But I suspect that the outcry would be greater if those feeling the slam of the fundamentalist fist were of some other group. So we're perhaps more sensitized to the abomination when it appears in one of those contexts. It certainly does not protest as it would if, say, all of the Christians or Jews or professors of a region were suddenly placed under house arrest. A man I know once argued that my objections to the treatment of women under fundamentalist Islamic rule were ethnocentric and rather smug. This is their religion, their culture, he insisted.
Most women there approve.
If they didn't, they could overthrow their so-called oppressors. Sure, I said. Without money, barred from driving, without a voice in the courts, responsible for the care of children, and unable to leave their homes, I guess if they really wanted to, they could wallop those Taliban fighters. Maybe their burqas would deflect the bullets. Just as the Jews of Europe could have commandeered the trains.