Combating Islam

Part VII: Feminist Apologetics and the Great Gaslighting Campaign

You’ve heard the line.

“Islam gave women rights 1,400 years ago.”

It’s the default chant of every hijab-wrapped influencer, every Western convert armed with a YouTube channel, and every reformist imam desperate to sanitize the scripture with a postmodern filter.

But say it with me now: repetition isn’t evidence.

Because what we’re dealing with here isn’t just denial. It’s an orchestrated, industrial-strength gaslighting campaign — one that rewrites rape as mercy, veils as liberation, and divine misogyny as empowerment.

This final part isn’t just a takedown of bad arguments — it’s a full-scale demolition of the lies, illusions, and intellectual contortions used to defend the indefensible.

🎭 The Apologetics Arsenal: Greatest Hits of Delusion

Let’s unpack the top-tier talking points in the apologetic playlist — and expose each for what it is: a sleight of hand, a distortion, or flat-out historical fiction.

❌ “Islam gave women rights 1,400 years ago!”

Let’s dissect this tired trope.

Yes, Islam codified some protections compared to pre-Islamic Arabia — a tribal hellscape where women were literally inherited and newborn girls were buried alive. But that’s like claiming credit for installing a door in a burning house.

A halfway step out of barbarism is not progress. It’s a pit stop on the road to continued oppression.

Islam gave women the right to inherit? Yes — half of what men get (Qur’an 4:11).
Islam recognized women's testimony? Yes — but only half the weight of a man’s (Qur’an 2:282).
Islam regulated marriage and divorce? Yes — and locked women into a system where divorce is lopsided, polygyny is legal, and marital rape is legal by omission.

This isn't empowerment. It's codified inferiority with just enough polish to gaslight the naive.

❌ “The Qur’an elevated women!”

Let’s read it aloud, shall we?

“Men are in charge of women, by [right of] what Allah has given one over the other…”
— Qur’an 4:34

That’s divinely sanctioned patriarchy. Not metaphor. Not culture. Command.

This same verse permits beating disobedient wives:

“...and strike them [if they still refuse].”

Add to this the theological approval of child marriage (Qur’an 65:4) and sexual slavery (Qur’an 4:24, 33:50), and you don’t get elevation.

You get domination — rubber-stamped by revelation.

❌ “The Prophet was a feminist!”

Let’s walk through the “feminism” of Muhammad:

Married Aisha at 6, consummated at 9 (Sahih Bukhari 5133).
Took concubines — women captured in war and raped legally (Sahih Muslim 3371).
Commanded veiling and segregation for his wives (Qur’an 33:53).
Ruled women as mentally and religiously deficient (Sahih Bukhari 304).

“I have not seen anyone more deficient in intelligence and religion than you [women].”
— Muhammad, in Sahih Bukhari

If this is feminism, Ted Bundy was a couples’ therapist.

❌ “Hijab empowers women!”

The claim that veiling is liberation is so Orwellian it deserves a prize in cognitive dissonance gymnastics.

The Qur’an commands veiling explicitly for Muhammad’s wives (33:59, 33:53), and implicitly applies it to all women to avoid harassment — which is victim-blaming 101.
Apologists will cite the “context” of modesty — but in Islamic law, the hijab isn’t optional. In many Islamic states, it’s legally enforced with violence.

From Iran’s morality police to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, the veil is not about freedom. It’s about control — wrapped in theology and barbed with fear.

❌ “Islam gave women the right to divorce!”

Technically? Yes. Practically? A Kafkaesque nightmare.

Men can divorce unilaterally with three words (talaq).
Women must go through legal courts, obtain a khula, return their dowry, and still risk denial.
Custody of children and access to alimony often hinge on male approval or judicial whim.

In classical fiqh, a woman could literally be trapped for life if her husband refused to release her. Sounds less like liberation, more like sharia-sanctioned imprisonment.

