Islam, women, and misdirected blame

We’re fond of positing Islam as a religion hostile to women.

            Some of us take it a step or two further, pitching Islam and Muslim culture as an overarching  umbrella, under which crimes against women are uniquely suited to occur.

            I’m thankfully not the first to suggest that both points of view could benefit from a second  glance.

            I’m not the first to emphasize the stunning advances in women’s rights that the advent of Islam made possible, the right to own property, the right to divorce, and the banning of female infanticide notwithstanding.

            And I’m not, I hope, the last to argue that the misappropriation of Islam to legitimize misogynistic practices might have a thing or two in common with the perversion of secular entities that were intended to promote justice.
            I therefore have no qualms about mourning in the same breath the 14-year old Bengali rape-victim who was sentenced to death for adultery by a faux-Islamic court and the millions of American women who will suffer if the House of Representatives delivers on its promise to cut funding to Planned Parenthood and related health care centers, slamming everything from STI screenings to the treatment of breast cancer. 
         The majority of the world’s Muslims would no doubt agree with me in attesting that the abuse of women, whether by law or by so-called scripture, is disgustingly systemic.