My life of hell in an Afghan harem | Phyllis Chesler

My life of hell in an Afghan harem | New York Post

I've read a lot of Phyllis Chesler's articles, and I had no idea about any of this.

I once lived in a harem in Afghanistan. 

I did not enter the kingdom as a diplomat, soldier, teacher, journalist or foreign aid worker. I came as a young Jewish bride of the son of one of the country’s wealthiest men. I was held in a type of captivity — but it’s not as if I had been kidnapped. 

I walked into it of my own free will.

Lots of naive, love-struck Western women have ended up in similar predicaments with Muslim men.  Some people refuse to look at reality until runs them over like a Mack Truck.

It is 1959. I am only 18 when my prince — a dark, older, handsome, westernized foreigner who had traveled abroad from his native home in Afghanistan — bedazzles me.

Wait a minute.  She was "bedazzled" by.... this dweeb?  I don't mean to be disrespectful, but, seriously, Phyllis?

I’ve never told this story in detail before, but felt that I must now. Because I hear some westerners preach the tortured cultural relativism that excuses the mistreatment of women in the name of Islam. Because I see the burqa on the streets of Paris and New York and feel that Afghanistan has followed me back to America. 

I call myself a feminist — but not just any feminist. My kind of feminism was forged in the fires of Afghanistan. There I received an education — an expensive, almost deadly one — but a valuable one, too. 

I understand firsthand how deep-seated the hatred of women is in that culture. I see how endemic indigenous barbarism and cruelty is and unlike many other intellectuals and feminists, I don’t try to romanticize or rationalize it. 

I got out, and I will never return. 

The whole article is worth a read, so be sure to click on the link.

That explains a lot about Phyllis Chesler, like why her writing - unlike the vast majority of Feminists' - fails to induce vomiting.  It also explains why - unlike the vast majority of Western Feminists, who obsess about imaginary "wars on women" and "wage gaps" - Phyllis Chesler focuses on the very real oppression of women in majority Muslim countries.