Those who deny inequalities between men and women in Islamic countries, including some Middle Eastern feminists, claim that it is merely a different kind of society where the conception of equality is different. Men and women are equal, but women just can’t drive in Saudi Arabia. They argue that “western feminism” doesn’t apply to Middle Eastern culture, and we shouldn’t force it there. To them, women’s rights are not a universal truth.

In Islamic society, the home sphere is the territory of women while the public sphere is the territory of men. A common defense of the treatment of women in the Middle East is that women are not less than men, they just operate in different spheres. It’s ironic that the societal restriction of Muslim women to the home is acceptable to liberals, and yet, in the 1950s and ’60s this was the very problem against which the feminist movement in America fought. Even if the law didn’t keep women in the kitchen, Donna Reed-style, it was a cultural problem that we had to grow out of. If only liberals fought for the same liberation for women in all countries.

But they have more important things to do like unveiling the ugly truth about the underlying sexism in the marketing of Luna bars to American women.