Why women are the cause of all the world’s problems – Malay edition

(Cross - posted at Brown Pundits)

There is Islamic misogyny, and non-Islamic misogyny, but the Islamic variety seems far better at convincing otherwise intelligent women to buy into this nonsense.


A Happy Man, A Happy Home

“You just need to open the newspaper or watch the news on TV: there are so many sex-related social problems rape, incest, prostitution and sex trafficking.”

Men will not be committing these crimes if they are sexually satisfied at home, she [Fauziah Ariffin] stresses. “The key to make a man gentle and loving is a first-class loving wife an obedient wife. When the wife is obedient, the husband will be happy and gentle. They will not look elsewhere for the loving they need.”

And like simple economics, cutting off the “demand” for the illegal “sex” will cut the supply. “The authorities have come up with a lot of solutions and conducted various raids or operations to nip these social problems, but they still exist. The solution we are proposing is one that is guaranteed to work, as it is backed by the Quran,” she explains.

Committee member Siti Maznah Mohamed Taufik tries another argument to demonstrate how a sexually frustrated man can cause violence in society.

“Just yesterday, there was a story about a man who hit his wife with a lesung (pounding stone) because she refused to have lunch with him. Do you believe that? It does not make sense. Just because of lunch, a man would hit his wife until she is hospitalised? I’m sure it is because she did not give him any the night before. That’s why he was furious with her.”

I wonder if it occurs to them that perhaps the reason this wife didn’t want to have lunch or sex with her husband is because he is the type of asshole who likes to hit women with pounding stones.

There are plenty more facepalm moments in the full article. A common thread in these kinds of worldviews is their extremely low expectations of men, who apparently can’t stop themselves from raping en masse unless they get a regular diet of sex at home. So it’s heartening that a Facebook group  that has sprung up to denounce the "Obedient Wives Club" was started by a Malaysian male, 22 year-old Matthew Tard Ong.

I personally don’t think this is a mainstream view among Malay women – this group appears to have some extremist associations. But how widespread is this? And is it a Muslim thing, a Malay thing, a Malaysian thing, or a human thing?