Shikha Dalmia in TIME on How Sharia is Liberating Saudi Women

Sharia that advises men to treat women like their property is symptomatic of everything that is wrong with Islam in the eyes of the West. But Reason Foundation Senior Analyst Shikha Dalmia points out in a TIME column this morning that this "backward" law is what Saudi women are using to fight for their rights. It is worth remembering, she notes that:

arguments that are regressive in one context are progressive in another. There are universal rights, but not a universally valid playbook for achieving them. Western freedoms too were won by precisely such piecemeal, ad hominem arguments.

John Locke, the English 17th Century political theorist credited with launching the Enlightenment, argued for the separation of church and state — the centerpiece of liberal democracy — not by a frontal assault on Christianity. 

Rather, he used the New Testament's own central teaching — that faith when forced brings no salvation — to stop the state from imposing one official religion.

Go here to read the whole thing.