Is Hollywood okay with women as property?

Gary Bauer writes that

there is one area about which Hollywood has remained conspicuously silent: the brutality of radical Islam.

Not only has the film industry consciously avoided using Muslim characters in its many films about war and terrorism, Hollywood has also been missing in action when it comes to speaking out against some Muslims’ unacceptable views on gays and women.

Women have it no better in many Muslim societies. Last November in Afghanistan, a group of school girls were assaulted by men who sprayed them with acid, leaving some of them with permanent scars and vision problems. The men, who are suspected of having been hired by the Taliban, attacked the girls because they felt it was an abomination for women to attend school.

According to Human Rights Watch, honor killings are typically committed by male family members against female members for reasons that include refusing to enter an arranged marriage, being the victim of a sexual assault, seeking a divorce or being accused of having committed adultery.

But honor killings are also common punishment for Muslim women and girls who refuse to wear head scarves, refuse to act as domestic servants, wear make-up or western clothing, choose to have friends from other religions or seek higher education, among other perceived wrongs.

Why is it that Hollywood obsesses about the alleged splinter in the eye of the West but ignores the plank in the eye of a culture that treats women no better than property?

I wish Hollywood would make a film highlighting the brutal treatment of gays and women in Islam, especially given the steady stream of films detailing how stifling to women American society supposedly was in the 1950’s and how oppressive it continues to be for homosexuals today.

Granted, it is much harder to bully groups from which one need not fear violent reprisal. When in 2004 Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gough directed the short film Submission, which chronicled the violence against women in some Islamic societies, he was brutally murdered by a Muslim extremist. Perhaps I shouldn’t hold my breath waiting for Hollywood, or “tough guy” Sean Penn, to summon the emotional courage to address this neglected issue.

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