Why do you think I am oppressed?
- Thread starter Muslimwoman
- Start date
Something I find amusing is that here in the States it seems sometimes that the payoff for feminism is that women get to be even more blatantly objectified. But it's really not feminism. Real feminism is as dead as Betty Friedan, who I'm convinced will forever spin in her grave. The politics of pretty, that's what we've got.
Chris
Chris
Muslimwoman
Coexistence insha'Allah
I agree completely. Women's liberation was born from frustration and oppression, once their objectives were met the movement ceased.
Womens lib went too far and has now created a number of problems for women in the west and I speak from experience. Can you believe some Muslim people in the west (particularly USA I notice) are now using the argument that polygamy is a good thing because some women would rather concentrate on their career, so a second wife can look after her husband and children while she rakes in the bucks. Some women may be happy with that but I just can't get my head around it - so why get married and have children?
I am not advocating women should be bare foot and pregnant but I believe there is a line women have now crossed and it is going to be very hard to get back over.Salaam
N
niranjan
Guest
That is true. In India, the famous muslim singer Lucky Ali, who is married and has sibling children , married again.
Upon asked why he did it, he said that his wife has to take care of his children, and could not go with him when he has to travel abroad which leaves him unsatisfied. Hence for this reason,he decided to take a second wife .
Lucky Ali - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lucky Ali - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I wonder whether Lucky's first wife being unsatisfied herself, will have any problems in taking an another husband using Lucky's reasoning herself.
Muslimwoman
Coexistence insha'Allah
I wouldn't be allowed to post the names I would like to call people like this. The view of taking a second wife simply for reasons of lust belong to the more fundamental Muslims. Yet this man states he has tried drugs (forbidden in Islam) and he earns his living through music (the fundamentalists say music if forbidden). Perhaps I would view it differently if he was pious man but this is just a perfect example of wanting your cake and eating it. He wants the rights of a fundamentalist if it gains him something and then turns around and completely flouts the Quran. So where are all the extremist scholars and jurists when a man commits such sins? If it was a women we can all guess what would happen.
The view of these awful people Niranjan is that men are 'unable' to control their lust and women are "instructed by Allah to be patient". They always neglect to mention that men are also instructed to lower their gaze and live a life of modesty. Really if anyone wants to see dual standards in action just look at the fundamentalist side of Islam.
That said, alhamdolillah, they are a small percentage of Muslims.
N
niranjan
Guest
Muslimwoman
Coexistence insha'Allah
Do you know Niranjan, it doesn't matter how pleasant I try to be with you, you still manage to remain ignorant, aggresive, sarcastic and outrightly biased. Do your scriptures not tell you that arrogance and pride are a sin? At least I am prepared to accept the wrongdoing of some people of my faith and I spend time to try to explain misconceptions of my faith as well as spend time listening and learning. Perhaps you should try humbling yourself (unless your caste doesn't allow this), sit back and try listening or engage in real discussion rather than just running off at the mouth all the time. A one sided discussion is called a lecture!!!
N
niranjan
Guest
Ok, lets get into discussion on a logical frame of mind. And I apologize sincerely if I have hurt your feelings as you too are my sister and friend. But you see I am a bit hurt myself seeing what is clearly happening to muslim women and little girls, whom I see as my mothers and sisters as well.
And I really don't like it when someone tries to demagnify the situation by saying that it is practiced by a small section of muslims when it is not.
Any way, if possible , try to spread awareness of this and try to prevent it as much as possible.
Thanking you,
Your brother,
Niranjan.
Muslimwoman
Coexistence insha'Allah
Niranjan
I am a woman and a mother (albeit to children who are not my own) do you not think it hurts me deeply that these women and girls are being treated this way? Do you not think it offends me deeply that any sister in the world is being treated in such a degrading way? Can you even imagine what I think of these 'men' and what I would be capable of if you gave me an AK47 and pointed them out to me in the street? I would happily go to prison for the remainder of my life or even be killed if I could stop just one woman or girl from going through this pain and I do not say that lightly. I would certainly kill, if I knew for certain who had done some of these things, normally I do not like violence but I see no alternative with some of these men, it would be better if they didn't walk the face of the earth.