🧠 The Logic Fallacies: Spot the Lies They Love

Muslim feminist apologists are not just theologically cornered. They’re logically bankrupt. Here's how their house of cards collapses:

🔁 Fallacy of Anachronistic Morality

“It was progressive for its time!”

Morality doesn’t come with an expiration date. If Islam claims to be the final, perfect message from a timeless God, then “for its time” is not an excuse — it’s a self-own.

A perfect God doesn’t benchmark ethics against 7th-century tribal norms. He defines them absolutely. If slavery, rape, and patriarchy remain in the holy text without repeal, then the "timeless morality" claim implodes.

🤹 Fallacy of Selective Quoting

Cherry-picking nice verses, ignoring the abusive ones.

Apologists love to quote:

“Paradise lies at the feet of mothers.”
“Treat women kindly.”

They conveniently skip:

Wife-beating (4:34)
Legalized rape of slaves (4:24)
Half-inheritance, half-testimony, no agency

Cherry-picked compassion is meaningless when the foundation is violence.

🪞 Fallacy of Reinterpretation

“That verse doesn’t really mean what it clearly says.”

When “strike them” doesn’t mean strike, and “child marriage” doesn’t mean child marriage, and “slaves” don’t actually mean slaves — then words have no meaning.

If God needs PR consultants and translation gymnastics to sound moral, then it’s not divine. It’s deceptive.

🧕📣 The Western Muslim Feminist: Pawn or Preacher?

The most insidious mouthpiece of this gaslighting machine is the Western-educated Muslim woman who preaches empowerment through scripture.

These are the TEDx darlings, Instagram influencers, and university panelists who wear Chanel and niqab with the same breath and claim Islam is the original feminism.

What they never tell you:

Their freedom to speak, choose, or reject hijab exists only under secular law.
The very Islam they defend would strip their rights if implemented as written.
They owe their independence not to the Qur’an — but to secular modernity.

If they lived in Taliban Afghanistan or Khomeini’s Iran, they'd be flogged, silenced, or stoned. And yet they sell Islam as feminism — to naive Western audiences who don’t know better.

🔍 Real Scholars, Real Talk: Even Muslims Admit It

Let’s hear from scholars — not critics, but Muslim and academic experts:

📚 Kecia Ali, Sexual Ethics and Islam:

“The Prophet’s sexual relationships with his concubines are not simply historical footnotes... they shape Muslim ethics to this day.”

📚 Jonathan A.C. Brown, Slavery and Islam:

“There is no denying that slavery is part of the sharia... and that it included sexual access to slave women.”

📚 Fatima Mernissi, The Veil and the Male Elite:

“The oppression of women is not a misreading of Islam. It is embedded in its foundational texts.”

Even those sympathetic to Islam are forced to admit: the problem is structural, not incidental.

🏛️ Islamic Feminism: Reform or Religious Stockholm Syndrome?

Islamic feminism is an oxymoron with a body count.

If you’re trying to reform a system:

Where God authored gender hierarchy
Where the Prophet modeled sexual slavery
Where law defines women as subordinate

…then you’re not fixing it. You’re legitimizing it.

The only honest feminism in Islam is the kind that rejects the system entirely — not the kind that apologizes for it with a wink and a blog post.

💥 Final Verdict: Feminist Apologetics Is Theological Theater

Islam doesn’t elevate women. It defines them as second-class, wraps them in doctrine, and dares them to object.

Feminist apologists aren’t liberators. They’re defense attorneys for patriarchy in a hijab.

This isn’t just hypocrisy. It’s a betrayal of every woman who’s been beaten, silenced, married off at 9, veiled against her will, raped in the name of God, or told her worth is half a man’s.

Gaslighting doesn’t fix theology.

Only truth does.

⚠️ Disclaimer

This post critiques Islam as an ideology, doctrine, and historical system — not Muslims as individuals. Every human deserves dignity. Beliefs do not. Truth-telling is not hate. Silence is.

This concludes the series