Who is to blame for this? "Wife-beating is universal. Many young women, in despair at being married off to a man they fear or loathe, douse themselves with gasoline and light a match. The hospitals in Afghanistan are filled with such cases. When a woman brings shame on her family for any reason--the reasons can be many and, by Western standards, trivial--suicide is the only option. Most discouragingly, Ms. Jones found, women themselves see nothing particularly wrong with this arrangement." I can't get mad at the American public. I mean, how can we blame the American public for the views that they hold when they are exposed to such ignorant and bigoted and outright silly commentaries and "analysis" by people who have no clue about the Middle East or Islam. And the writer of this quoted passage is a leftist (not even a liberal) writer who could not see what was wrong with her pathetically stereotypical generalizations. Notice that she says: "many young women". How many? Who cares? Was that based on a study? Not when you are talking about the Middle East. Just cook up data and go along. Who cares. And notice that it makes it sound as if women comsuicidedede only in those lands. By the way, I really recognize this passage: it mirrors the most hateful Russian Orientalist writings on Islam: it is taken from the Russian version of the Islamic "mind" titled Everyday Islam by Sergei Poliakov (if you are interested, read my article on Islam and the Study of Central Asia published in mid-90s in Arab Studies Journal). And notice the last line: that women enjoy their oppression. When you complain about Western public ignorance of Arabs and Islam, you have to blame those (some not all of course) Western journalists, writers, scholars, and travelers, and I dont care if they are leftist or rightist or Republican or Democrat. It makes no difference to me, or to you. Do you see now why I am angry, damn it? And let me tell this writer and her readers: the women of Afghanistan don't really need your buckets of tears. So please, spare them, will you?