It will be of little consequence to you but it also deeply pains me the way they use and twist my religion for their own desires, they have the audacity to mention the name of G-d when they commit these crimes and I do not believe G-d will forgive them their crimes or the use of His name in such vanity.
Perhaps in your country it is a majority of Muslims I really do not know. Saudi is another country with a lot to answer for. Certainly from what I read the attrocities against women in your country seem prevelant and sustained, as they do in Saudi. But there are 1.5 billion Muslims in the world and yes a vast majority are peaceful and would never dream of doing these awful things, however they are outside your country so outside your range of vision. Quite frankly if I lived in your country I would no doubt feel as you do.
All I have been asking you to do is not judge every Muslim the same way. Perhaps that is difficult for you because you are faced with these issues every day in your country? But please try and I promise I shall continue with my work to bring these attoricites to the attention of the world. If you ever hear of anything you want posted on websites or emails sent in protest to your government just PM them to me, I will be happy to do everything that I possibly can. I will not assist with propaganda against Islam but if it is a genuine issue of a woman being harmed in the name of Islam I shall do what I can.
Salaam
N
niranjan
Guest
And what will you do if Islamic fundamentalists themselves are doing these things?
What would you have done when the turks during the assyrian genocide were raping the assyrian women and little girls relentlessly and putting them in their harem, (which is an another name for brothel)?
Well , we can't wait till judgement day for justice. As Emerson said, "If a man cannot discipline himself , the world will be forced to discipline him."
You should not in any way think that we will let these guys off easily for rape, murder,paedophilia, and human rights violations .
Muslimwoman
Coexistence insha'Allah
Niranjan
This is the last time I will post to you. Everytime I feel you accept I am not a monster for being a Muslim and I try to be nice to you, you just throw Muslim attrocities at me. Yes they happen NO I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THEM.
Goodbye and salaam
This is the last time I will post to you. Everytime I feel you accept I am not a monster for being a Muslim and I try to be nice to you, you just throw Muslim attrocities at me. Yes they happen NO I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THEM.
Goodbye and salaam
N
niranjan
Guest
I have not stated that you were responsible for them, did I ! And I have never stated that you were a monster for being a muslim or something, and if it were so, I would not have mentioned my muslim bhaji(aunt), or addressed you as my sister or addressed muslim women and little girls as my mothers and sisters.
I was only showing the ludicrousness of your saying that you will take up a rifle and shoot these guys down, when these guys can easily do the same thing to you. In fact they are much better trained than you are.
Fight them with your pen aggressively. You will be more effective in that way. Take this as your jihad, the true jihad , in my opinion.
Vajradhara
One of Many
Namaste Muslimwoman,
thank you for the post.
whilst that is certainly the case, the fact remains that many Muslims derive a great deal of their guidance from the various written Hadith chains, Bukhari seems to be a very popular one.
"chinese whispers"? this phrase carries a certain connotation that i would like to understand before i respond. what do you mean, exactly, by this phrase?
well.. it is easy enough for four views to be correct, it simply depends on their perspective.. in any event, this is one of the issues that makes it difficult for a non Muslim to discourse about Islam, without a central orthodoxy, as it were, it is quite muddled about the correct view within Islam and so forth.
the most often offered argument is that the United Nations took the land from the Palestinians and, therefore, it should be returned. i find this argument to be a sound argument on its face, however, we must be clear on this.. if we are using historical precedent to determine which people the land belongs to, we must conclude that the land belongs to the Jewish people since it was their land before the Romans took and renamed it to Palestine. Further, the Persians enforced a Diaspora upon the Jewish people and removed them from their land only to be replaced by others.
on a more practical slant.. it is quite clear that Jordan and Syria have sufficient land to create a sepearte Palestinian state, if they would so choose. why they have not done so is certainly suspect, in my mind.
it was quite amazing, all in all. to be frank with you, my only awareness of any political issues would occur when we were evactuated to England or France and even then it seemed sort of unreal. we were evacuated about 8 times whilst i lived there.. during one of those times, the Libyan government refused to let my mother leave the country.. my brother and I were in England for almost three months before she could get out and join us. what a strange time that was!
