Sheikh Hilali, Rape, Women, Men and Responsibility Last week an imam in Australia, during his sermon, compared women to a piece of meat. If you leave the meat uncovered, he said, don't blame the cat for eating it. In other words, if women are going around without "proper" clothing, then don't blame men for ogling, fondling or even rape!

Yeah, offensive as all get out.

Rape, I suppose, can sometimes be about sexual frustration. Date rape, for instance, probably has an aspect of sexual frustration to it. But whether sexual frustration comes into play or not, all rape is about men wanting to impose their will, through force, on women. That or it is being used as a form of punishment against other men, as in a war situation where the invading army pillages the village and rapes the women. Either way, it is a crime of domination, not of uncontrollable sexual passion.

To excuse rape, or other offensive behavior, because women are being too tempting, is 1) to midrepresent what rape really is and 2) to denigrate the male personality. I do not for a moment believe that men are driven to ogling, wolf whistling, grabbing buttocks or breasts, nor violence by the sight of a semi-clad woman. Western society has proven that men indeed can control themselves when it is expected and required of them. Of course, there will still be a small criminal element, just as there will always be pedophiles, murderers, and bank robbers. But the vast majority of men can and do treat women with respect, no matter what they're wearing.

The argument, then, that women have to wear a hijab or worse, a face veil such as the chador, the burqa, or the niqab, in order to be safe from men, is just plain wrong.

Not only is it empirically wrong, it is religiously wrong, at least according to Islam, whence these comments come.

What did the prophet Muhammad do when a man started staring at a woman? He turned the man's face. That bears repeating: HE TURNED THE MAN'S FACE. He did not say to the woman, you're too beautiful, cover up. He did not say to her, get thee inside a chador, or behind a niqab. He did not send her to another room, or behind a curtain. HE TURNED THE MAN'S FACE. Repeatedly. He took action to correct the situation where the responsibility lay -- with the man who was acting unacceptably, ogling a beautiful woman, not by punishing the victim.

This is the methodology Muslims should be implementing.

Islam, Feminism  ¶ 9:49 PM