KEY POINTS:
There is a dilemma for women in the West regarding Islam. It is how to show tolerance and understanding of a different culture; how to respect a world religion that commands the devotion of millions; how not to rush in with Western judgments about a way of life
we do not share - all familiar liberal-minded points of view.
But over some things there is no dilemma at all. And many of them concern the lives of women. Two such events are currently in the news. Both deserve condemnation.
The first is happening in Saudi Arabia, where a 19-year-old woman has been sentenced to 200 lashes and six months in jail. And what is the crime for which such brutal punishment is to be meted out?
She was raped by a gang of seven men. Just that.
She was travelling in a car with a male friend when the gang stopped their car, attacking and raping them both. Four of the gang were convicted of kidnapping, but the court ruled that the punishment for the woman - and her male friend also - is justified because they were breaking the law of the land by travelling together.
This is so totally at odds with the way we think that it's hard to get any purchase on the mind-set behind it. Saudi Arabia is a country where its particular interpretation of sharia law governs how women dress, behave, whom they may talk to, be alone with.
In the world of realpolitik, we are meant to respect the sovereignty of such a country and its right to impose laws of its own choosing on its citizens. But at least half its citizens are women, and surely many want change.
Even the women who buy into the form of Islam that imposes such barbarities must wonder what life is like for women who live free lives.
In the West, you would expect a groundswell of feeling among women against such a ruling. But Saudi women don't vote.
And even in countries where women vote, those who campaign for change have a rough time. Maryam Hosseinkhah is a journalist and women's rights defender. She is a Muslim and she is Iranian. This month she was arrested in Tehran and, according to reports, accused of "disturbing public opinion" and "propaganda against the system".
She is part of Iran's Women's Cultural Centre, founded as long ago as 2001 to promote women's rights.
Women in Iran are further along with their liberation than in Saudi, but nonetheless Maryam is currently in Tehran's Evin Prison.
There is no liberal dilemma about deploring such arrests. These actions are as wrong in their treatment of women as genital mutilation. They, too, call for our condemnation.
What can be done to support such women? Now that the Iraq war has discredited the case for humanitarian intervention, we are back with thetheory of respecting the sovereignty of another state and its laws.
Not that I would want us to launch an attack. But we have to find other ways to influence these events.
Those countries which treat their citizens equally - or aspire to - should now condemn these actions. The case for these women should not be constrained by the wish not to offend Islam.
Instead the Bush Administration has refused to condemn the Saudi sentence. Perhaps it takes a woman to lead what should be a global protest.
Hillary Clinton is doing just that, calling the Saudi punishment an "outrage" and calling on King Abdullah to cancel the ruling - the first high-profile woman to do so.
It may be that the status of women is the one issue that, more than any other, comes between Islam and the West. And it is a two-way street.
They are as appalled by our licentious, binge-drinking culture as we are by their restraints on their women. The truth is that women should no more be at the mercy of the trashy values of celeb culture than controlled by the rule of male mullahs.
But in the West they have a choice. It is not being Islamophobic to wish for our Muslim sisters the freedom from such brutal constraints as are now happening in the name of their religion.
- Independent
