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May 22, 2013

John Thorne: They launched the 'Arab Spring' but now yearn for the good old days of a strongman

John Rosemond: 'Disciplinary math' adds up to parental successl

Warren Richey: Are prayers before public meetings OK? Supreme Court to decide
Rick Montgomery: Use of ADHD drugs as study aid raises concern on campuses

Brierley Wright, M.S., R.D.: 6 convincing reasons you should keep carbs in your diet

Eoin O'Carroll: Scientists examine nothing, find something

The Kosher Gourmet by Carole Kotkin: This soup is made from one of the great pleasures of spring: A wonderful pairing of rosy color and earthy tang

May 20, 2013

Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?

Hannan Adely: Town raises Palestinian flag at City Hall

Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Morgan Housel: When smart investors do stupid things

Sharon Saloman, M.S., R.D.: Hunger games: Eat more, weigh less, without starving

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star

The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting

May 13, 2013

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation

David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church

Emily Alpert: Recession dragged down birth rates for less-educated women
Morgan Housel: The deep downside of home ownership

Peter Teffer: Will Dutch police soon be stalking cybercriminals on your computer?

Heidi McIndoo, M.S., R.D.: Meatless 'meat' can have its own set of problems

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: Celebrate! This must-try appetizer is delicate yet has depth of flavor: Corn-Leek Cakes with Caviar, Smoked Salmon and Creme Fraiche

May 10, 2013

Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be

Caroline B. Glick: The dirty little secret about Israel's Arabs

Mona Charen: Hawking's Moral Calculus: The man and the movement he embraces
Morgan Housel: The biggest retirement myth ever told

Sandi Doughton: Eyes may provide new insight into brain problems

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : The Great Gatsby's Jewish Ties; Jews in the "Time 100 list" List; People's Most Beautiful Women

The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: A sweet-hot meal: Pear salsa spices up salmon

May 8, 2013

Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas

Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate

Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
Amanda Paulson: Study reveals sad truths about community colleges

Harvard Health Letters: Evidence weak that zinc, echinacea are beneficial

The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility

May 6, 2013

Edmund Sanders and Patrick J. McDonnell: Think Israel's objective in Syria is to weaken Assad or embolden the rebels? Think again

Brian Bennett: Israeli airstrikes may show weakness in Syrian defense

Michael Ollove: Millions of ex-felons, parolees and those on probation are about to be entitled to tax-payer paid health coverage
Karen Kaplan: Most men can skip PSA test for prostate cancer, urologists say

Kimberly Lankford: How to track down a lost life insurance policy

Dream of Mars exploration achievable, experts say

The Kosher Gourmet by Susan M. Selasky: EGGPLANT WRAPS are an easy, sumptuous and scrumptious meal

May 3, 2013

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Human Courage and the Unavoidable, Disturbing Text

Steven Emerson: Attorney General Fights CAIR in Court, Lauds it in Public

Mediterranean diet helps beat dementia: study
Harvard Health Letters: When to be screened for a hearing problem

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Iron Man's Jewish Connections; Marc Maron's New TV Show; Martin Landau Grows Up with Israel; Shalom, Allan Arbus

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: A sweet surprise for Mother's Day dessert

May 1, 2013

Jonathan Rosenblum: An Improbable Journey to Orthodoxy

Jonathan Tobin: Blame Obama, Not Israel for Syria Push

Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Halena M. Gazelka, M.D.: Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: What you need to know about implanted pain relief devices

Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine

Jessica Shugart: When it comes to math, MRIs may be better than IQs

The Kosher Gourmet by Mario Batali: The celebrated chef on how high-maintenance ASPARAGUS RISOTTO need not be

April 29, 2013

Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust

Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?

Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Morgan Housel: He's rich, smart and old: Listen to him

Thomas Salinas, D.D.S.: Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: The safety of amalgam fillings

Harvard Health Letters: Tomatoes and stroke protection

Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: Swing into spring with lemon cream pie

April 26, 2013

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The world is a mirror

Caroline B. Glick: Time to confront Obama

Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Kimberly Lankford: New strategies ease pain of paying for long-term care insurance

Howard LeWine, M.D.: Ask the Harvard Experts: Too much ibuprofen?

Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom: Jewish Major Leaguers, 2013; New Movies and Comedy Show; Shalom, 'Lumpy' (Leave it to Beaver)

The Kosher Gourmet by Emily Ho : A bright and cheerful salad to herald the warmer months ahead

April 24, 2013

Steven Emerson: Boston Bomber Exposes Islamist Secret

Morgan Housel Admit it: No one has any idea what's going on
Harvard Health Letters: Can you get headaches from headache medication?