overall, my experience was positive; though that does not mean that there weren't terrible things that happened.... i was attacked by a gang of arab youths and beaten with shovels and pick axes, pelted with stones and generally beaten pretty badly, it is possible that some of the skeletal structure issues that i'm dealing with today stem from that encounter.
the town, itself, was the site of several battles during world war 2 and, as such, there were artifcats from the conflict which one could easily find.. at the end of my street, upon the hill, was a machine gun nest, called a "pillbox" that had been hit by a tank shell which caused the roof to collapse. we would climb around on that thing for hours and hours.. due to the oil industry, there was alot of pipe that ended up not being used and was stacked near the beach... so we'd go play in those as they filled with sand.
acutally, i was saying that it would be agreeable for us to have different views on how the issue of immorality should be addressed. my views different than what is oft found as the Islamic view for handling these things, which is probably as we'd expect seeing as how i'm not Muslim
indeed. one often imputes ones own failings and views unto the whole of humanity and in doing so often draws inaccurate conclusions about a great many things. i would agree, i suspect this person was unable to control their own thoughts and thus is trying to excuse them by laying the responsibility for them on someone else. though i'm pretty confident that, even in Islam, such things are highly dubious and not likely to succeed.
this is an issue raised by men that are guilty of raping a woman and are seeking to excuse their behavior.
if you were to see a jar full of money sitting on someones table, even if they leave the room, you should not take it. If you do, it is not the other person that is responsible for your theft, it is you and you alone.
i find the entire argument invalid and without merit, i.e. that the way a woman dresses provokes a man to commit a crime.
therein lies the rub, doesn't it?
they wouldn't be Easter bonnets then, would they? in any event, it would certainly depend on the government. if you lived in, say Burma, you'd do what the government instructed or you'd be killed... if you lived in, say the Dominican Republic, you would probably make your own choice based on your own moral compass.
that said, there are plenty of Christian types that wear head coverings all the time, the Quakers and Amish come to mind.
many beings believe that their deity cares about their clothing, what it looks like, how it fits them, what it covers and what it does not. i have, personally, found this feature of deistic traditions to be very strange and seems to be more of a matter of control over the populace by religious authority than anything else.
metta,
~v
thank you for the post.
Muslimwoman said:
whilst that is certainly the case, the fact remains that many Muslims derive a great deal of their guidance from the various written Hadith chains, Bukhari seems to be a very popular one.
"chinese whispers"? this phrase carries a certain connotation that i would like to understand before i respond. what do you mean, exactly, by this phrase?
well.. it is easy enough for four views to be correct, it simply depends on their perspective.. in any event, this is one of the issues that makes it difficult for a non Muslim to discourse about Islam, without a central orthodoxy, as it were, it is quite muddled about the correct view within Islam and so forth.
the most often offered argument is that the United Nations took the land from the Palestinians and, therefore, it should be returned. i find this argument to be a sound argument on its face, however, we must be clear on this.. if we are using historical precedent to determine which people the land belongs to, we must conclude that the land belongs to the Jewish people since it was their land before the Romans took and renamed it to Palestine. Further, the Persians enforced a Diaspora upon the Jewish people and removed them from their land only to be replaced by others.
on a more practical slant.. it is quite clear that Jordan and Syria have sufficient land to create a sepearte Palestinian state, if they would so choose. why they have not done so is certainly suspect, in my mind.
it was quite amazing, all in all. to be frank with you, my only awareness of any political issues would occur when we were evactuated to England or France and even then it seemed sort of unreal. we were evacuated about 8 times whilst i lived there.. during one of those times, the Libyan government refused to let my mother leave the country.. my brother and I were in England for almost three months before she could get out and join us. what a strange time that was!
overall, my experience was positive; though that does not mean that there weren't terrible things that happened.... i was attacked by a gang of arab youths and beaten with shovels and pick axes, pelted with stones and generally beaten pretty badly, it is possible that some of the skeletal structure issues that i'm dealing with today stem from that encounter.
