Not sexist to attack Yassmin. How could a gender advisor think it?
There are ways to defend sharia advocate Yassmin Abdel-Magied, but this is not it: "Julie McKay, gender adviser to the chief of the defence force, believes the criticism of Abdel-Magied is motivated by sexism. "We saw a telling example of what happens to women who stand up for gender equality...,' Ms McKay wrote."
There are ways to defend sharia advocate and ABC host Yassmin Abdel-Magied.
But surely this is not it:
Julie McKay, gender adviser to the chief of the defence force and partner at PwC, believes the criticism of Abdel-Magied is motivated by sexism. "We saw a telling example of what happens to women who stand up for gender equality...,' Ms McKay wrote.
How Orwellian.
Abdel-Magied was not standing up for gender equality, but sharia law. The two are actually incompatible, in the opinion of many students of Islam.
Yet what set of principles is less safe for women than sharia? As a moral and legal code, sharia law is among the most dehumanising, demeaning and degrading for women ever devised by man:
• Under sharia law, a woman’s testimony is worth half of a man’s testimony in court (Koran 2:282).
• Under sharia law, men are the “guardians” of women; women are to be obedient to men, and husbands may beat their wives for disobedience (Koran 4:34).
• Under sharia law, a woman may not refuse sexual access to her husband unless she is medically incapable or menstruating, a teaching based partly on Allah himself saying in the Koran, “Your women are a tillage for you; so come unto your tillage as you wish” (Koran 2:223)
• Under sharia law, a woman inherits less than a man, generally half as much, again based on holy writ: “Allah enjoins you concerning your children: the male shall have the equal of the portion of two females” (Koran 4.11, 4.12)...
• Under sharia law, a man may unilaterally divorce his wife through talaq, whereas women are limited to divorce either under specific circumstances, such as the husband’s impotence, or with the husband’s consent and payment of a certain amount of money (khul).
• Sharia law permits fathers to contract binding marriages for their children so long as they are minors; and although a boy married against his wishes may exercise his power to divorce his wife unilaterally once he matures, a girl’s exit from such an unwanted marriage is much more difficult.
• Under sharia law, the custody of children is generally granted to fathers, and mothers lose custody if they remarry because their attention is supposed to go to their new husbands.
• Although majority-Muslim countries have in practice abolished slavery (Saudi Arabia did so mainly as a result of foreign pressure in 1962), slavery still has not been abolished in sharia law. Sexual slavery was common in Islamic history and is accepted by sharia law.
But even if you somehow believe in the laughable idea that sharia law does promote gender equality, it would still be false to claim that the criticism of Adbel-Magied was a "telling example of what happens to women who stand up for gender equality".
Her critics in fact uniformly criticised her in the believe that she had not stood up for gender equality at all, but had betrayed it.
Hirsi Ali's article is just one example of that. Here is another, this from Miranda Devine:
Being a tolerant society does not mean we have to defend intolerant attitudes of sharia, particularly the inequality of women...
Abdel Magied argued that women are treated well in Islam. This may be the case in Brisbane, where she lives, but the idea of trying to argue this about Islam in general is nonsense... In Iran, discrimination against women is entrenched in the law...
If this is a fair example of McKay's understanding of gender issues, why is she advising the chief of the defence force?
