Women & Islam...

[anelie.]

mustardseed: i will get back to you later. I will not have access to internet for a few days and i don' t have time now to write long answers.

Ambientsound: I agree with everything you have written. Yes, I felt this emptiness but I never knew what makes people so empty. You gave me an answer.

[AmbientSound]

There are many more things that make people so empty. Part of it is being shown the fairy tale version of life, where everyone ends up "happily ever after," only to be thrust into the "real world" which appears more like a desolate wasteland of intelligence, sincerity, and charity. It's like sticking a hologram of a rose and an actual moldy banana side by side and observing the resulting relationship. You aren't actually seeing a rose, just its illusion. Nor do you smell it. But that moldy banana is quite solid and real.

I think that something is going to happen to the people who possess the greatest monetary power and wealth, in our lifetimes, which will set off a chain of events that will lead to an eventual balancing of power between those who lead and those who are led. There is a lot of talk of 2012 and there seem to be quite a few people who believe in it. 2012 marks the end of the Mayan calendar. I don't know enough about it to say whether there is relevant cause to believe in this prophecy, but it's certainly causing quite a buzz amidst a lot of people. I have seen a few documentaries about it, all of which were fascinating. It was compelling, to say the least.

[astral traveler]

I read a few quotes in there that basically say that women were created equal to men, but then why are men guardians over women?  Could guardian and protector simply mean the literal meanings of that men are supposed to protect the women, but not dominate over them?  Why in Islam, do women enjoy far fewer freedoms than men? (examples, they can not walk in public alone without a male family member... but men are allowed to walk without a female family member, men do not have to cover their bodies up like a women, men can marry 4 wives (does that mean women can marry 4 husbands too?) Men are promised virgins in heaven... do women get virgin males in heaven?)  This does not sound like the 'equality' that was quoted from the Quran....  More examples... why is a women who was raped scorned as being 'unpure' even though she is the victim? Where are her male protectors then?  Why is the burden of proof ALWAYS on the women to prove rape, and then of course the male witnesses will not tell the truth, and then the women is punished for making it up? What women would want to admit that she had been violated then?  Why do women have to worship in a separate area behind men in mosques?

as your words clearly demonstrate, women are not treated as equals within islam.  for example, in the last five years there have been 600 iraqi women who have set themselves ablaze with kerosene to protest the oppression which they receive from their men.

[AmbientSound]

There will come a day when all people are free. They already are, but they have to realize it for themselves. Freedom isn't something that somebody gives you, it's something you have to give to yourself. It comes from inside you. The realization that you are free must occur before action can be taken to persuade one's oppressor to recognize it as fact. You're not asking to be free, you're asking others to recognize that you already are free, that the possibility exists that you will make choices that they may disagree with, and that they have the same freedom. Equality is real. Status is an illusion. Even status allegedly given unto others by holy scripture and writings.

Quantum physics might seem like an obscure subject for most people, but it reveals just how much of our reality is shaped by perspective and observation.

[astral traveler]

There will come a day when all people are free. They already are, but they have to realize it for themselves.

i realize that i'm free.  i'm just waiting for my mortgage lender to come to the same level of enlightenment.

[anelie.]

Mustardseed: your did not replied to most of the points I raised in my previous message. You only talk about the disrecpet of women´s rights in Japan, but I do not think that that was the main issue in my message. But I agree with you, every eastern society, including Japan is much more traditionalist than us, and that is reflected in their behaviour to women.
You wrote that "I still think that Islam represses women, free thought and free speech and all the very things a free world is made up of."

You will find the answer in the article of the European Parliament Deputy, who spent a half of her life in the Middle East:
it isnot a perfect translation, so it does not sound like a real English, but I hope that my translation is understandable.
And by the way, as regards a part about anaphabetism, and the effort of the government to deprive the poor people of their rights and income, my husband, who is from Maroc, told me about it already many times, so it is not only one person´s point of view.

Here is the article:


Islam

The problem is not in Islam, but in the oil. Thanks to the oil incomes the regimes of the Middle East are free to ignore the requirements of the policical and economic modernization.
The scandal about the caricatures of the prophet Mohammed has worsen the relationship between the arab Middle East and Europe.  The closer look att he situation shows that islam serves only as a pretext. In fact the ruling security and military structures of the arab countries are in favour of such conflict. If we don´t exert enough pressure on them we might face in future not only  instability, but also a large military conflict.

