In the article in question, Eltahawy provides a long list of acts, laws, and behaviors directed against women in various Middle Eastern countries and argues that compared to that list, the debates over women’s reproductive rights in the United States (between Democrats and Republicans) are not worth much of the agitation they have produced. … Just as regime-appointed clerics lull the poor across the region with promises of justice—and nubile virgins—in the next world rather than a reckoning with the corruption and nepotism of the dictator in this life, so women are silenced by a deadly combination of men who hate them while also claiming to have God firmly on their side.

XREF: Relates to ongoing comparative arguments about which society oppresses women more, a common trope in both feminist and anti-feminist discourse. QUESTION: Is Eltahawy's comparative framing methodologically sound, or does it rely on cherry-picking worst cases?

Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ Th…, loc. 562