I'm still on hiatus, I swear!

If you've ever had uneasy feelings about women and Islam, go read the excellent interview with Geraldine Brooks at Salon. She discusses at length the real role of women in Islam, not the patriarchal extremism forced by dictators. She also has great points to make about the possibility for internal change in Iran, what effect Saudi oil wells have on the oppression of women, and the reason Western feminists chiding Islam is so irritating and useless.

Most every Muslim woman I've ever met has outspoken, strong-willed, and straightforward. Go read and find out why. Islam in its actual form I always thought was much less oppressive of women than, say, Catholicism. For instance, Islam lacks the "virgin-mother" figure, the perfect woman you're supposed to strive to be exactly like. But no one can be both a virgin and a mother, so in Catholicism you can never be the perfect woman. Even when Islam is too oppressive, it is for different reasons. When Catholicism tells women to be meek and quiet, it does so because women are easily corrupted. When Islam tells women to be meek and quite, it does so because men are easily corrupted and may take advantage of them.

I do have problems with Islam. Despite being heavily encouraged in my youth by my father and stepmother, I am not a Muslim. However, the problems I have with Islam are the same problems I have with pretty much every religion (homophobia, submission to the will of an invisible divine power, conformity). Islam itself is not misogynist. Unfortunately, the teetering dictatorships propped into place by our crap foreign policy and our lust for oil, often are.

Now, back to Kingdom Hearts.