The real war on women While attacking Romney, Obama continues to largely ignore abuses in the Muslim world Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/real-war-women-article-1.1164157#ixzz2Ic90hGKW

For the greater part of this election cycle, we’ve heard a good deal from the left about a fictional Republican “war on women.” Everyone from President Obama himself to Georgetown-law-student-turned-Democratic-mouthpiece Sandra Fluke has tried to convince female voters that Mitt Romney is hostile to the female portion of the electorate.
But thousands of miles away, there is a real war on women. It is one that Obama and his supporters would prefer to ignore.
In the same region where four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens, were brutally murdered on Sept. 11, women suffer each and every day. Radical Islamic thugs were behind the fatal attack in Benghazi, as well as the riots that spread across the Middle East; Muslim females, however, are persecuted and oppressed not by terrorists, but by their own communities, governments and even families.
Obtaining insurance-covered contraceptives (a big concern for the American left) is the least of these women’s worries. Instead, females in many Muslim countries are focused on having their bodies fully covered from head to toe, aren’t allowed to drive and cannot leave their homes without the supervision of a male family member. Laws and cultural norms vary from country to country, but it is undeniable that, as a whole, the Muslim world has a serious problem with how women are treated.
In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Time magazine investigated this problem in an article called “The Women of Islam,” a piece that remains relevant today. It diagnoses the problem as a profound one, dating back centuries: “The Koran allots daughters half the inheritance of sons. It decrees that a woman’s testimony in court, at least in financial matters, is worth half that of a man’s. Under Shari’a, or Muslim law, compensation for the murder of a woman is half the going rate for men.
“In many Muslim countries, these directives are incorporated into contemporary law. For a woman to prove rape in Pakistan, for example, four adult males of ‘impeccable’ character must witness the penetration, in accordance with Shari’a,” writes Lisa Beyer.
And while all religions must grapple with how to integrate ancient texts, with their sometimes-outdated notions, into modern life, the Muslim world seems to have done far too little in this regard,
Take, for example, Islam’s attitude toward domestic abuse, with the Koran (sura 4:34), which has been “interpreted to say that men have ‘pre-eminence’ over women or that they are ‘overseers’ of women and that the husband of an insubordinate wife should first admonish her, then leave her to sleep alone and finally beat her,” as Beyer chillingly wrote.
Not much has changed in the decade or so since. It was only two years ago when Time magazine ran the horrific and now infamous cover picture of, Aisha, an Afghan woman with her nose and ears cut off by the Taliban for fleeing her abusive in laws.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/real-war-women-article-1.1164157#ixzz2Ic98cOsr