the town, itself, was the site of several battles during world war 2 and, as such, there were artifcats from the conflict which one could easily find.. at the end of my street, upon the hill, was a machine gun nest, called a "pillbox" that had been hit by a tank shell which caused the roof to collapse. we would climb around on that thing for hours and hours.. due to the oil industry, there was alot of pipe that ended up not being used and was stacked near the beach... so we'd go play in those as they filled with sand.
acutally, i was saying that it would be agreeable for us to have different views on how the issue of immorality should be addressed. my views different than what is oft found as the Islamic view for handling these things, which is probably as we'd expect seeing as how i'm not Muslim
indeed. one often imputes ones own failings and views unto the whole of humanity and in doing so often draws inaccurate conclusions about a great many things. i would agree, i suspect this person was unable to control their own thoughts and thus is trying to excuse them by laying the responsibility for them on someone else. though i'm pretty confident that, even in Islam, such things are highly dubious and not likely to succeed.
this is an issue raised by men that are guilty of raping a woman and are seeking to excuse their behavior.
if you were to see a jar full of money sitting on someones table, even if they leave the room, you should not take it. If you do, it is not the other person that is responsible for your theft, it is you and you alone.
i find the entire argument invalid and without merit, i.e. that the way a woman dresses provokes a man to commit a crime.
therein lies the rub, doesn't it?
they wouldn't be Easter bonnets then, would they? in any event, it would certainly depend on the government. if you lived in, say Burma, you'd do what the government instructed or you'd be killed... if you lived in, say the Dominican Republic, you would probably make your own choice based on your own moral compass.
that said, there are plenty of Christian types that wear head coverings all the time, the Quakers and Amish come to mind.
many beings believe that their deity cares about their clothing, what it looks like, how it fits them, what it covers and what it does not. i have, personally, found this feature of deistic traditions to be very strange and seems to be more of a matter of control over the populace by religious authority than anything else.
metta,
~v
Muslimwoman
Coexistence insha'Allah
quote=Vajradhara;105269]whilst that is certainly the case, the fact remains that many Muslims derive a great deal of their guidance from the various written Hadith chains, Bukhari seems to be a very popular one.[/quote]
Certainly and I myself gain guidance from some hadiths but I am very sceptical as to the authenticity of some, even collected by Bukhari. Bukhari collected hundreds of thousands of hadiths and by a process of elimination collected together just 7,000 (if memory serves me correctly) which he classified. He eliminated those he felt were down right lies, little white lies and very weak. However we still have things such as "a group of monkeys arrested another monkey for adultery and stoned it to death and I helped". This is sheer nonsense and I cannot take it seriously. My view is that I search the books of hadith and accept those that are in line with the Quran and reject those that are not. The idea, to me, that you must follow the hadiths blindly and accept all of them as factual is just plain silly.
Certainly and I myself gain guidance from some hadiths but I am very sceptical as to the authenticity of some, even collected by Bukhari. Bukhari collected hundreds of thousands of hadiths and by a process of elimination collected together just 7,000 (if memory serves me correctly) which he classified. He eliminated those he felt were down right lies, little white lies and very weak. However we still have things such as "a group of monkeys arrested another monkey for adultery and stoned it to death and I helped". This is sheer nonsense and I cannot take it seriously. My view is that I search the books of hadith and accept those that are in line with the Quran and reject those that are not. The idea, to me, that you must follow the hadiths blindly and accept all of them as factual is just plain silly.
