| Mr Khan said: Basically a replacement for Communism as a rallying cry for the dispossessed? I would debate the latter point as well, because many Western efforts are focused on bettering the lot of women in the Muslim world, certainly one of the main goals as far as social development in Afghanistan was education for girls, and some of my associates back in DC were working hard on a campaign to make it illegal for Americans to send their daughters on trips to other countries for the purpose of female genital mutilation (obviously illegal in this country, but they get around that by just sending them to Mali or somewhere and having it done anyway) |
Yeah, but as the multiple failed bans in Egypt have shown, making such things illegal does fuck all. You have to win the argument, and there are way too many westerners who like to fancy themselves as liberals but are unwilling to strongly and unequivocally condemn that kind of barbarism. I understand that not everyone is blessed with the intelligence and eloquence of, say, Christopher Hitchens, but everyone can be just as unapologetic as he is in defense of human rights.
