[She] wears a hijab that covers her hair and neck [and] said that Islam for her is a welcome antidote to Western libertinism. “What’s more liberating — being judged on the size of your I.Q., or on the size of your bust?” Divorced, with a 13-year-old daughter, she has stopped drinking and having flings. “I never sit in, waiting for the telephone to ring,” she said, "and I’m never dragged in to immaterial rows by inconsiderate, useless men."What dismal, minor problems people solve with religion. Aren't you embarrassed to present the religion you want us to respect as a cure for your mundane immaturity about boyfriends and drinking? What a stupid either/or choice you thought you had! The real question is why you only see the world in terms of such extremes. The West only represented libertinism and forced you to drink and have meaningless sex, so you had to jump into a system that imposed all sorts of limits on you. You bring up I.Q., but you sound as if you had no functioning mechanism of reason and judgment in your head. If you're so smart, how about controlling your own behavior and using some judgment about who gets to entertain himself with your body? And if you hadn't figured out how to do that yet, what made you competent to select a religion that tells you want to do? How can you decide you don't want to be free if you haven't yet learned what freedom is?
There's much more in the linked article. Read the whole thing. I gave the NYT a hard time yesterday about an article about a Muslim school in NYC, but this article has quite a different tone. And the headline is quite a change from yesterday too: "Hungry for Fresh Recruits, Cult-Like Islamic Groups Know Just When to Pounce."
ADDED: I note that religions of all sorts are pitched as solutions to mundane problems. In particular, Alcoholics Anonymous seems to be based on the idea that you can't solve your own problems, but must refer them to God.
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