Yep, time has come to address this important issue of our time. Now is an appropriate time since on MRM subreddit there is also a topic on Islam at this very moment.

Now, I know that people like to dig up some shit they read in the news, about women getting acid thrown in their faces, about some women who got imprisoned for getting raped and what not, and claim that this proves oppression or enslavement. Most of these stories are usually taken out of context, or vastly exaggerated, or even if they are true, they are not the rule. There are crazy people everywhere, remember Jimmy Savile, Josef Fritzl, Elliot Rodger....

So, I will take a bird's eye view on Islamic countries, looking at statistics that are available online. I suppose that numbers cannot be too much off. The reason why I am taking bird's eye view is that if something is common it should be reflected in statistics. If women are routinely violated in Islamic countries, it should be reflected in data on homicide, suicide, life expectancy, and so on...

So, let's start:

  1. Violence against women:

I won't bother her with various polls claiming that 30%, or 40% or 50% of women experience DV. Those are known to be BS, whether they are done in the West or in the Middle East.

I will concentrate simply on homicides. If there is significantly more violence against women in Islamic countries, then there will be significantly more homicides of women. Pretty simple, right?

So, let's see here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homicide_statistics_by_gender

Well, I counted 28 Islamic countries where a woman is less likely to get murdered than in USA, and additional 7 countries where a woman is more likely to get murdered than in USA but less likely than in Russian Federation. There are 50 Muslim-majority countries, and some of these are sub-Saharan African shitholes where violence is extremely common and impacts overwhelmingly men.

So, I can't find any evidence of violence being exclusively directed towards women. Perhaps we should look at how often a woman gets murdered compared to a man.

Well, here's percentage of homicide victims who are female in some well-known Muslim countries:

Iran - 18%, KSA - 33%, Indonesia - 19%, Turkey - 20%, Morocco - 12%, Bangladesh - 36%, Egypt - 12%, Pakistan - 23%

And here are Western countries:

USA - 22%, UK- 29%, France - 37%, Germany- 47%, Russia - 24%, Canada - 30%

So, even in comparison to men, women aren't getting murdered more than in the West. Men in both the West and Islamic countries get murdered about 3 times as often as women do.

So, nope. I don't see any evidence of enslavement or oppression, or even of different treatment compared to the West. Men are the disposable sex, there as here.

  1. The Law

Is Sharia Law especially hard on women?

The simplest way to check this from bird's eye view is to check prison statistics, and what percentage of prisoners are women. Do women make a worryingly high percentage of prisoners in Islamic countries?

http://chartsbin.com/view/t5b

Iran - 3.5%, Saudi Arabia - 5.7%, Egypt - 3.7%, Algeria 1.1%...

USA - 8.8%, Sweden - 5.3%, France - 3.7%

If you look at the map, you will see that Islamic countries have on average lower percentage of female prisoners than Western countries, where pussy pass is pretty strong.

In other words, the arm of the Law strikes men about 20 times more often than it strikes women.

I can't see any evidence of Islamic law being especially hard on women. If it were really that bad, it should be reflected in prison statistics. It is not.

PS. As far as capital punishment goes, here's a typical year in Iran: "In 2012, 580 people were sentenced to death. 9 were women, 571 were men"

  1. Education

Only Mali, Yemen, Bangladesh and Turkey have more men than women enrolled in universities. (Source: World Economic Forum)

Speaks for itself.

If women were 2nd class citizens, enslaved and oppressed and generally of less worth than men, why should most of Islamic countries be spending more money educating women than men? Many of these countries are very poor. They don't have money to throw around.

No evidence of oppression, I'm afraid. Quite the contrary.

  1. Suicides

Surely, if women were degraded 2nd class citizens, it should be expected that they will value their own lives less than men, and therefore should be more prone to suicide, at least compared to their sisters in the West.

So, let's see male-female ratio in suicides in some Islamic countries:

Turkey - 2.68

Afghanistan - 3.52

Bahrain - 3.28

Saudi Arabia - 2.50

Iran - 1.45

UAE - 4.00

Azerbaijan - 4.82

Qatar - 6.08

Pakistan - 1.04

Tunisia - 1.63

As you can see, the numbers are all over the place, but generally men commit suicides around 2-3 times as often as women do. This is about the same ratio as in the West, maybe slightly smaller.

So, no evidence of oppression here. Quite the contrary. (Unless one thinks that men and women are equal only if men commit 5 times more suicides than women. If one thinks that, one deserves a bullet in the head)

  1. Politics

I haven't been able to find what percentage of parliament seats women hold on average in Islamic countries, but I have found some info:

Arab countries - 19%

Here are some Islamic non-Arab countries:

Iran - 6%, Pakistan - 21%, Bangladesh - 20%, Indonesia - 20%, Malaysia - 10%, Albania - 28%, Afghanistan - 28%.

Hmm.... so around 15-20%.

Now, what does this mean? Some will say that these numbers are too small, that they should be bigger, that women's voices are not represented enough in their parliaments, ....... Perhaps. But is this an evidence of oppression, enslavement, 2nd class status?

In USA, women make 19% of Congress. In 2000s, it was only 10%. In 1990s, it was only 5%. In 1980s, even less than 5%.

So, were women oppressed and enslaved in Reagan's America, when they made up smaller percentage of parliament seats than in most Islamic countries today? Less than in Iran and Saudi Arabia?

So, no evidence of oppression here, either. Perhaps slight disadvantage, but no evidence to cry "CHATTEL!"

  1. "But they have to conceal their faces! They are literally faceless!"

Full face cover is very rare in Islamic world. Google "Tehran girls" to see typical Islamic headdress.

And even if we are talking about the full face cover, why is that necessarily an evidence of oppression and enslavement?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNnWVu4SJb0

  1. "They have to pretend to respect women's rights because of UN, NGOs, USAID,...."

Well, they sure aren't pretending to respect gay rights.

.................

So, is this perfect and complete analysis of women's status in Islam? Of course not, but my point is that if women are treated significantly worse, if they are actual slaves, servants, 2nd class citizens, it should be reflected in the data. Numbers should be seriously off, compared to the West.

Maybe women deserve better in Islamic countries, but there is no evidence of enslavement, oppression, 2nd class status or of extreme shit that altrighters, "skeptics", atheists and other morons constantly go on about. Actually, most Islamic countries have better indicators than USA and UK had in 1980s, for example.