Shrill complaints may go down well in the western media but they don't help Muslim women. We need credible, reasoned argument. A recent article in the New York Times refers to the "Muslim rebel sisters", Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Irshad Manji and aims to compare and contrast their respective campaigns against their "Muslim upbringing".

The tendency to lump together Muslim females in exile who have rather unsavoury views about Islam makes the voices of moderate females difficult to hear. From a position of relative ignorance when it comes to Islam in general, the west post-9/11 has had to familiarise itself with a religion, culture and ideology which so alarmingly appear to despise all that is western.

The post-9/11 crisis also created an audience which was eager to hear about the depravity and barbarity of the Muslim world but also not keen on subtlety. A quick, convenient, stereotypical picture was needed, and the "sisters" certainly paint that. There seems to be more of a platform for the angry disenchanted Muslim female. Male exiles from the faith do not seem to attract the same sympathetic open-armed treatment as the damsel in distress who has liberated herself from the shackles.

The most prominent of the "refuseniks", Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Irshad Manji and Wafa Sultan have caused a stir for allegedly being "brave enough" to criticise Islam and nail their colours to the west's mast of values. Each, in her own way, has either deliberately or inadvertently (but inevitably), placed herself in an antithetic position to the religion and the religion's followers; realistically, focusing on a lesbian, an atheist and a secularist "who does not believe in the supernatural" - all of them earnestly seeking to bring about reform in Islam - is a self-defeating exercise.

For me, as a Muslim female, the three women all represent false dawns. Wafa Sultan's debut on al-Jazeera , where she bleated hysterically about the irredeemable retardation of the Islamic faith, made her conservative Muslim opponent seem positively temperate. What is to be gained from this comprehensive assault other than an alienation of those whom you are allegedly trying to reform?

Hirsi Ali has made a spiritual decision to reject all religion but preoccupies herself solely with the "defeat of Islam" to the exclusion of other monotheistic religions.

Irshad Manji mocks and calls the chador a "condom", while claiming to have taken the harder path of changing Islam from within.

Even the titles of their seminal works sound confrontational and antagonistic: Infidel (Ali), The Trouble with Islam Today (Manji), and Sultan's upcoming The Escaped Prisoner; When God is a Monster. If one has a genuine desire to expose Islam's ills and reform the religion, that is not only legitimate but commendable, but in marketing oneself as a Crusader speaking on behalf of the mute Muslim millions (but to a predominantly Western audience and rarely engaging positively with the Muslim community) there is more than a hint of self-promoting opportunism.

I have nothing but admiration for those who shoulder the risks involved in taking on one's family, culture and heritage irrespective of faith, but media-courting one-woman-roadshows pitting themselves against the Muslim world do little more than create western media darlings. Furthermore, the (sometimes faux) extremity of their views spoils the appetite for more nuanced, considered, opinion. So, you are a young disfranchised Muslim female but have had no epiphanic realisation that Islam is misguided and evil? You have no bite-size catalogue of atrocities, no stereotypical anecdotes of abusive overbearing men, no death threats, no fatwas? Move on, there's nothing to see.

The "sisters" have set the mould and any address that is not predicated on a complete acceptance of western values and a rejection - nay, abhorrence - of Muslim ones is too dilute, too bland for the numbed palate.

I should have a natural synergy with these women but I am appalled at how cavalierly they have appropriated the very limited opportunity to capture attention and raise awareness; how they merely ride the zeitgeist and milk it for all it's worth. Their personal histories exhibit a disturbing ruthless tendency to twist half-truths into a media-friendly tale of woe.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali's account (the particulars of which have fallen under serious doubt) chronicles many stereotypical buzz-stories, including genital mutilation and an unhappy arranged marriage, and culminating in a fatwa on her head.

Wafa Sultan recounts a tale of witnessing an assassination with a convenient "God is Great" soundtrack (denied by others who were there at the time).

This chameleonism offends me. Their abuse of the religion and its mores is unconstructive and gratuitous, reminiscent of usage of the "n" word by black people, still offensive, unnecessary and - above all - counterproductive. Manji and Hirsi claim to be insiders but have no understanding of Arab culture and how it complements and colours Islam. They all view (or at least present) Islam and the Muslim world as one obsidian monolith of submission and ignorance.

There is a paucity of credible, reasoned argument when it comes to the discourse between Islam and the west. Therefore when voices are heard, it is a tragic waste that they are pitched at a hysterical shriek supporting an irreconcilable "clash of civilisations" paradigm. What do these enlightened, brave souls hope to achieve? What end is justifying these means? If the ultimate goal is to capture the attention of strategic partners in the Muslim world in order to bring about reform, they are estranging the very people who have standing and influence in the community. Rather a fundamental miscalculation by such intelligentsia.

What is most exasperating is that due to the intense media coverage and exposure of Hirsi et al, Arabs/Muslims have been so antagonised that other Muslim women, passionate about their cause but more moderate in their discourse, struggle to be heard without either falling under suspicion or being expected pathetically to appeal to western advocacy.

The essence of the refuseniks' campaigns is a feminist one, women's rights in Islam being the most inflammatory and least defensible of the repertoire of grievances. An ironic side-effect is that they have robbed the Muslim woman of her independence and free will, pigeonholing and victimising her as a "Caged Virgin". It is undeniable that much needs to be said about the state of women in Arab/Muslim society and this needs to be done delicately, responsibly and with sensitivity to diversity in culture, heritage and religious practice.

The vanguard of reform in Islam is a pious middle class, slightly suspicious of the west but capable of free and subtle thought. Engaging with those who can best bring about change in the Arab and Muslim world is difficult enough without western audiences desensitised to all except the most extreme of anti-Islam views, and Muslim audiences disillusioned by telegenic articulate women cynically exploiting the naivety and polarisation of a terrorised post-9/11 world.

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