Is Hamas Anti-Women?

People love simplifying complex issues, paring them down to the degree where all complexity is lost, and all that remains is an oversimplified, meaningless slogan. Thus the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is transformed into "Israel bad, yay to independent Palestine" or vice versa. The proponents of such an approach tend to feel extremely self-righteous. They believe that they have solved the problem and found a solution, so they despise all of us who dare remind them that the issue may be a little bit more complex than what their Hollywood-inspired "good guys versus bad guys" mentality suggests to them.

Liberals are especially funny in this respect because they have a history of vocally supporting regimes and political movements that, if successful, would have killed, imprisoned or muzzled these very liberals in the matter of seconds. Take, for example, the liberal sympathies towards Hamas. You have to be deaf, mute and blind or have just moved here from the moon not to realize that Hamas is extremely anti-women and anti-gay. To give just a little example of the most recent instance of Hamas's anti-women barbarity:

 A Gaza rights group says the ruling Hamas militant group has barred male hairdressers from working in women's salons. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights said Monday that five male hairdressers were interrogated and forced to sign declarations that they wouldn't work in women's salons. Male hairdressers for women are rare in conservative Gaza where genders rarely mix in public. Hamas tried to impose a similar ban last March, but backed down after an outcry. It's the latest attempt by Hamas to impose its strict version of Islamic law on Gaza's 1.5 million people. The group took control of Gaza in 2007. It has also banned women from smoking waterpipes or riding behind men on motorbikes.

So how ridiculous are the so-called liberals who claim they are feminist and militate for gay rights, while simultaneously thinking that handing over an entire region to anti-women and anti-gay religious fanatics is a wonderful idea?