The REAL Arab Spring Meets Honor Killing

“Part of the Palestinian identity is to kill women, to beat women…”
Oy vey! Racism! Islamophobia! No. These are the words of Yusuf Jabareen, an Israeli Arab ” title=”Palestinian Media Watch” target=”_blank”>Palestinian Media Watch. Other than the somewhat more poetic style, it resembles American discourse about, say, greed in American culture, or in Israel about orthodox religious influence: Pluralistic, emotionally heated, and ambitious enough to push cultural and religious buttons. You got to admit that it’s impressive to see Arab female lawyers and activists lash out at the conservatives for behavior that is so clearly associated with Islam. THIS I can call Arab spring!

Palestinian society shows – and not for the first time, that it’s more progressive and mature than most Muslim societies around the world. Even more significantly, the direction this debate is pointing to: Towards women’s rights, liberalization and exclusion of religious factors from the judicial culture, is counter to the direction so many Muslim societies are heading in – that of radicalization, religiosity and submission to indoctrination. One may argue that the Arab Spring (the old school one) shows the opposite. I would argue that religion, specifically the religion of Islam and even more specifically the brand of Islam promoted by the Muslim Brotherhood – largely the soul winner in these spring games so far – is contradictory to the values I listed above, therefore cannot bring any good in that area.

A story on Israeli financial daily The Marker yesterday (sorry – Hebrew only) reports about the