Women: Islamic? The Middle East Primer

Last year, Pakistan Today ran a satirical story about the very real Council on Islamic Ideology.

Said council is a group of bearded zealots who for some reason hold a certain amount of respect in some Pakistani circles, and who lobby for more Islamic influence in government. The story told how the council had ruled that women were “un-Islamic.” It took a while for readers internationally to realize it was a spoof (yours truly included), probably because such hair-brained rulings have been a staple of many extreme Islamic — and religious — bodies of late, so it did not seem particularly absurd.

The status of women in Islam is enormously complex, and endlessly debated. But why does it need to be so complicated? Well, look around. As of today, at least two major news stories are still unfolding which involve self-proclaimed Muslims perpetrating atrocities on women, who are utterly de-humanized: the Boko Haram abduction of girls in Nigeria in 2016, and the sickening selling of Yazidi girls and women into sexual slavery by ISIS in Iraq and Syria, which came to light recently.

In both cases Islamic militants have decided (and decisions have apparently been ratified by an “Imam” or religious leader), that it is legitimate to “use” non-Muslim women as sex slaves, and by…