Recently members of the Ukrainian-based, global feminist
group Femen staged protests across Europe calling for “topless jihad.” While American
feminists today are satisfied whipping up outrage about Mitt Romney’s binders
and Sandra Fluke’s right to bill taxpayers for her birth control, Femen’s Amazonian
warriors dive right in to do battle in a real War on Women being openly waged
by Muslim misogynists. Topless jihad – it puts a whole new spin on #MyJihad.
The protests in Sweden, Italy, Ukraine, Belgium, and France [here
are images from the demonstrations; warning – most contain nudity and/or
offensive language] were in solidarity with a gutsy young Tunisian activist
named Amina Tyler, who recently shocked Islamic sensibilities by posting naked
images of herself online, with the words “I own my body; it’s not the source of
anyone’s honor” penned on her bare chest.
The head of Tunisia’s Orwellian-titled Commission for the
Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice responded to this provocation as you
might expect from a violent totalitarian, calling for Tyler to be stoned to
death lest her obscene actions lead to an epidemic of Muslim women casting off
not just their burqas and blouses but their oppression as well.
The courageous response of Western feminist organizations? A
search of the National Organization for Women’s website for a statement about
Tyler from the preeminent feminist group turned up zero results. So it was left to her sisters at Femen to lead
the pushback with small but riotous demonstrations in which shouting young
women ran amuck in public wearing little else but grammatically awkward slogans
like “Bare breast against Islamism,” “There will be millions Amina’s,” “Arab
women against Islamism,” “No Sharia,” “F*** Islamism,” and the most common,
“F*** your morals.” Femen activists
even burned a Salafist flag in front of the Great Mosque of Paris. If
only Western feminists had half their bold determination to stand against
totalitarianism.
Make no mistake, Femen is not your mother’s feminism, all
political correctness and academic pontification. They aren’t even your
grandmother’s bra-burning feminism. Here
is their own description, imperfect English and all:
FEMEN is the name of the scandal
famous organization of topless women activists, who defend with their breast
sexual and social equality in the world. Activists of FEMEN are morally and
physically fit soldiers, who every day make civil actions of the high degree of
difficulty and provocativity.
FEMEN is the new Amazons, capable
to undermine the foundations of the patriarchal world by their intellect, sex,
agility, make disorder, bring neurosis and panic to the men's world…
FEMEN is a hot boobs, a cool head
and clean hands. Be FEMEN means to mobilize every cell of your body on a
relentless struggle against centuries of slavery of women!
FEMEN is an ideology of SEXTREMISM… of the women's sexual protest
presented by extreme topless campaigns of direct action… serving to protect
women's rights, democracy watchdogs attacking patriarchy, in all its forms: the
dictatorship, the church, the sex industry.
They don’t limit their protests to Islam. Like their
partners-in-spirit Pussy Riot, the Russian punk rock group, Femen activists
have targeted Christians too by disrupting the Pope’s sermon in St. Peter's
Square, attacking the Orthodox “Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia,” and cutting
down a crucifix in Kiev.
But attacking Christians is easy and even culturally
acceptable, as genocidal Muslims and Western leftists well know. Where Femen
really excels, displays impressive balls, and deserves serious respect, is in
their fearlessness toward Islamic fundamentalism – a fearlessness lacking in
emasculated Western authorities.
The
aforementioned piece in The Atlantic,
which was surprisingly supportive of Femen’s confrontation of Islam, reported
on a recent debate
between Femen leader Inna Shevchenko and Arab-American Muslim blogger Laila
Alawa, who claimed to be a feminist, about women, Islam, and the hijab. Shevchenko
stunned her opponent and the moderator by noting that the only reason Femen was
discussing Islam at all is the “blood, fear, and dead women’s bodies” to which
it has led. Even Alawa did not deny it. Femen's problem with Muslim headscarves,
Shevchenko said, centered on whether wearing them was voluntary:
It symbolizes blood and all the
crimes that are based on your religion, even if you don't support them... If
you’re a feminist, if you’re for liberation, then be brave [enough] to say that
we are against that and take off your scarf until the moment that your scarf will
not be a symbol of crime.
The moderator accused her of insensitivity and Alawa, rocked
on her heels, tried to defend her choice. Shevchenko urged Alawa to take off the
headscarf “until the moment when it will not be a symbol of the death of your
sisters.” Imagine an American “feminist” taking such a bold stance in the media.
“We demand human rights for all women, for Arab women and American women,”
Shevchenko told the Atlantic writer a
few days after the debate. “The idea of a Muslim feminist is oxymoronic.”
Femen’s in-your-face campaign in defense of Amina is in
stark, positive contrast with the West’s usual timid and hypocritical acquiescence
of the abuse of women under Islamic oppression. This is how human rights are
won and preserved – not by tolerance and “dialogue,” but by fighting for them.
(This article originally appeared here on FrontPage Mag, 5/10/13)