Muslims don´t think much about their abstract God, they have a clear idea about him. Allah is unique and decides about everything. To Him belong all the will and responsibility. Islam means submission. To be a muslim  is a way of life, it is a complex of daily customs, life in a community. Common prayers, common purification, common pilgrimage to Mecca, common friday prayer, common fasting, following of the same law, family life, celebration of festive days. To be a muslim means to live a fully valued life of an islamic community.  There is no need to be afraid of islam as an ideologic phenomenon. In its essence it is not a violent, untolerant and expansive phenomenon, but on the contrary, it is an instrument of consolidation and stabilisation.  In the chaos of the collapse of the ancient empires Islam become an instrument of a calm cohabitation and flowering of many doctrines, philosophies and cultures. As a reflection of christianity and judaism that were shown as an error in communication of the real God Revelation, Islam tried to consolidate, simplify and precise the monoteistic vision of the world.  God according to the Coran is unique, has no partner, is allmighty, He has all the will and He decides everything. Islam removed the complexity of Father, Son and the Holy Ghost, just as it simplified the old-testament Prophets.

More than by the fire and the sword, Islam expanded by demographic explosion of the descendants of arab warriors (fighters?). During centuries Islam created a unique place for tolerant cohabitation of independently organised communities, that were allowed to keep their own system of law, religion, social and tax system and sanctuaries.

In the course of the centuries Islam found big inner balance. Even the slowly degrading Osman´s Empire did not evoke a need of an inner reform, analogy of protestantism. Only the fast and violent invasion of Napoleon and colonialism from the West forced the islamic masses to quickly search the answers for the questions of the modern world – victory of the foreign armies, decline of its own economy, the end of the middle-age erudition.  Muslim masses searched the defence in turning to the fundamentals, roots of their faith. When the British and the French, almost from day to day, without a calm handover of power, quitted after the second world war their dominions, it was, almost without an exeption, security and military apparatus that got the power in the concerned countries, instead of natural elites.  This security and military apparatus became a direct part of the Cold war conflict. Instead of urban, cultural and commercial elites the Middle East is until now dominated by security apparatuses and armies.

Community character, simplicity of its teachings and no separation of the religion and the State make out of Islam a very effective totalitary idelology of the early industrialization.  Allah´s teachings serve very well to the „consolidation and stabilisation“ of uneducated, unemployed, unproductive and in poverty living masses. Islam was misused as a totalitarian, mass and bolshevik ideology.

This means that contemporary Islam is not a cause, but a consequence, not a source, but a side-effect of a big  danger.  Bolshevization, radicalization and extremism of the political and social systems of the Middle East may be theoretically compared to the situation in pre-industrial Russia or to Germany humiliated by the defeat in the First World War.  It is a phenomenon that might lead to a profound and long-lasting instability of that area. That might end in a long lasting world conflict, unleashed by terrorist groups and fed by security and military systems, self-assigned  interpretors of the God´s truth, decadent feudal families and demographic pression from bedouine cultures. Since Islam is not the source of the conflict, it is neither a starting point to its solution. The only solution is a change of political systems in the Middle east.

Oil as a problem

The main source of problems is the oil. Thanks to the easy incomes from its exploitation, the developement in the Middle East stopped at the pre-industrial stage. Growing consumption of the oil caused increasing of the oil income without any requirements for modernisation and lead to the fact that the arab world stayed at the stage  of the desintegration of feudal structures. Where there is no tax, there is no need for reprezentation. In the Middle East there is even no need for the population, because the population only lowers the oil incomes of those who dominate them.  Why share it with the population they don´t need?  Why to invest in its development? Why care about its education and social, cultural, political, social security development? Why to increase its employment rate? It is only necessary to consolidate and stabilize the arab masses, to domitate them and keep them on the income of 1 to 2 euros per day.

Dependant on oil are also the  Middle East countries that do not exploite it, every year, they get, through a redistribution of the oil ressources, 22 milliards of euros.  The less dependent country is Morocco – one third of its labour force works in Europe. Stable third class, whose existence is enabled by the cultural capital and free work in the services, does not exist anywhere. Tunis lives out of the oil investment in the tourism. Security apparatus, conjunctural profiteers and  feudal families control the population with the help of  the consolidating, stabilizing, tradicionalistic, mass, even totalitarian instrument. Islam helps to dominating elites to keep the control of the oil incomes.  And that is where lies its danger.

A big number of the analphabets

The second source of the problems is the demographic explosion caused by a higher hygienic standard and development of the  health care, especially thanks to the use af the antibiotics.  Oil income ensure a very good level of the basic health care for the whole population.  Islamic prohibition of the contraception caused in the last few centuries the fact that the Middle East reaches the highest portion of the young generation in the population structure in the world.  The growth of the oil prices maybe enables the growth of the GDP, but it does not mean any growth of the expenses for education.  Arab population grows asymetrically, most people are born at the social bottom, at the income level of 1-2 euros per day.