Kerri-Ann Jennings, M.S., R.D.: How to easily get more Omega-3s in your diet

Melissa Healy: Pot in a pill: All the pain relief without the smoke

The Kosher Gourmet by Susan Russo: Chipotle Chili Butternut Squash Soup is bold, zesty, hot

April 22, 2013

Ken Dilanian: Counterterrorism's future is unclear

US man departing country arrested on terror charges
Barbara Williams: An unorthodox but growing treatment in a 9-year-old's battle against cancer

P.J. Skerrett, M.D.: How to recognize a good whole grain product

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom: Teen actor Jonah Bobo in New Flick: Hunky James Wolk on Mad Men; Erich Segal's Daughter Writes Prize-Winning Jewish Novel


Jewish World Review May 3, 2007 / 15 Iyar, 5767

Slouching Toward ‘2084’

By Suzanne Fields


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | The Dutch novelist Margriet de Moor, writing in a German newspaper, wants to know whether anyone is at work on a novel titled "2084." Well might she ask. The world seems not to have changed much since George Orwell wrote "1984," his dark and gloomy look at a Marxist Utopia, where freedom of thought was brainwashed out of humanity by Big Brother, who watched everything a man or woman said, did or thought.


When "1984" was published in 1949, the threat to the world was international communism, with its aim of total dominion over the minds of men. Orwell, once attracted to communism, had seen the light shining through the darkness imposed on Eastern Europe by the Soviet Union and the ruthless oppression imposed by Joseph Stalin.


The threat today is not a dictatorship of politics, but one of religious theocracy, not of surveillance cameras or deathly state interrogations but of the imposition through intimidation of a perversion of religion. A novel called "2084" would confront this perversion of Islam, the rigid Sharia law where the distinction between church and state is not obliterated but sadistically internalized. Those most brutally victimized are women.


Ms. de Moor describes a visit to a Dutch shelter for battered women, where typically 80 percent of the women are Muslims. On the day she visited, the women had just watched a showing of the documentary movie "Submission," depicting the abuse of Muslim women in the name of Allah. The screenwriter, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, wanted to demonstrate to the battered women the way "the machismo of Islam" is grounded in their religion. But women who had been brutally beaten by their husbands were merely outraged by the honesty of the filmmakers.


When the film showed Koran texts projected onto the naked bodies of women, calling attention to how and why they were disrespected, dishonored and abused, the battered women of the shelter demanded that the projector be stopped. They were offended by the "blasphemy" on the screen, not by their bruises and wounds. They would not look at how their treatment was rooted in the Islamist interpretation of the Koran. They were the helpless prey of a dictatorship of the spirit.


Theo van Gogh, who produced the film "Submission," was killed by an Islamist terrorist. Ayaan Hirsi Ali cannot go anywhere without a bodyguard. When she urged the Dutch parliament to determine how many "honor killings" take place in Holland each year, she was accused of overstating the problem, of making a Temple Mount out of a molehill. Only when it emerged later that 11 Muslim girls were killed by their families in eight months and in only two regions of the Netherlands, the Dutch government finally recognized a big problem in the heart of their free society.


"As I myself know too well, it takes a long time to dissolve the bars of a mental cage," Hirsi Ali writes in "Infidel," a memoir. "In Islam, unlike in Christianity and Judaism, the relationship of the individual to G-d is one of total submission, slave to master. To Muslims, worship of G-d means total obedience to Allah's rules and total abstinence from the thoughts and deeds that he has declared forbidden in the Koran."


Margriet de Moor examines the mental cage from another cultural angle, to see what leads Muslim men to find sexual titillation everywhere. "How sex-obsessed is a culture that teaches a woman that she is basically a walking, sitting or reclining set of genitals?" she asks bluntly. "How over-aroused is a society in which men are expected to have no qualms about throwing themselves on any woman who happens to walk by unless a powerful signal in the form of a divinely ordained dress code forbids them to do so?"


Islamists condemn what they see as sexual decadence in the West, but seem to think the only way to avoid succumbing to debauchery is to force women to hide their flesh, and to beat up the women who don't. In George Orwell's "1984," prostitution was the outlet for male instincts that couldn't be repressed, and sexual release was permitted only if it was furtive, joyless and consummated with women "of a submerged and despised class." The Party knew it couldn't kill the sex instinct, so it set out to distort and dirty it. The Islamist terrorists, expecting an abundance of compliant virgins as their reward in heaven, play a variation on the theme.


Today increasing numbers of moderate Muslim men and women are beginning to speak out against the ruthless subjugation of Muslim women, and they deserve our support. But it's not clear whether they can eliminate it even by 2084.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.


Comment on JWR contributor Suzanne Fields' column by clicking here.

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