The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.

Questions Nobody Is Asking

  • “Why Are There So Many Bosnians in St. Louis?”–headline, TheAtlanticCities.com, Feb. 15
  • “Why Should Banks Risk Capital on Innovative New Companies With Brilliant Ideas When Washington Dutifully Repays Interest and Principle [sic] on Those Boring Old Savings Bonds–Albeit With Freshly Printed Cash?”–headline, Deroy Murdock syndicated column, Feb. 15

Will Naomi Wolf Wear a Veil? 
“Naomi Wolf, the author and activist, is in early-stage talks with the global news network Al Jazeera,” reports Politico. In a way this makes sense: Wolf is a hysterical critic of America’s antiterrorism efforts. In 2007 she published a book called “The End of America,” in which she claimed that the Bush administration was taking us down the road to fascism.

Still, the first thing one thinks of upon hearing this news is the irony of a leading “third wave” (i.e., hypernarcissistic) feminist joining a pro-Islamist news network. Is she going to wear a veil? Probably not, but it turns out she doesn’t mind if Muslim women do. She spelled it out in a 2008 Sydney Morning Herald article:

Are we in the West radically misinterpreting Muslim sexual mores, particularly the meaning to many Muslim women of being veiled or wearing the chador? And are we blind to our own markers of the oppression and control of women?

The West interprets veiling as repression of women and suppression of their sexuality. But when I travelled in Muslim countries and was invited to join a discussion in women-only settings within Muslim homes, I learned that Muslim attitudes toward women’s appearance and sexuality are not rooted in repression, but in a strong sense of public versus private, of what is due to God and what is due to one’s husband. It is not that Islam suppresses sexuality, but that it embodies a strongly developed sense of its appropriate channelling–toward marriage, the bonds that sustain family life, and the attachment that secures a home.

That used to be true in America and the rest of Christendom as well, until the first- and second-wave feminists came along to “equalize” the sexes. One wonders if Wolf is really as sympathetic to Muslim traditions as she tries to sound, or if her supposed sympathy to Islam really just reflects what she imagines to be a shared antipathy to Western traditions.

Note: The excerpts above are from the Feb. 15 BOTW archives.

For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.”