In 1975 firing squad executed the young Saudi Princess for alleged adultery on the main square of the Saudi capital Al Riyadh in a view of thousands spectators. The sword beheaded her accused lover, a military officer, standing beside her. After BBC ran a videotape of the execution, the Saudi government issued an angry protest. Americans have no idea, what kind of gigantic monster they have woken up by supporting emancipation of Muslim women. As a fresh graduate from Leningrad University (Russia), I did research on Afghani women, as I learned later, commissioned by the Soviet military in preparation for the war in Afghanistan. The Russians lost the war, but I became fascinated with the Muslim culture of Central Asia with its total separation of men and women. This culture in total defiance of Soviet law had polygamy. One story house meant one wife, two story house - two wives.
I saw in Uzbekistan young soldiers, buying gifts for older and younger moms, thus betraying how many wives their father had. I saw cities with no women on the streets and streets with no windows, so women would not look out and would not be seen from outside. I saw crowds of unemployed men, idling on the corners and watching the European woman, traveling alone, as an outlandish monstrosity. “How many children do you have?” every taxi driver would ask me. “Just one? What is wrong with you?” and with mucho pride radiating on his face: “My wife has seven already and she is younger than you!” These men, economically and educationally inferior, felt superiority in the family field. They had tremendous power over their wives and scores of children. Women in Central Asia were very cheap at this time. A young 14-17 year old virgin could be bought for 30 sheep to become a wife and her husband’s possession. It would be his responsibility to house, feed, and protect her. The main problem of today’s Westerners in their dealing with Muslim society is, that they don’t understand Muslim concept of women as property. San Francisco Chronicle a few years ago published an interview with an Afghani woman, who proudly disclosed, that her husband paid $12,000 for her.
A woman, bought for such an exorbitant price, could expect VIP treatment, considering that in Central Asian countries as Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, doctors at this time were paid $20 per month, and people making $200 per month were viewed as millionaires. However, not all female properties are equal. During the civil war in Afghanistan both the Taliban and the Northern Alliance treated women in conquered cities as part of their victory loot. The Taliban sold kidnapped women as concubines to wealthy Pakistanis, who already had four wives (so limited by the Koran), for $30 per head. It is useless to emancipate women, who don’t feel a lack of freedom. I was raised in the Soviet society, where all women were forced to work, whether they liked it or not, so I could not believe, that so many Muslim women could willingly abstain from education and career. When I asked a high level Kyrgyzstan lady, how they could live such a life, she answered angrily, “While your women shoveled gravel on railroads, our women enjoyed themselves in harems dressed in silks and fidgeting with pearls.” I didn’t see harems of Scheherazade in my travels to Central Asia, but I saw women at the age 15 turned into child-producing livestock, who at the age of 27 and 9 children later looked older than 50. For them black chador or paranja, totally covering them head to toe, just leaving narrow slit for eyes, were not such a bad solution. I observed that they couldn’t eat in men’s (including their own sons’) presence. Even in households headed by well-educated and well-positioned husbands, women waited on them, squatting in the corner and afterwards finishing leftovers. A ‘woman as man’s possession’ situation (culturally and economically) gives a husband absolute power over his wife and her children. Any disobedience is cruelly punished. The most ignorant loser, when it comes to his family and his house, is the king, the dictator, and the tyrant. He enjoys unbelievable respect and obedience in his growing kingdom from numerous descendants, who are the only pension plan he has.For millions of Muslim men, raised in this habit of undeserved power, women’s emancipation is equal to the confiscation of property, loss of identity, loss of dignity, and castration. Do you remember the American Civil War? The Southerners were afraid to lose their slaves, property, servants, the work force on their plantations, and their lavish lifestyle. Muslim men are even more scared. That is why bin Laden, as an owner of 4 wives and 44 children got so hysterical, when in Saudi Arabia he saw American military women freely talking to men, driving cars (for Saudi women all strictly forbidden), and even more (punished by stoning) barely clad women going out with men of their choice. It was an INVASION from HELL.Muslim men will defend their property with their lives, which in the Muslim countries, economically underdeveloped and impoverished by population explosion, worth less than nothing.Western civilization for millions of bin Laden’s kind is scarier than hell itself. When you see agitated “male only” mobs in the fits of mass psychosis, experiencing “wargazms” on the streets of London, Karachi, Beirut, or Gaza, this is an uprising against the unstoppable advances of Western values, especially, when the liberation of enslaved women is included. The cause of this uprising is instinctive and is an explainable fear of collision with the future. This fear has been called future shock, and for them to live with this fear is worse than to die. Running from their own fear Islamists pronounced holy war, jihad to the future. This is why they pronounced the death sentence to Saudi Princess, who dared to love. They pronounced “death to America” and destroyed two of her highest trees, WTC skyscrapers in the magnificent New York skyline. This New York skyline that for two centuries symbolized and forever will stay as a symbol of hope and freedom for so many desperately longing for freedom people of the world.