The area where I live has in recent years gotten a very large muslim population. Sadly integration into the society has, for a number of reasons been slow (depending on who you ask it's anything from a government conspiracy to the group not wanting to join society at large.) The way that groups of these men treat women on the street (I am one) is...very hard to put up with. They follow women, screaming whore, grabbing themselves, making lewd suggestions or even stopping their cars and offering money for sex, or just sex. If in line, they will often push past women, I've been spit on for asserting that I was in front of the line, I've had friends with similar stories. I have read the koran serveral times, and I think I have a general understanding of the religion and can find no basis for such treatment in the book. THese groups of men, obviously have a very different view of how to treat women, and as I understand from friends who come from the region treatment such as I describe above is common for women who are not dressed modestly, the muslim view of modesty for women being much more extreme than that of the western world. THey have left their homes, and come to mine so to say, yet expect me, a nonmuslimwoman, to treat them with the same 'respect' and behave in the same way that women in their country did.

I am a firm believer in that people have the absolute right to say whatever they wish, however, my question. At what point does this privilege end. How should I, (in this groups view) respond to this type of behavoir? I have many muslim friends (men among them) and they wouldn't dream of treating anyone in the way I describe, so this is in no way a post of 'muslim men are awful' ..as it so often is, it's the few awful ones that fuck it up for the larger group. Sadly for this particular group, there is a rather shocking concentration of bad ones around the area I live, and my view has been rather effected by the treatment that I, and my female friends regularly receive.

After the IKEA photo scandal of removing all women from it's catalog in saudi arabia I thought about the clash of cultures some more. How should one approach that idea, that women are lesser (property in some cases), how women should act and dress and interact with men, without it going over to 'women are greater' also keeping in mind that whatever people choose to believe..is their choice. ..can it be done?