Don't get us wrong. It's definitely progress that rape is not always and in every case a woman's fault now:

We're just unimpressed by this being called anything but what it is: a centuries-overdue correction to a pathologically sexist theo-juridical practice. We've been known to say that there are parts of the Islamic world that are mired in the 9th century. That's actually inaccurate when it comes to the way that fundamentalist Muslim countries treat women: the Judeo-Christian West was NEVER this bad. There were never laws grounded in the Bible that presumed women to be more at fault for rape then men. The Gospels were never mobilized as an excuse for rape the way that the Koran de facto is in places like Pakistan. So yeah, this is progress in the most literal sense. But it's difficult to call it progressive - no matter how hard Western feminist groups try to argue that the European Enlightenment is the real threat to women.

The sad thing is that women in Pakistan would be mired in their third-class existence even if Musharraf managed to strongarm the parliament to repeal all the sick, anti-women laws that they have on their books. Egypt, for instance, has more or less formal legal equality - and women still hide behind their veils. You'll even hear Egyptians saying that behind those veils, women are just as well-groomed and carefully made up as their Western counterparts. In other words, in everything but day to day public behavior, women in the West and women in Egypt are presumably equal. But it's precisely that public, quotidian existence that reflects and makes all the difference: it's the sense of life that matters. Gut-check: how many decades or centuries away are we from women in most (all?) of the Muslim and Arab world being able to make something like this, produced by two Israeli girls and posted to YouTube on Tuesday:

It's meaningless and silly and fun. And that's the point. Here's the original video that Tasha and Dishka put together, which is one of the most popular videos on YouTube ever:

Our original, pre-YouTube-on-MR post about this video is here. The title is "Joyful Israeli Girls A Stark Contrast To Girls In Arab And Muslim World", which is, well, true.

Previously: Bahraini Women's Rights Activist Dismantles Religious Zealots, Saudi Arabia Discovers Women Need To Eat Food, West: Female Fighter Pilots, Islam: Women's Private Parts Are Dirty