Of cats & meat

Periodically, I come across posts that attempt to shed some light or whitewash (since I’ve never read the Koran I really don’t know which one it is) Koran’s attitude toward women. The beautiful, the poetic, the condescending, the argumentative, all of them seem to agree on one thing: Koran’s view of women is loving, progressive, and respectful. Men?.. I guess it’s a given that the Allah is cool with them, since I’ve never heard a man touting the delights afforded to him by Koran (except for the 70 virgins, who might turn out to be raisins). My view of Islam is shaped entirely by what its holy men preach and practice. The stories from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other Islamic states about women being condemned to stoning for being raped are, sadly, commonplace. This voice of feminism comes to us from Australia (The Sydney Morning Herald), hardly an Islamic stronghold:
Sheik al Hilaly's remarks were made during a Ramadan sermon to 500 worshippers in Sydney last month. …
"If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats' or the uncovered meat," the sheik asked.
"The uncovered meat is the problem."
"If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab (Muslim headscarf), no problem would have occurred."In this colorful simile, the uncovered meat represents “scantily dressed women”, and carnivorous cats are featured as men. "Who is this man, so utterly ignorant of the humanistic ideal that is real Islam?" you ask. “[Sheik Hilaly is] regarded by much of the Islamic community as the mufti [a Muslim scholar who interprets the sharia] of Australia.” Surely, Muslims of a civilized western nation wouldn’t stand for such vitiating umbrage? Wrong again. They asked the sheik to abstain from preaching for several months, and… nope, nothing else.
Loving, progressive, respectful.