Mondo Cane

Here is a story from the U.S. about a family of Liberians who have decided to disown their 8-year old daughter because she was gang-raped. I suppose it is better than being lashed and jailed for such an offense, or murdered as an "honour killing". Still, why should the health and safety of a member of your own family not trump the concern about what the neighbours think?

From Saudi Arabia comes this story of a Miss Beautiful Morals contest winner, a young lady shrouded from head to toe throughout the contest, the object of innumerable jokes on the Internet. Apparently, she was selected over the other 274 contestants because she articulated answers to conventional Arabian morality better than the others. I wonder if she also wished for "world peace" as the clincher.

Finally, we have this column from venerable Canadian journalist, Robert Fulford, commenting on honour killings and the lashing of women in, oh, let us say "more conservative" societies, and wondering why the voices of Western feminists are so silent. I think he found his answer from one of them.

But more typical is the feminist blog of Deborah Kate, who acknowledges that feminists have been accused of ignoring Muslim women. Kate comes out against stoning, enforced marriage, female circumcision, etc., and wonders idly whether countries guilty of crimes against women deserve sanctions like those levelled at South Africa in its apartheid days. No, she decides, exhibiting the fondness for fashionable moral relativism that is now epidemic in feminist circles, “I realize I cannot force my version of feminism upon non-Western women.”