today

The Australian mufti Sheik Taj al-Din al-Hilaly compares women to meat left out in the street, attracting predators. His exact words seem to have been "If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat ? The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred."

IMO: Knowing Australian women as well as I do I feel it difficult to comment tactfully, but can point out that I think that in those circumstances the cats might wind up losers. Perhaps the Sheik has sincere and worthy aims but his comments remind me of some Catholic rantings of yesteryear although I think that even the great Catholic apologist Dr. Rumble might not have gone so far. The Sheik's words are of interest if they are not simply propaganda motivated and up to a point I take the view that changes in moral code are simply going too fast for all of us. Problems as in my TV blog can easily emerge and it is best for no-one to be hasty or over-judgemental. For instance, what if in Iraq the 'gay bomb' were followed by the 'SM bomb' and then what some would see as the ultimate horror, the 'FD bomb'.