The American founder of the world’s most popular online magazine for Muslim women says Pauline Hanson’s recent burka “stunt” is symptomatic of Western democracies trying to disempower Muslim women and “look at them in an inferior lens”.

A little background on Pauline Hanson’s “stunt”:

Senator Hanson shocked her colleagues when she entered Question Time wearing the religious garment…The One Nation Leader was calling for the burka to be banned in Australia. The incident ignited a debate about dress codes in Federal Parliament and whether Senator Hanson should have been allowed to wear the garment into the Chamber.

In answer to Amani Al-Khatahtbeh: the West is most certainly not trying to “disempower Muslim women.” Sharia disempowers Muslim women. In fact, concerned citizens of the West are trying to advance human rights and equality for all. Unfortunately however, those abuses that are routine across the Islamic world under Sharia have made their way onto Western soil. FGM has become a shockingly widespread practice despite Western laws, and in the UK, “white girls” are getting raped by racist Muslim rape gangs; mass rapes still occur in other locations throughout Europe, such as Sweden and in Germany. In addition, Western nations are even being compelled to undermine their own security through the forcing of the burqa.

A panel of global thinkers and writers gathered for last night’s Melbourne Writers Festival edition of Q&A, where a young high school student asked: “In some Islamic nations, women are often deprived of basic human rights such as driving a car, voting or even punished for exposing an ankle…In a world where women are often the guilty party to the crime of rape and must endure severe punishment, aren’t freedom and religion mutually exclusive?”

What was actually wrong with that young high school student’s question? Nothing, of course. It was perfectly logical and reasoned. But instead of getting an answer, she was hit with the frequently employed tactic of making her out to be the guilty party. Oh, the horrors of being deemed “Islamophobic.” This charge or implication is now a default response to anyone who questions any aspect of Islamic practice.

Food for thought in this article: “If Muslim men like the veil so much, let them wear it.”

“West ‘trying to disempower Muslim women'”, Australian Business Review, September 4, 2017: