Through Western Eyes
So far, we have seen that the Koran is not the cause of lack of democratic practice or disregard for the individual or of wife-beating. Other cultures-- admittedly without any concept of Original Sin-- have values and practices that the West should find, to put it mildly, bizarre. But we have seen that these practices haven't "captured the West's attention-- yet".
But what about the West? How does the western world regard women and democratic practice in the West itself? And while answering these questions, we must keep in mind the incontestable fact that we are talking about people endowed with the ability to tell right from wrong, unlike the rest of mankind, people who have known Original Sin.
The first thing to note is that western women do not suffer any harm through war-- they are at the delivering, not the receiving, end of the missile.
A UNIFEM report has it that " The economic cost of violence against women is considerable - a 2003 report by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that the costs of intimate partner violence in the United States alone exceed US$5.8 billion per year: US$4.1 billion are for direct medical and health care services, while productivity losses account for nearly US$1.8 billion."
In peaceful Geneva, Switzerland, a randomly selected study of nearly 1,200 ninth-grade students revealed that 20 per cent of girls had experienced at least one incident of physical sexual abuse . See here
According to The Care Center (www.teencarecenter.org ):
--Of rape victims who reported the offense to law enforcement, about 40% were
under the age of 18, and 15% were younger than 12.
--Of 1,000 representative female students at a large urban university, over half had experienced some form of unwanted sex. Twelve percent of these acts were perpetrated by casual dates and 43% by steady dating partners.
-- Female adolescents are frequent victims of sexual assault and rape. The
incidence of rape in the United States peaks among young women 16 to 19
years of age. The reported incidence of rape and sexual assault reflects a
fraction of the actual frequency of this crime. The National Victim Center
estimates that almost 700,000 women are raped each year, and that 61% of the victims are under the age of 18.
- Female adolescents are at high risk for becoming victims of acquaintance rape or "date rape." Studies have shown that the highest incidence of acquaintance rape occurred in grade 12 and during the freshman year of college. Of the 25% of college women surveyed who reported having had unwanted sexual intercourse, 84% knew their assailant, 57% of the episodes occurred on dates, and 41% of the women stated that they were virgins at the time of the assault.
Again, this is probably an underestimation of the true incidence of date rape
Alcohol a factor:
- It is estimated that approximately one-half of assault cases involve alcohol
consumption by the perpetrator, victim, or both. Moreover, while alcohol
consumption and sexual assault frequently co-occur, this phenomenon does
not prove that alcohol use causes sexual assault. Rather, alcohol contributes to sexual assault through multiple pathways, often exacerbating existing risk
factors. For example, the desire to commit sexual violence may actually cause alcohol consumption in that a male perpetrator drinks alcohol before
committing a sexual assault in order to justify his behavior. Whereas, among
college-aged males, fraternities encourage both heavy drinking and the sexual exploitation of women.
Date rape drugs:
- Date rape drugs or drug-facilitated sexual assault causes sedation and amnesia to the extent that a potential victim cannot resist or may not be aware of the assault. In fact, about 25% of the women who contacted the Canadian Sexual Assault Center reported that drugs were a factor in a rape.
The most commonly reported drugs in addition to alcohol to facilitate sexual assault are flunitrazepam and gamma hydroxybutyric acid (GHB), which is now touted as a new recreational 'club drug'.