The oil mana does not need any more investment.  The Middle East is the most retarded area in the world as regards the creation of new jobs (working posts?)  growth of the work productivity, technology modernization, and development of services, science and the system of education.  Therefore we are facing millions of analphabets, who cannot find any place for them on the job market, have no social security, no information and no influence on the politics. These social strata with the lowes social mobility in the world are kept only on the level of a life  minimum. Masses in Algeria, Lebanon, Iran, Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, as well as Palestine only confirmed that they don´t need to consolidate with the help of security systems, there is no need to  fight for  democratic right to vote. They themselves vote for the stabilisation and consolidation, that means Islam. 

The third problem lies in a fact that  in order to fulfill the role of the consolidating and stabilizing function, Islam needs an inner, as well as external conflict.  The external conflict is obvious.  The statements of the iranian president Ahmadi about the holocaust and destroying of Izrael, the case of the iranian nuclear program, misuse of the danish caricatures by the syrian secret services to start political convulsions are the clear manifestations of the support of the consolidation of the totalitarian power  of the security apparatus.  The reason is clear, to name a common external ennemy, meaning the western democratic civilizations and their representant in the Middle East -  Izrael.

The biggest inner conflict of the contemporary Middle East takes place between the controllers of the oil income and those who assume that their „natural“ right to these incomes is being taken from them.  An example par excellence is a deprivated member of a commercial Ladin family,  many leading salafists represented in the kuwait parliament or the growing number of wahhabist leaders, not to speak of Muslim brothers of a jordanian prisoner Zarqawi. In the Middle East it is the question of ensuring one´s portion on the oil income.
In order to get such power it is necessary to use all the possible means, including killing of the people whose faith is not strong enough. This model of behaviour is the same as that of the totalitarian regimes.

European responsibility

But do we realize our european responsibility for the development in the Middle East? The only solution is a prompt, clear, unconditional and hard pression on the change of the political conditions. We should focus on the observance of law, end of the economic discrimination, respect of human rights, including democracy, freedom of speach and of religion. As regards Iran, it is necessary to introduce intelligent measures: stop movement of its diplomats, to limit travelling of its prezident, unable the Iran Air to fly abroad, exclude the country from the football world championship: These are sanctions that do not destroy economy of the country and will not harm the income of the poorest. The same as regards Syria: if we put a pressure on an immediate and complete withdrawal of the syrian security from Libanon, marking the syrian-libanese border as a legal international border, the unconditional realization of the announced economic liberalization, setting free  the political prisoners, recognition of the kurdish minority, complete end of censure. With Egypt we have to negotiate the end of the numerous civil and military aids, if the prezident Mubarak does not admit false elections, if he does not permit due registration of the political parties and if he does not set free domocratic dissidents.

As regards other countries of the Middle East... (repeating the same things...) plus there should be more internships and more programs for the development of education.  Pressure should be also put on the growth of the employment rate through reinvestment of the oil incomes, supporting the internal arab commerce, construction of energetic and traffic network.

However, the real solution is only one: to limit the consumption of energy = oil. Because the level of unstability is directly proportional to the growth of unstability and big problems of the Middle East. Let´s hope that Europe will deal with climate changes. But it is the USA, who, if they want to stay the leaders of the world development, have to accept the leading role in the modern synergy politics. Fight against terrorism and with climate changes are the two sides of the same coin.

[anelie.]

ambientsound: I am not sure that it is so easy with realising that all people are free. Sometimes the reality is just too real:)
I am not much in favour of the 2012, but who knows, maybe there will be some kind  of a war... what else it should be? War can lead even to a good thing, if it weren´t for the Second world war, there would be  no European Union today, who was created in order to prevent another big european conflict. And it worked pretty well. But I like your description of the today´s world: a rose in the banana mold:)

[CFTraveler]

For the sake of clarity (for those that are reading this and are not bilingual), that the word  analphabet here means illiterate.  It's probably self- explanatory, but I thought I'd point this out. 
Very interesting article, btw.

[AmbientSound]

We are part of an evolutionary process. We struggle to be free because we must learn to let go of our old ways. Those in power, the head of our "tribes,"  must be removed from power in order for the rest of us to progress. We have the technology today to do absolutely anything we want, but the red tape and restrictions on what is allowed and what is not is what prevents this technology from being implemented to everyone's benefit. Though I tend to believe that those with the most power are also the most corrupt and evil, no matter how good they may appear to be, I cannot know for sure. I can only bear witness to the consistently atrocious decisions made by the Bush administration, which to me marks the height of this evil (so far). These corporate cronies built their own administration and hijacked America, and that's really what it comes down to. Eight years have passed and nothing has happened to them. Yet Obama, the guy who has to fix this mess, faces more death threats than any president in U.S. history! Our leaders GREATLY underestimate the importance of education.