Vajradhara
One of Many
Namaste Muslimwoman,
thank you for the post.
that seems like a sensible approach to take.
it would certainly depend on the content of the discussion i should think. we are all, in one way or another, expressing the correctess of our views according to our understanding.. i submit that we do not possess the understanding of others regardless of how lucid they may make their points.
setting up ideology against biology and a conflict will arise without fail, in my view. i'm never a fan of a 'one size fits all' approach to moral or religious teachings.. each being is unique and requires just what they need.. and nothing else.
you would take the money simply because someone left it out in the open?
no. in no uncertain terms. each being is responsible for their own actions and i'm fairly sure that most religious doctrines would agree with this view. does that mean that a person could not be provoked into an act of aggression? of course not.. that can, and does, happen. that does not, however, remove the responsiblity of ones actions.
since rape has nothing to do, per se, with the woman.. there's no real method that you could ascertain this. perhaps your very unattainability provoked the assailiant? there is really no way to know that you didn't contribute, in some small way... is there?
do you see how dangerous that line of thinking is??
because it is *entirely* the criminals fault, in all ways and in all cases.
sorry, i'll have none of that.
that a woman feels guilty about being the victim of a crime is certainly the result of cultural conditioning and social mores that sigmatise the victim and protect the criminal by trying to insinuate that he had "no choice" or "she was asking for it."
hmm.. well... in American history, at least, both of those groups were victims of severe persecution. if you'd like to read about how they are losing their disctintive culture and way of life, i'd be happy to find something for you.
in some cases, they are. in others they are not. blanket statements covering vast swaths of humanity are rarely informative or accurate. the view of one as being oppressed is, in my opinion, formed from a notion of some fundamental human rights... and not all beings share the same opinion regarding those rights.
metta,
~v
thank you for the post.
Muslimwoman/ said:
that seems like a sensible approach to take.
Muslimwoman[/quote said:
it would certainly depend on the content of the discussion i should think. we are all, in one way or another, expressing the correctess of our views according to our understanding.. i submit that we do not possess the understanding of others regardless of how lucid they may make their points.
setting up ideology against biology and a conflict will arise without fail, in my view. i'm never a fan of a 'one size fits all' approach to moral or religious teachings.. each being is unique and requires just what they need.. and nothing else.
you would take the money simply because someone left it out in the open?
no. in no uncertain terms. each being is responsible for their own actions and i'm fairly sure that most religious doctrines would agree with this view. does that mean that a person could not be provoked into an act of aggression? of course not.. that can, and does, happen. that does not, however, remove the responsiblity of ones actions.
since rape has nothing to do, per se, with the woman.. there's no real method that you could ascertain this. perhaps your very unattainability provoked the assailiant? there is really no way to know that you didn't contribute, in some small way... is there?
do you see how dangerous that line of thinking is??
because it is *entirely* the criminals fault, in all ways and in all cases.
sorry, i'll have none of that.
that a woman feels guilty about being the victim of a crime is certainly the result of cultural conditioning and social mores that sigmatise the victim and protect the criminal by trying to insinuate that he had "no choice" or "she was asking for it."
hmm.. well... in American history, at least, both of those groups were victims of severe persecution. if you'd like to read about how they are losing their disctintive culture and way of life, i'd be happy to find something for you.
in some cases, they are. in others they are not. blanket statements covering vast swaths of humanity are rarely informative or accurate. the view of one as being oppressed is, in my opinion, formed from a notion of some fundamental human rights... and not all beings share the same opinion regarding those rights.
metta,
~v
Muslimwoman
Coexistence insha'Allah
Sorry this thread hasn't been coming up on my User Cp, so I wasn't ignoring it.
No it is not true. The legal age limit for marriage in Egypt is 16 years. Men that have sex with children, under that age, are arrested and imprisoned regularly.
However, this is a modern concept, as most countries 1400 years ago allowed marriage and sex with young children.
Muslimwoman
Coexistence insha'Allah
Salaam Vajradhara
Of course I would not take the money but I would suggest to the owner that they should cover up the money, as they are inviting thieves to help themselves.
No it does not remove the responsibilities of ones actions. The same must be said for women. I am not talking about women who are attacked by violent men with a desire to control but men 'led' into acting violently to satisfy a sexual desire that the woman has deliberately aroused. If a woman chooses to go out half dressed, flirts like crazy and sends every 'come get me' signal in the book, in my view she has some responsibility for her actions. Am I saying the man is the victim .... no way, he should have more control but the woman has a degree of responsibility in how she acts.
May I give another example. A woman that goes to stay in a house with her friend and her friends husband. She has chosen to wear a tiny see through nightdress and parades around the house in front of the husband. