Martha Nussbaum

Nussbaum finds the European and American discourse on the related topics of immigration, integration, hijab, niqab, sharia law, minarets and mosques, including the “Ground Zero mosque,” to be mostly ignorant, irrational, contradictory and malevolent.

In its stupidity and viciousness, anti-Islamism parallels anti-Semitism, she writes.

Just as Jews have long been viewed with a mixture of fear and contempt, and also thought to be unfit for normal citizenship, so are Muslims.

It is said that women are forced to wear it. But those making the assumption rarely, if ever, ask the wearers themselves.

“Muslims, like Jews, are always accused of having a double loyalty, and both are seen to submit themselves to a double set of legal requirements — religious law somehow making them bad subjects of civil law.”

Just as anti-Semites hold that “there is a conspiracy to take over the world and that all Jews are somehow part of it,” anti-Islamists are saying the same of Muslims.

The burqa degrades women. “The “glaring flaw” in such a seemingly feminist argument is that “modern societies are suffused with symbols of male supremacy that treat women as objects. Sex magazines, pornography, nude photos, tight jeans, transparent or revealing clothing — all of these products, arguably, treat women as objects, as do many aspects of our media culture.

“Women are encouraged to market themselves for male objectification in this way, and it has long been observed by feminist thinkers that this is a way of robbing women of both agency and individuality, reducing them to objects of commodities.”

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