* Iran: Lawmakers reject proposal to allow men to marry additional wives without first wife’s consent

Ahmadinejad’s Great Leap Backward for women

According to this report, Ahmadinejad’s recent move to cancel Iranian women’s legal right to object to or even know about their husbands’ plans to marry additional wives is part of a much larger (albeit unsurprising) agenda to further restrict women’s rights under Sharia law. Meanwhile, apologists are likely preparing the standard boilerplate: Islam elevates women, Sharia liberates them, and any time a measure comes under criticism from the West, it is to be branded as “cultural,” not Islamic.

Funny how those same “cultural” flaws keep cropping up in association with Islamic law and tradition, though. Like communism, no one is apparently ever implementing Sharia “right,” and that’s why countries under its yoke are dysfunctional, corrupt, and largely impoverished outside the ruling class. But hey, let’s try it in your country, and this time it’ll be different. Honest.

“Ahmadinejad’s New Enemy: Women,” by Amir Taheri for the New York Post, September 6 (thanks to JCB):

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* But not to worry: its only a ‘tiny minority of extremists’, so tiny, you can hardly see them. (They only come walking up to you when you arrive in Jakarta airport and investigate you with sticks..)

* Another gem: “far less than 1 percent of the population subscribes to extremist, global jihadist views”- okay then, people: take your shoes and socks off and go back to sleep!

See: jihad is all about peaceful inner struggle!

Indonesia: Gambling That Tolerance Will Trump Fear

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