It is important to note that the precise details circumstances surrounding the case of Tori Towey and her treatment in Dubai are not entirely clear and may never be agreed between the parties involved. Yet, most Irish people following the case have probably by now divined the general picture of what occurred, and hopefully drawn some important conclusions about what her story tells us about the rights of women in Dubai.
The treatment of women in the Islamic world is not, generally, a topic that excites mainstream western media for several reasons, the most important of which is that no self-respecting commentator would ever wish to engage in what might be called cultural imperialism – that is to say promoting the idea that western values are inherently superior to the values of the Islamic world.
Clare Daly, renowned leftist though she might be, was not above donning the headwear pictured above when she went to talk turkey about the Great American Satan and Western Imperialism with the Iranian-funded militia in Iraq: When in the Islamic world, you obey their commands as a woman, even about how to dress. Presumably Daly’s own views about the rights of women to choose their own clothing, and the other choices she thinks they should be able to make, didn’t come up in the meeting.
This is one of the inherent contradictions of progressivism in the west: The Muslim world is largely exempt from it, and not just inside its own territory. Acres of newsprint has been devoted, in recent years, to the mass-child-rape scandal (for some reason generally called a “grooming” scandal) in Rochdale in England, where the official verdict of the investigators is that the very progressive policing and political establishment was wary about pointing the finger at certain “cultures” even while adherents to that culture were creating a factory-line of young girls to be shared around like sex toys.
Domestic violence, for example, is not a crime across much of the Islamic world because Islam as widely interpreted in the Islamic world permits a husband to “chastise” his wife and minor children. Spousal rape, similarly, is rarely prosecuted because of the Islamic belief that submitting to a husband’s desires is a wifely duty. Rape outside of marriage often results in women being accused of illicit sex, and prosecuted as if they had willingly partaken in their ordeal. Even in Islamic countries where such practices are formally condemned, most research indicates that local Islamic customs tend to outweigh formal legal rights for women where these matters are concerned. In Rochdale, some of those involved in the child rape scandal were not even first generation immigrants: They had been born and grown up in the UK, but adhered to the cultural values of their ethnic and religious origin anyway, when it came to women and sex.
In the west, in recent years, female genital mutilation is often talked about, but in an entirely culturally neutral way as if it was a blight that had simply fallen out of the sky. I mention this because in Dubai, where Tori Towey will hopefully remain for not very much longer, some 34% of women report having undergone the procedure, which – when done properly – entirely eliminates a woman’s ability ever to orgasm for the rest of her life, lest sexual desire drive her to lust for men other than the husband to whom she is to provide a dutiful, if numb, service.
Incidents of this barbarity in the west align temporally, one might note, with the increased migration here from the Islamic world, and from the parts of Africa that also practice it.
The point is this: For women, there is an objective and obvious difference between the culture of the western world and the culture of the Islamic world. You are safer, legally, in the west. When it comes to the treatment of women, western culture is simply superior.
Of course, a great many people in the world, being wrong, simply do not see it that way. And we should not expect them to begin seeing it that way simply because they have migrated from the part of the world where their cultural values are dominant to the part of the world where our cultural values are dominant. The recorded numbers of “honour killings” in the UK, for example, would seem to confirm that.
Indeed, in a way, the Tori Towey story demonstrates that cultural incompatibility fundamentally in another way: She, it seems reasonably clear, did not resign herself to living forever in a culture with values entirely alien to her own and simply accepting that she would live by its rules. Having experienced that culture at its worst, she now wants to come home, and it is a credit to the Irish Government that they have moved so swiftly to assist her.
Yet, at some point, this is a question that the west will have to answer here at home, if not in the Muslim world itself: Are we tolerant of “diversity” on the issue of the rights of women, or are we cultural imperialists about it, at least within our own territory?
In recent years, French politicians have at least wrestled with this, proposing, for example, a ban on Burkha wearing in France on the grounds that the religious repression of women should not be permitted within French territory. The Dutch banned it, also.
In Ireland, an estimated 10,000 women have undergone female genital mutilation, yet only a handful of prosecutions have been filed. We do not know how many women in Ireland are living under – functionally if not officially – the same kinds of Islamic rules about domestic violence, spousal rape, and so on – that Tori Towey found herself living under in Dubai. Yet we can be reasonably certain that that number is not “zero”.
But that leaves us with a fundamental question: If the values of the Muslim world, when it comes to women, are utterly repugnant to us when applied to an Irish woman in Dubai, are they equally as repugnant when applied to Muslim women in Ireland?
The answer is that they should be, and must be. Because on this issue, our culture is simply superior.