Italy: Women pay the price for open borders, but everyone suffers.

Italy: Women pay the price for open borders, but everyone suffers.

By | 2023-03-09T00:43:32-04:00 March 9th, 2023|Islam, Op-Eds|0 Comments

Although these days we rarely hear the major news outlets reporting on the status of Middle Eastern illegals crossing the Mediterranean Sea into Italy and other western countries, there are yet continual arrivals of illegitimate and overcrowded boats, which negatively impact the host nations. While the major media concentrate daily on the critical news regarding the events of US, Russia, China and Ukraine, border crossing violations are consistently underway.

For years, high-profile Islamic terrorism plagued the world, driven and financed through a larger geo-political agenda. Today, Islamic migrants still flow into coastline towns and move in to crowd the margins of major cities. Due to this, there is widespread homelessness, vandalism, squatters’ rights, and theft — disrupting and endangering the neighborhoods of welcoming countries. Women become especially vulnerable to street attacks, such as rape, robbery, and kidnapping.  

The origin of crimes against women can best be explained by way of Egypt where Islamic dogma penetrates the hearts and minds of male followers through religious directives (edicts) and mandates. Physical and psychological harm comes to females victimized by self-appointed men policing Coptic and Muslim women according to each edict. As recorded by the office of the House of Fatwas in Cairo, 60 percent of all violent crimes against women around the world are caused by the fulfillment of Islamic edicts (fatwas).   

This barbaric mentality transfers to other cultures once Muslim men migrate to the West from areas of the Middle East. Western women are then subject to unsafe streets with the same real dangers faced by their Middle Eastern Coptic and Muslim counterparts.   

In Egypt, the edicts co-exist within the mainstream and once heard are acted upon by men looking to set the record straight on behalf of Islam, their religion. This leads to abuse of all types, including rape and murder — all with the excuse of following and protecting Islam and keeping the faith intact. This is a normalized expectation in Islamic culture and is culturally accepted in silence. In both the court of law and the court of public opinion this behavior remains unspoken and becomes the underlying premise of injustice. This system restricts freedom and serves as a control mechanism.  

For example, it works in the following way. Just recently, Sheik Mabrouk Attia, the former dean of Islamic and Arabic Studies and faculty member of Al Ahzar Institute, used his position to stir up unnecessary controversy on a national TV broadcast when he excused the Mansura tragedy (northeast of Cairo) where a college student killed his female colleague due to her rejection of his marriage proposal.

The professor said, “It is better for women and girls to wear a veil to live, for when wearing loose and wide clothing women do not become passionate.” His blame game addressing women continued, “Your life is precious to you, so when you leave home, dress like a basket and do not wear two pieces of clothing or pants nor have hair on your cheeks.If you don’t follow my advice, you instigate the man who will humiliate, attack, and kill you.” In truth, it is the sheik who instigates with his statement.

His public statement of gender supremacy gives license to men to harass and violate women who do not follow the letter of the Islamic law. Although Coptic women are not subject to Islamic law per se, they will nevertheless walk in the streets with real fear of strangers, because chances are they will be attacked as a result of such edicts.

For the Muslim woman, danger is not only in the public sphere but also behind the walls of her own home dealing with abuse from family members spurred on by the spontaneous dictates of religious authoritarians of the professional class. These are then carried out by the lower classes — less educated and impoverished followers, the men who also leave in illegal boats — in a type of thug warfare.     

Although a certain attempt was made recently by an enlightened female member of the Egyptian parliament just one year ago to enact legislation that would penalize (jail up to 5 years) husbands who beat their wives, it was rejected. It merely served to reveal that the culture is not ready for gender equality, nor for justice in the courts. No wife would dare attempt to bring a case against her husband in court. Modern day Egypt has doubled down on remaining primitive. Such mentality will continue to travel across the sea with the migrant to a new land. Of course, it is inexcusable in any land.  

An Arabic journalist, Mahmood Mustafa, reported on Nov 20, 2019, that the Global Fatwa Index (GFI) within the Egyptian House of Fatwa revealed that 22 percent of all fatwas made up to that time around the world pertained to instructing women and mandating penalties for infringements. Out of the 22 percent of fatwas (edicts), 60 percent of them are related to aggression against women and girls around the world.

At the same time, GFI stated that “given this high percentage of fatwas against women, Muslim countries are negatively affected by these fatwas. It went on to stress that “It is not possible to achieve goals of sustainable development for any country without putting an end to physical and moral violence against women.” And yet to this moment, its own house continues to issue and codify such fatwas.  

On The International Day for the Elimination of All Forms of Violence against Women, celebrated annually on November 25th, the GFI elaborates on the intentions of the issued fatwas along with the subsequent House of Fatwa endorsements. “The fatwas received globally revolve around two elements: The first is material, which harms the female whether by beating, harassing, raping, burning, killing, etc. The second is moral, which is through exerting all psychological pressures on women to control their thoughts and eliminate their personalities.”

The GFI offered the solution paraphrased here: Raise awareness of women’s rights and combat violence against them. Raise awareness of their psychological, social, and economic rights. Urge non-violence and promote kindness toward women.

However, the GFI has abdicated its role. It never goes within its own house to stop its own endorsements of such fatwas. Who is to do so if not the pre-eminent House of Fatwa? With its power and authority to negate and expunge retroactively past fatwas utilized for violent purposes and block and forbid any new Fatwas against women’s rights this institution never even hints at doing so.

Islam’s highest authority has been clear that physical and mental abuse of women is synonymous with religious expression. The two are inseparable, and there is no top-down instruction to the contrary. When a host nation offers religious freedom to every individual on its soil it will be faced with this chilling paradox.

Most migrants are males. As such, the task remains for the citizenry of western nations to deal with this mindset and survive the country’s division on what to do about immigration. The ideology of the Left and its current policy makers promotes open borders. In the recent Italian election, the conservatives of Italy voted for controlled ports. The current prime minister ran on this campaign promise. The people are still waiting for the fulfillment of this election promise.