Pakistan’s religious right and American Conservatives are two sides of the same rusty coin. The head of the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII), a constitutional advisory body that provides recommendations to Pakistan’s government on Sharia compliance, recently defended his decision for advocating for “lightly beating” women. The council drafted their own version of the Women’s Protection Bill in late May, which counters the progressive Punjab Protection of Women Against Violence Act that was signed into law in March 2016. Although the CII bill includes some positive proposals including women’s right to own property, ban on honour killings and acid attacks, it misses the mark by encouraging the beating of women in a country where violence against women is becoming an epidemic. Not surprisingly, the western media was quick to jump on the story, bringing undeserved attention to a backward, largely unconstitutional piece of legislation that is far from becoming law. Ironically, the CII proposal is no different than the regressive rhetoric used by America’s right wing in efforts to maintain its influence. Unfortunately, support for beating women is not a phenomenon limited to Pakistan. According to a report by UN Women, 16 percent of Americans also believe that beating women is sometimes justifiable. Granted this is a small minority, but it illustrates that such backward attitudes are not just limited to Muslim or developing countries, but prevalent all over the world. In the case of the US, such regressive beliefs about women are promoted at the most influential levels of America’s right-wing movement. Republican nominee Donald Trump’s sexist track record against women is now common knowledge. However, his former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski’s assault on reporter Michelle Fields at a political rally in March that left her arm with bruises indicates that hostile actions can occur as a result of hateful rhetoric. Last year, Fox News’ resident psychiatrist Dr Keith Ablow even went so far as to say that hitting women is a by-product of gender equality, tacitly implying that equal rights for women opens them up to more abuse by men not less. On the topic of rape and abortion, Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee argued in 2015 that a 10-year-old rape victim in Paraguay should be forced to carry her child. Even the ultra-conservative CII has ruled that abortion is only considered murder after 120 days of conception. In 2004, Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who continues to attract millions of listeners in the US, said women who are protesting sexual harassment, “…are out there protesting what they actually wish would happen to them sometimes.” Such anti-woman attitudes are not a departure from the CII. In some cases, they are even more extreme coming not from a fringe advisory group but mainstream Republican leaders and major personalities themselves. Such rhetoric is not limited to just women alone. Whereas in Pakistan the status of religious minorities such Christians, Hindus and Muslim is subject to contentious debate, Republicans have their own scapegoats. Whether it’s about Trump’s proposals to build a fence on the American-Mexican border, banning Muslims from entering the US, or the CII trying to tackle “incendiary” issues such as declaring a jizya tax on religious minorities, both are playing to the nostalgic appeals, discontent and disillusionment of their base and their subjective definitions of “greatness.” Unfortunately, such rhetoric only serves to validate and mobilise hatred in the form of bigotry and violence leading to the unfortunate loss of life. In the US, such bigoted rhetoric resulted in the deaths of three, young American Muslims in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and the killing of Ahmed al-Jumaili, an Iraqi who survived violence in Iraq for 36 years, but lost his life only a month after immigrating to the US. In Pakistan, such rhetoric led to the brutal murders of politicians Salmaan Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti who fought for the rights of Pakistan’s minorities. Most recently, journalist and activist Khurrum Zaki lost his life for launching charges against religious extremists, and paid the ultimate price. This type of demagoguery only has one objective: control and power. Any move towards progress and reform is a threat to their relevance, and hence, a threat to their influence in their respective societies. It is in their best interest to try and preserve the status quo at any cost. The most effective way to sell this anti-progress is to wrap it under the facade of achieving “greatness,” whether it’s a return to the glory days of Islam or the immigrant-less “white picket-fence” America of the 1950s. It is ignorance, not terrorism that is the greatest scourge of our time. The writer is a Pakistani-Canadian writer and a political analyst