I really have to wonder; despite the numerous shout-outs that he's given to spirituality, faith, etc. he's always struck me as practicing religion purely for political purposes, and almost always had it backfire on him (Jeremiah Wright, Rick Warren at the inauguration, etc.). It's like a foreign country that he's dutifully paid lip service to, but that has never warmed to him in return. I'm not at all surprised that his "official" church now is the Camp David chapel, where he can play with his BlackBerry for an hour if he wants to.

You know Jimmy Carter isn't the first or only religious person to think and act on these things, right? This isn't news to Obama or anyone else who's discussed the topic in the last thirty or forty years. Obama and any number of the rest likely already agree with what Carter is saying.

Mr. Carter, not one word about the most misogynistic, oppressive and patriarchal religion the world has ever seen?

At least pay lip service to criticism of Islam in this regard otherwise you forfeit all your credibility and may lead one to believe that you are an Islamic apologist bent on maligning the U.S. and Israel.

dlksandiego

"In some Islamic nations, women are restricted in their movements, punished for permitting the exposure of an arm or ankle, deprived of education, prohibited from driving a car or competing with men for a job. If a woman is raped, she is often most severely punished as the guilty party in the crime."

-- from Carter's article

When pigs fly

Right on, Jimmy Carter. This is precisely the reason that so many women, including me, shun religion. Why would I choose to be part of an organization that declares that half of the human race (my half) is inferior to the other half, determined by gender.

President Carter focused exclusively on abuses against women promoted by religion. However, we could also look at abuses against men - forcing men to fight for the "right religion," male genital mutilation (circumcision) performed on helpless infants!

Some religions do good things like feeding the hungry, but perhaps there wouldn't be so many hungry people in the world if religions weren't such a repressive and negative influence in their lives.

Who writes these things?

It doesn't sound at all like Carter was talking about how religion, generally, subjugates women. Religion itself DOESN'T subjugate women.

Conservative fundamentalism and the manipulation of very selective passages of scripture to enforce pre-existing societal prejudices and superstition subjugates women.

Thank you.

God bless Jimmy Carter.

A question for the religiously oriented right wing Republicans: if you were pleading at the bar of Eternal Justice, and had a choice of representing Jimmy Carter or George W. Bush as your client, whose case would you prefer to present?

After seeing some of the discussion about Islam in the letters, Frances and I decided to add Carter's criticism of Islam to the post (thanks, captcrisis!)

Why does Carter have the capacity to write a critical, yet still educated and thoughtful, article in support of women’s rights, but Broadsheet is, at best, only capable of generating tabloid feminism?

Was this op-ed published in America anywhere?

If not, why not?

Other than that, great article by President Carter.

dlkencik is one of those inevitable anti-Muslim zionist bigots who follow any article by or about Jimmy Carter on the net in order to post his venom against a man who dares to hold Israel to account for its racist, brutal acts against Palestinians.

OF COURSE Carter mentions Islam, dolt! Everyone mentions Islam on this issue as if Muslims invented the whole idea of subjugating women.

I seriously doubt, however, that Carter mentions the decades-long fundamentalist Jewish orthodox movement in Israel in which women are verabally abused, physically assaulted for not wearing modest clothing or generally behaving like a proper Jewish woman should. There have been cases of these zealots throwing acid onto the faces of Israeli women, but you never hear of such incidents on liberal sites like Salon nor anywhere in the US media. It's perfectly acceptable to hate on Islam and Christianity but never EVER Judaism.

This CBS article talks about these highly organized, vicious, violent "modesty patrols" in Israel that terrorize many Israeli women into curbing their movements in public:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/04/world/main4501952.shtml

I love Jimmy Carter. He is one man who knows how to "not go gentle into that good night." He gets better and better. What an inspiration.

and was responsible for my kids terrible education. How? His economic policies - we couldnt move to a better school district (mortgage rates were 17 - 18%) could not sell our house or afford another one (and Yes, 17%). We had to sit in long gas lines every day to buy enough to go to work (but at least we had jobs, not like millions of others), We couldnt go anywhere because we were afraid of using our precious gas and not being able to go to work. We never saw each other because one of us worked 2P to 10P (me, as a nurse at a hospital) and 11 P - 7A (him). We had to do that because we couldnt afford day care because everything was so expensive. It was truly a dark time in America. Then he went on TV and accused Americans of "Malaise". You think, Sherlock?

There was a happy ending. Reagan was elected in 1980 - we traded up our starter house in 1983 because he turned the economy around, we could again purchase gas so we were able to take our kids on vacation, etc. But dont ever tell me what a hero Carter was unless you lived through his administration.

I'm all against abuses of women but I don't like the way the fact of tribalism is being swept under the rug and everything is being lumped into "religion."

Pushtuns may point to the Qu'ran to justify their treatment of women, but the sociological fact is that these are tribal practices that are normal and typical for a tribal economy.

The Qu'ran was written for an audience that was half urban and half tribal. Obviously with a tribal audience the religion is not going to make everything tribal into a sin.

The tribal system is a whole socioeconomic system that performs many roles that are performed by governments in wealthy modern developed nations.

Pushtuns may point to the Qu'ran to justify these practices, but really what they are defending is a socioeconomic system that has existed since pagan times, long before the Books of Moses even existed, let alone the Qu'ran.

Until there is a mature and balanced discussion of tribalism and the issues it presents to the modern world, there is no possibility of any effective dialog with the abusers of women in these tribal cultures.