Women's virtue & Fanatics

Islamic Justice implemented Allegation: Attending a home party with single men present" Penalty: 70 whips source: Homa Darabi site.

5. Women are not allowed to travel without the permission of their husbands.
6. In court, the number of witnesses required to prove a crime is higher if the witnesses are female.
7. A woman's right to divorce and child custody are limited.
8. The legal age for girls to 'marry' is 9.
9. Any form of friendship or association between the sexes outside marriage is punishable by flogging, imprisonment, forced marriage and stoning to death…

For Ballard, however, these are merely 'another kind of freedom'. For her, women living in Iran and Islam-stricken societies have different freedoms because of their place of birth and 'their' culture and religion. Ballard even goes so far as to credit Islam for the facts that 'women in Iran are in many ways among the most assertive and socially independent' or that 'more women take engineering degrees in Iran than in the UK' though these have nothing to do with Islam and everything to do with women's own resistance and transgressions. Ballard says blaming religion for the denial of women's rights in countries like Iran 'disguised as concern for human rights' is tantamount to 'blaming Protestantism in Britain or Catholicism in Mexico for endemic domestic violence' and to seeing 'paedophilia as a symptom of a Christian or western culture'.

This is nonsense because:
1. Islam is in political power in Iran and many countries of the Middle East and North Africa and