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Maybe the feminist angle is not what most right wingers really hate about Islam, but for me at least it is the main thing. I’m somewhat of a western chauvinist and one of the important ways the west is culturally superior is in how we treat our women. Islam’s treatment of women is barbaric and disgusting in and of itself because women are human beings, but it’s also disgusting to me because of how alien it is to my culture. I’m a basic women-are-people equality feminist (a right wing position these days I’m afraid). Maybe I’m not the modal right winger (I’m not that right wing), but while there could be some people from whom the feminist anti Islam line is bad faith, I assure you that it is a real motivating concern for some of us.
Then I congratulate you sincerely on being principled on this matter. However I still believe that this war is not being prosecuted on women's behalf, and whether or not the women of Iran will be better or worse off is a highly uncertain question. It would not be the first time America's regime-change efforts in the middle east resulted in an even more backwards/regressive Islamic rule.
I would mostly agree. This war is over nukes, terrorism, old grudges and regional power. I do think some Iran hawks are hawks for cultural reasons though. At the object level we are jockeying to make Iran less powerful and more compliant, but how we got there is importantly related to their barbaric culture. Part of why a powerful Iran seems like such a bad thing to me is that I don’t want to live in a world where a culture like theirs can project power.
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Yeah, that's a big element for me as well, plus the weird double standard; western rurals/conservatives having slightly-old-fashioned views about women and gays that they can't really enforce = disgusting bigots, but downright medieval attitudes enshrined in law and actual gay-bashing from slightly browner people is a-okay.
I actually find some Christian conservatives pretty off putting because of their views on women as well, however, I’m way more comfortable with them than with Muslims because Christianity is a much bigger tent and as far as I can tell the most distasteful Christian attitudes come from weird low church Christians who as far as I can tell are wrong about their religion. Meanwhile, I’ve read the Quran cover to cover and as far as I can tell ISIS is just mostly right about how to interpret their religion. Of course western Muslims lie to themselves and others about how bad it is (they translate “jihad” to “struggle” when translating the Quran which is obvious dishonesty because “jihad” is a word in English too), but the theological grounding for extremism is so strong in Islam that you can’t trust that a population of moderate Muslims won’t swing to extremism at some later date. The Middle East was way more chill about their religion 200 years ago, but the Quran says what it says, and it’s the revealed word of god.
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While we're inching closer every day, I don't think there's a major constituency for bombing Alabama yet.
Did you ask in Auburn?
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