I just don’t understand why you are saying such silly things. I would have thought that accurate statements that address your questions and correct your statements would be valued by someone who is interested in Truth. If you’re not interested in these sort of answers and comments, then please say so, so that I know not to waste time responding to your slightly strange and unusually aggressively defensive comments.

Eddie - It looks like the pie is in your eyes. Do us all a favor and take a shower, you look ridiculous.

– I disagree. The scale may be different but the ideologies are mirror images of one another.

Thanks for qualifying that. The wearing of the hijab and jibab are pre-Islamic cultural traditions that seem to have originally been to a response to geography/climate, etc., which then ‘morphed’ into fashion and then ‘morphed’ into religious symbolism (both for pre-Islamic paganism and Saudi Arabian Islam) and then ‘morphed’ into a crypto-theological Saudi Arabian legalism (with all the baggage, half-forgotten, from these previous reasons). I think this is on the way to an answer to your question that ‘remained’. As to keeping women ‘hidden’, that is certainly a ‘development’ (so to speak) that went hand-in-hand with the puritanical legalism associated with men’s and women’s dress-codes. (The Qur’anic passages cited by Saudi jurists to justify the dress-code and limitations on movement of women in fact literally sit side-by-side in the Qur’an. Some of these crazies even look to the Hebrew Bible for supplementary justification!) Anyway, it’s clear that we can’t be talking here about ‘Islam everywhere and always’ - indeed, in part, we’re not even talking about Islam at all, but rather a long pre-Islamic Saudi Arabian tradition that was subsequently mixed with Saudi Arabian Islam and then still later a particular stream of Saudi Arabian Islamic jurisprudence. Ill-conceived simplifications and hopelessly vague generalisations about “Islamic history” - and even about “Saudi behaviour” (as if there were an ahistorical ‘type’ to it) - helps no-one a jot and makes you look like an amateur pie-thrower to boot.

I hope this information helps you craft more accurate and insightful comments in the future. Kind Regards.

A memorial day for all victims of state terrorism? That would be a sight. And a lot of pride would have to be swallowed before an honest reckoning could occur. Where to start?

To their credit, the Turkish government is making noises that show recognition of the atrocities committed against the Armenians. A friend of mine who recently travelled through Rwanda spoke of the memorials to the genocide there and the pride with which the locals showed foreigners the signs of progress since that dark time. There is much to commemorate in South Africa. The horrors of the gulag archipelago must be remembered. Pinochet’s victims would qualify, if we could recover their names. And perhaps we’ll see a truth and reconciliation commission in Timur soon.

I was reading a text a few weeks back dealing with global issues. There is a little anecdote about the Vietnam memorial wall in the US. If a similar wall were erected in honour of all of the children who died prematurely from preventable diseases then that wall would span the equator, or something along those lines. I imagine a memorial for the 20th century’s victims of state terror would be visible from space.

While we ne doubt disagree on what Israeli behaviour we’re talking about- well said, Antony.

Errr … I believe there are places in the world with not inconsiderable Muslim populations and their own long Islamic histories where there is NO ‘tradition’ (in any meaningful sense of the word) of “keeping women covered and hidden their entire lives”. I’m thinking of the world’s largest Muslim nation of course: Indonesia.

How about we keep our culturally specific Middle Eastern traditions in the Middle East, rather than illegitimately generalising them to “Islamic history” as if it were some kind of homogeneous blob. After all, accuracy (not sloppy generalisations) helps your case insofar as people won’t write you off as just another ignoramus.