Monday, March 8, 2010

Foggy Fogh-Rasmussen

Today is the UN's International Women's Day and Anders Fogh-Rasmussen, the former Danish P.M. who currently heads up NATO, thinks he knows why "violence" and a paucity of women's rights often go hand-in-hand:
...Many of the world's longest and deadliest conflicts - in Congo, Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, and elsewhere - occur in regions where women's rights are often infringed. As the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has recently written, "[C]ountries that marginalize women often end up unstable.
If this is true, then the empowerment of women in unstable countries benefits not only them, but all of us. It is, to my mind, a crucial component of a comprehensive approach to the security challenges of the 21st century. During this International Women's Day, we should remember that allowing all women to exercise their full rights is not only an obvious moral imperative. It may have far-reaching geopolitical consequences as well...
Indeed. It would have been helpful, however, had Fogh-Rasmussen dispelled some of the fog (instead of adding to it) by pointing out that three of the four "violent" countries he listed are violent and dismissive of women rights due to the "moral imperative" of sharia law.

I think a better way of marking International Women's Day is to read this account of a speech given last month by Ayaan Ali Hirsi, a women who knows all about what it's like to live under sharia, a law designed specifically to keep women in their (lowly) place.

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