The #MeToo campaign, secular liberalism, and the problem of sexual harassment

Groundhog day

I was not going to write about the #MeToo campaign. The hashtag at first seemed to bring catharsis for some women and men speaking about their sexual harassment traumas openly (although reliving trauma on social media was itself traumatic for some). Predictably, the campaign quickly revealed deep contradictions, hypocrisy, and false virtue, and failed to provide any solutions to the root cause of the problem.

Like other hashtag campaigns in the past, the #MeToo campaign against sexual harassment in Westernised societies would not effect any change as long as its campaigners remained in denial about the social causes behind the problem. Some Muslims also participated in the campaign and joined in the mass chanting the modern-day hymn of hashtagging, with little thought on how Islam could solve the problem, let alone any thought to advocating it as…