically shapes people's thoughts in some sort of totalizing manner. Our enemy is very tough, but the idea that your median muslim women can't discover quite easily through experience that it is swell to have money and be away from the house seems pretty weird to me. This is precisely what the enemy fears, and for good reason. I think the enemy basically admits this in their own writings. They are terrified.