The German news magazine Der Spiegel, in its issue of January 3, 2011, has two separate stories that become more intriguing if one reads them together. (In a recent post I noted that I have finally discovered my mission in life—to perform this synthesizing operation on stories in The New York Times. I am now globalizing this mission.)
The first story deals with the travails of Muslim young women in Germany due to the contradiction between the strict sexual ethics of their parents and the exuberant hedonism of German culture (which, in this and in other matters, reflects post-1960s culture throughout Western societies). At the core of traditional ethics are two sacred values—the virginity of unmarried women and the honor of the family. The second depends on the first. A young woman who loses her virginity not only commits a grave sin and spoils her life chances (she becomes “spoiled goods”, unlikely to find a husband within her parents’ community), but she has very seriously dishonored the entire family to which she belongs. (Let us leave aside here the important question of whether these values are intrinsically Islamic, or whether they are due to Turkish or Arab cultural influences not necessarily based on religion. Liberal Muslims of course propose the latter interpretation. Communists used to differentiate “real existing socialism” and theories about “true socialism”. By analogy: “Real existing Islam” is one thing, ideas about “true Islam” another. Here we are concerned with the former.)
Read Full Article »