3 very wrong things in this picture

1. A last resort before divorce? How do you EVER resort to physical abuse, and why in the actual #$%@ is it seen as a better option than divorce?? (were it not seen that way, divorce would probably be the place to go first).

2. "her husband has a higher status than her" <--short quote, yet still perfectly in context. Religiously motivated inequality, because somebody was born a different gender. Unbelievable. 

3. All of the moderate Muslims in the world should be extremely vocal about this. THEY should be the first to condemn this crap, not us heathens.

All moderate Muslims (and, for that matter, Christians and Jews whence someone who claims to follow your god in some sense does things this offensive) YOU are enabling them. We get offended when someone uses any religion as an excuse to commit atrocities. All too often, when you see such things, Christians may get offended at Islam for justifying terrorism, or Orthodox Jews for the disgusting practice of oral suction during infant circumcision. But when an evangelical Christian says you should lock all homosexuals into a large pen, you simply disagree. Should that not offend you the most, since they are citing YOUR saviour as the reason for their hate? If I believed in blasphemy as an actual concept, that would be the most offensive form it could take. Let's hate people of different sexual orientations in the name of Jesus. Let's transmit herpes to infants in the name of Yahweh. Let's kill in the name of Allah. 

But this never happens. The closest you get is Christians (I'd assume among the group) counter-protesting the Westboro Baptist Church, but it's typically part of a diverse group, and they never stand out individually.  But I've not once heard a single person utter something like "How DARE you use our saviour as an excuse for you to persecute gays?" or "How DARE you say that Allah sent you to murder innocent people just because they have not heard the word?". I've not heard this once.  Instead, they always go into defensive mode. They're figuratively standing in the correct spot: dead centre between the atheists, and the religious extremists. However, they are facing the wrong direction. They're saying to us "now now, hold on Atheists, they don't speak for us! They don't represent us!" Instead, they should be condemning those that give their faith a bad name, in which case, we are standing right behind them as backup to drive that level of filth out of this world. 

Because the moderates don't have much leg to stand on, if you take their holy texts as a whole and without crazy hoop-jumping rationalizations of the horrible laws and rules in them.

Come on guys, you are not being fair to them. We all know girls and women are mere vagina clown cars and if they don't obey men, they deserve what they get.

YES! There's little that makes me cringe more listening to debates than hearing very stupid (or smart but deliberately dishonest) apologists saying crap like "You say Christianity is not true, but you want our morals. You can't do that! You should be getting your morality from Darwinism!" or something equally dumb. If I can ever be bothered, I want to compile a list of every bible verse that has anything to do with the creation (or modification) of species, just to be able to say "the theory of evolution only disproves this miniscule percentage of your book."...of course I'll probably add that the majority is easily disputed in other ways. 

For sure. My biggest problem with any moderate religious person (other than wondering how they deal with the level of mental calisthenics required to compartmentalize everything effectively) is exactly what I said; their reluctance to speak out against extremeists who cite their god as their reason for causing others harm. I've never really seen anybody be pressed on this in any major sense. 

"That's not Islam. He is an extremist!"

"Well...the Qu'ran permits and even suggests it..."

"He's interpreting it wrong!"

"Then gather the moderates to tell him!"

What comes next? I somehow don't think they would be too eager (and the same goes for any other religion)

Rule 1. Always suspect a Jewish source.

Rule 2. Always suspect an Israeli source.

Rule 3. Always suspect sympathizers with Jews and Israel.

That said, who is Abd Al-Rahman? What exactly with quotes including the context does the Koran say?

MEMRI is operates out of the US run by ex-Mossad types. It specializes in MIS-translating the most obscure sources to put Islam in the worst possible light. That they are ex-Mossad makes them Israelis. I have not come across information if they are dual loyalty types also. For the record, dual citizenship is dual loyalty by definition.

So why do people give crap like this a wider audience?

Anyone wanting to attack me, please preface the attack with the answers to my two questions.

One of the rules you pick up in looking at history is making sense of its laws. Why particular laws? Related is why there were condemnations of particular things? It is common (you may argue its validity) to say the past was like the present. When there are laws and public complaints and indeed preaching then there is a real or perceived current problem.

We then note the more preaching there is on keeping women in their place the more they are getting out of their place. You can go through all of European history and not find much of anything on the place of women until the late 19th c. when political rights and getting out of the home into the workplace got started. If this article is credible and the author is an acknowledge authority speaking from a major mosque then it likely good news for women.

Egyptian vigilantes act to stop attacks on women

Kareem Fahim 

Published: November 7, 2012 - 3:00AM

CAIRO: The young activists lingered on the streets around Tahrir Square, scrutinising the crowds of holiday revellers. Suddenly, they charged, pushing people aside and chasing down a young man. As the captive thrashed to get away, the activists pounded his shoulders, flipped him and spray-painted a message on his back: ''I'm a harasser.''

Egypt's streets have long been a perilous place for women, who are frequently heckled, grabbed, threatened and violated while police look the other way. Now, during the country's tumultuous transition from authoritarian rule, more groups are emerging to make protecting women a cause.

''They're now doing the undoable?'' a police officer joked as he watched the vigilantes chase down the young man. The officer quickly went back to sipping his tea.

The attacks on women, a problem Egypt has long wrestled with, did not subside after the uprising. If anything, they became more visible as even the military was implicated in the assaults, stripping female protesters, threatening others with violence and subjecting activists to virginity tests. During holidays, when people take to the streets to stroll and socialise, the attacks multiply.

During the recent Eid al-Adha holiday, some men were surprised to find they were no longer able to harass with impunity, a change brought about not just out of concern for women's rights but out of a frustration that the post-revolutionary government still, like the one before, was doing too little to protect its citizens.

At least three citizens groups patrolled busy sections of central Cairo during the recent holiday. The groups' members, men and women, shared the conviction that the authorities would not act against harassment unless the problem was forced into the public debate.

Egypt's new President, Mohammed Mursi, has presided over two holidays and many activists say there is no sign that the government is paying closer attention to the problem. However, the work by the citizens groups may be having an effect. Last week, after the Eid al-Adha holiday, Mr Mursi's spokesman announced the government had received more than 1000 reports of harassment and said that the President had directed the Interior Ministry to investigate the complaints.

This is part of a story that ran in SMH and in the NYT. An argument that sexism and sexual harassment is not endemic in Egypt would need some strong support. Of course, no one is going to argue that middle eastern monotheists of all stripes (and their global sycophants), don't have a whole lot of trouble finding the understandably razor thin line between theology and gynaecology. But, at least there's some push back in Egypt now. I can't help thinking that all religion has to do to guarantee it's own irrelevance and collapse is continue to abuse women and children.