Via Hecate, this story about the way Iraq now is for women who don't like fundamentalism:
"I asked Sawsan Ali of Althawra city who is 30 years old why she quit school and stays home. She has lost her ambition and tends to think about death. Sawson answered: "There's no hope for safety in the foreseeable future, my rights as a woman do not exist. Everything is against me as a human: family, traditions and culture. Killing and terrorizing women have become a daily show. Why should I live? I cannot go to school safely or voice my opinion. Whatever I do is opposed by others. Basically nothing is left to live for, therefore I am preparing for death."
Not all Iraqi women feel the same way, of course. Most of them perhaps never had many freedoms to lose. But I felt guilty reading that piece, guilty about the U.S. occupation and how it unplugged the bottle in which the particular genie of woman-hating was kept in Iraq. Much in religion may be good but no mainstream religion currently in vogue regards women as full human beings. And it's religious factions who hold power in Iraq, while the U.S. mostly looks the other way when it comes to those silly women and their "rights."