On the American Right’s total ignorance about Iran

Over at First Things (which, I repeat, is one of the best supposedly conservative magazines out there), they find it “an outrage and a horror” that Iran has been elected onto the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women committee.  No doubt like other United Nations commissions, this one will be working at least implicitly to promote abortion and undermine the patriarchal family, but nobody seems to be outraged about that.  Why, one wonders, is it shocking for Iran to be on this committee, even by the standards of feminism?  Women in Iran vote, attend university, and enter the professions in large numbers.  I doubt the fellows at First Things (or the fellows at National Review, whose comments started this discussion) have really thought about it.  What they have is an irrational anti-Islamic bigotry that causes them to assume that Muslims “hate women”, mostly because Muslim women dress modestly.  Even on the American Right, it seems, we find it hard to understand that a culture can respect women without dressing them like harlots, or indeed that modesty is a gesture of respect.  (In any event, most Iranian women just cover their hair, not their faces.  Some don’t even cover that.  I know several Iranian women studying physics at American universities.)  The Islamic Republic is a modern, civilized state that treats its women as well as Americans treat ours.  I for one would rather have Iran on this committee than the United States, because while America is wholy committed to the creed of feticide, androgyny, and perversion, Iran will more likely steer the committee away from radicalism and towards basic decency.  What baffles me is that the American Right should think differently.