The problem with the "ladies"

Do you remember the famous saying by which began Martin Niemöller "First they came for the Jews...." The moral is that evil targets the weak and the vulnerable and works its way up the food chain. By safeguarding the rights of the weakest of us we safeguard all our rights. By humanizing the least of us we reaffirm what makes humanity precious.

This week there has been talk of banning women from praying near the Kaaba. I am not a believer, but I can see how religious women would become upset by this exclusion. The rationale was simple: there was overcrowding which was causing a public safety problem, and excluding women would ameliorate that issue. Note that the exclusion of women was not something sanctified by some explicit and conscious diminishment of women from their equality before god, rather, it was an offhand, almost banal, expression of the way that many Muslim men view women. It reminded me of a woman at my mosque as a child who complained that all the women were being moved to the basement for prayers. Why? Because the main prayer hall was overcrowded. It reminds me of a conversation that my aunt once had with my uncle, she joked offhand asking why men should always pray before women. My uncle, a religious man, explained that if women prayed before men in the hall then when they bent over and prostrated themselves they would expose themselves to men. That would be improper. My aunt responded, "Ah, but it's fine if we see your backsides all the time?" My uncle was so taken aback that he didn't respond. On another occassion my mother explained to some friends (non-Muslim) that purdah, the veiled and covered state you sometimes see Muslim women in (i.e., "black moving objects") is virtuous, because "only their husbands can see their beauty, it is for no one else." Her friends laughed and responded, "Ah, but women can always look through the veil to see the men!" This is a common joke.

My point with these anecdotes is to highlight the fundamental depth of the problem between men and women in much of the world, and in particular (though not exclusive to) the Islamic world. The problem is not the men just view women as things, rather, it is that they often also view them as nothings. Excluding women from prayer halls is expedient and convenient. Women cover themselves up so that they are "for His eyes only," but men walk about in relative freedom, their faces naked to the world, are they not comely as well? Ah, but the lust induced in women is nothing.