Do not miss this post at Steven Vincent’s blog: In the Red Zone: Morals Authority. (Hat tip: The Shape of Days.)

A few months ago, the student continued, a young man and woman were ambling down a narrow path at the university when black-shirted militiamen accosted them, accusing the couple of “unIslamic behavior.”  When they protested their innocence, the brave warriors of Allah began beating the woman; when the man tried to defend her, they knocked him to the ground, punching and kicking him into submission.  (Of course, those of us who follow the news remember how Moqtada al-Sadr’s men last March attacked a student picnic last March, in which men co-mingled with women, many of whom were not wearing hejab!)

I asked the student how this opporession made her feel, and she grimaced and curled her fingers into two trembling talons.  “It burns inside,” she added.  “We are not free to dress or act as we like.  Meanwhile, the religious parties have banned from our lives music, social interaction, relaxation.  I am depressed all the time.”  I then asked her if she ever had “fun” in Basra; her face took on a blank, faraway look.  “No,” she whispered, looking at her hands folded in her lap.  “I see on television the lives people live in America.  And I feel my years are being wasted.”  Lisa, this is a 22 year old woman in the very bloom of youth! 

But this is what Basra has become in the aftermath of the elections.  These are the unwritten, unlegislated and unchallengeable “social” and “religious” norms that have an iron grip on the city (and not only here).  And yet back home, you hardy find a public discussion or even acknowledgement of these shackles on human behavior—the Right is too busy congratulating itself on the progress of Iraqi democracy and the Left is too obsessed with multimcultural relativism and discrediting Bush.  Meanwhile, Bedouin customs and religious edicts—in short, tribal Islam—is grinding the hearts and souls and futures of thousands of Basran women (and men) into the desert sand.  All they can do is curl their hands into talons, burn inside and wait for the day of their true liberation.

It’s an excellent point, but it is possible to find these issues being discussed—on blogs like LGF and a few others.