Moral relativism begets gender apartheid

By KATE WALKER
UPI Correspondent

While the U.S. Congress was voting overwhelmingly last week to condemn the use of torture by American forces, selected members of the Senate were listening to a different form of human rights appeal.

Phyllis Chesler, noted feminist, told a Senate hearing hosted by the American Committee for Democracy in the Middle East that lasting democracy could never come to the region without the support and participation of Arab women.

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As detailed in her book "The Death of Feminism: What's Next in the Struggle for Women's Freedom," Chesler's long campaign for the emancipation of women living under oppressive Islamist regimes has seen her at odds with a significant proportion of the Western feminist movement. The attitude of political-correctness that surfaced in the 1980s has morphed into a form of moral and cultural relativism that Chesler decries as dangerous to the rights of oppressed people around the world.

This notion formed a cornerstone of her speech to the Committee: "Dare to argue for military as well as humanitarian and educational intervention -- and you will be slandered as a 'racist' -- even when you are arguing for the lives and dignity of brown- and black- and olive-skinned people," she said.

"In the name of anti-racism and political correctness, the Western academy and media appear to have all but abandoned vulnerable people -- Muslims as well as Christians, Jews, and Hindus -- to the forces of Islamism. Such cultural relativism is, today, perhaps the greatest failing of the western academic and media establishments," she said.

"If we, as Americans, want to continue the struggle for women's and humanity's global freedom, we can no longer allow ourselves to remain inactive, anti-activist, cowed by outdated left and European views of colonial-era racism that are meant to trump and silence concerns about gender."

Chesler's views on the negative impact of moral and cultural relativism are shared by Ramesh Sepehrrad, president of the National Committee of Women for Democratic Iran, who was interviewed alongside Chesler.

"That the subhuman status of women is evil is not a racist statement," Sepehrrad said.

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