Islamic Culture

From Right Wing News Post 7496

U.S. troops in Afghanistan are having a hard time understanding what is a strange Afghan cultural practice to them. The practice can be summed up in the ages old Afghan phrase, "women are for children, boys are for pleasure."

Yes, that phrase means what you think it means. It has been well known for a long time that some parts of Afghanistan have an odd sexual practice ensconced in its culture. Men have sex for pleasure with boys often eschewing women. Sometimes these men even claim to be disgusted by the idea of sex for pleasure with a woman. Yet none of these Afghani men think of themselves as homosexual because they don't "love" their male sex partners. They just love the sex.

This fact had become well known by Americans back in the 1980s when we were assisting the Mujahadeen to fight the Soviets. CIA operatives, social psychologists and cultural experts working with the government and Army personnel learned this strange habit long ago. But now that we are back in force in Afghanistan we are encountering this practice again and it is causing no end of confusion for U.S. forces -- especially medical personnel.

According to Fox News, American doctors are trying to teach Afghani men that they are getting sexually transmitted diseases from the anal sex they are having with each other. The docs are telling these men that they must stop the practice.

The problem is, though, that these Afghani men refuse to take the doctor's advice because they say it is their cultural practice. In fact, they say that the Koran tells them to do this.

The Fox report includes this statement by an Afghani that surely reflects his cultural bias on the issue. The report mentions that the U.S. medical personnel was trying to tell these men that sex with women will keep them from getting these diseases. The Fox News report said, "when it was explained to him what was necessary, he reacted with disgust and asked, 'How could one feel desire to be with a woman, who God has made unclean, when one could be with a man, who is clean? Surely this must be wrong.'"

So why do I peg this to a backwards Islamic practice? Because the problem here isn't just a weird interpretation of Islam isolated in one small corner of the earth it is Islam itself that is the problem.

Certainly we don't necessarily see this homosexual practice in every Islamic culture, though it does exist in larger numbers than one might think. But the root of the problem is wrapped up in what the Afghani man above said about women. "They are unclean," he told the U.S. doctors. This idea that women are “unclean” is ubiquitous throughout the religion.

This disgusting devaluing of women doesn't just happen in Afghanistan, though it seems to be especially virulent there. This devaluing of women is rampant throughout the Islamic world. Islam hates its women. Islam beats its women. Islam rapes its women. Islam murders its women. From every corner of the earth Islam is anti-female.

So, it is no surprise that in at least one Islamic culture even having sex with women makes Islamic men sick.

For Islam to come from the 13th century into the 21st Century it must learn to treat its women with respect.