Islam in America:
No battle too small not to be fought; no lies too outrageous not to be told.
“Equality and respect for everyone,
including women.”
Abraham Lincoln would not have believed Brenda Meneses for a minute. The chances are Henry Ward Beecher would have walked away scowling and Harriet Beecher Stowe would have jotted down a few lines for a sequel to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. John Brown would have cited it as one more reason to stop raising sheep and to take up arms. They would have heard this story before or something like it—from John C. Calhoun, from the overseer at Tara. The slaves were happy, contented, they had the best of all worlds.
A three-woman panel met at San Antonio College as part of a lecture series on Christianity and Islam. The object was to clear up some misconceptions about the role of women in Islam. Muslim women were not oppressed, that’s what the panelists told the kids. In fact, it was just the opposite—Islam teaches equality and respect for everyone, including women. Isn’t that what Ibrahim Hooper has been saying all these years? Or was it somebody else? Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Jimmy Carter? Robert Edgar? Someone.
One of the panelists was Brenda Meneses. People often confuse cultural behavior with actual theology she said. Christians in the Western World have a difficult time understanding this because they have a different idea about the role religion plays in their lives. Well, sure, that’s possible. There are many interpretations of the Bible. What do the suras say about the role of women in Islam?
Tabari IX:113 “Treat women well for they are like domestic animals and they possess nothing in themselves.”
Bukhari V3B48N826 “The Prophet said, ‘Isn’t the witness
of a women equal to half of that of a man?’ The woman said, ‘Yes.’ He said,
“This is because of the deficiency of a woman’s mind.”
Someone should have asked Brenda if she was familiar with the separate-but-equal clause of the US Constitution. Maybe the panel meant virtual equality not actual equality, a chimera glimpsed from afar; you will get your reward in Heaven; slavery is a positive good; what else is there for domestic animals and those with deficient minds other than lifting bales and toting barges? The slave master in the antebellum South insisted that slavery benefited both races. Rhett got his cotton planted, Scarlet her ball gowns, the cotton mills their cotton and the slaves were introduced to civilization and their souls were saved.
James H. Hammond, the Senator from South Carolina, was not one to mince words. When he addressed the US Senate on March 4, 1858, he laid bare the soul of the South. “In all social systems,” he said, “there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life. That is, a class requiring but a low order of intellect and but little skill. It’s requisites are vigor, docility, fidelity. Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement. It constitutes the very mudsill of society and of political government; and you might as well attempt to build a house in the air, as to build either the one or the other, except on this mudsill. Fortunately for the South, she found a race adapted to that purpose to her hand. A race inferior to her own.”
Hmm…a class to do the menial duties…a low order of intellect…such a class it must have…fortunately it found a sex adapted to that purpose to hand…a sex inferior to their own…they are like domestic animals…the deficiency of a woman’s mind…
Hammond continued: “Our slaves are black, of another and inferior race. The status in which we have placed them is an elevation. They are elevated from the condition in which God first created them, by being made our slaves. None of that race on the whole face of the globe can be compared with the slaves of the South. They are happy, content, unaspiring, and utterly incapable, from intellectual weakness, ever to give us any trouble by their aspirations.” (He must have forgotten Nat Turner)
Had the Master of Silver Bluff referenced the Qur’an while writing his speech? Perhaps.
Hmm…an inferior sex…elevated from the condition in which first created… (Tabari I:280 “’I must also make Eve stupid, although I created her intelligent.’ Because Allah afflicted Eve, all of the women of this world menstruate and are stupid.”)…happy, content…utterly incapable from intellectual weakness…never to give us trouble…
Muslim women are unlike Western women says Meneses. Religion is integrated into every aspect of their lives. It affects how they dress, how they conduct their politics. Of course there are some disparities, some dislocations, some abominations—honor killings, female circumcisions, beatings—but Islam has pushed woman’s rights sooner and more significantly than Christianity.
Wow! That would be news to Gloria Steinem and the woman’s rights movement. Perhaps they should pay more attention to what is going on in the Muslim world. With the feminist movement supposedly dead in the water, they could pick up a few pointers from people like Brenda Meneses. Is she available? One would not want to impose but if Ms. Meneses could take a few minutes off from her studies and researches and the even more formidable task of enlightening the students at San Antonio College and help the underprivileged mass of American women, especially those stuck under the glass ceiling, with her vast store of knowledge it would be greatly appreciated.
No problem at all. Brenda is available. She has plenty of time. She is an administrative assistant to the Reverend Doctor David L. Semrad, director of the San Antonio United Methodist Campus Ministry. Really? Is that true? That’s what the Ministry says. She answers the telephone, welcomes visitors and arranges meals for Bible Study groups. She should have plenty of time.
Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Is it to be understood that Ms Meneses is not an expert on Islam but is a receptionist? There is no PH d tacked on the end of her name? No Doctor of Philosophy? No Doctor of Divinity? No endorsement from Robert Edgar or Ibrahim Hooper? Yes, that is correct.
Well, for Heavens sakes, what is a scarcely educated dhimmi woman doing trumpeting the wonders of Islam in a sanctioned lecture series on an American college campus to kids who are probably only a paragraph behind her in Indoctrination to Islam 101? It’s a good question—have we sunk that low in our spineless surrender to Islam?
When Opie Taylor was ten-years-old Sheriff Andy took him to see Rin-tin-tin, only it wasn’t Rin-tin-tin, it was Rin-tin-tin’s double and when Opie found out, he was disgusted. “What a gyp!” he said. Nonetheless, Opie got more for his money—it only cost a dime—than the students who attend lectures at San Antonio College get for their thousands.
Islam is on the march in the United States and no battle is too small not to be fought and no lies too outrageous not to be told.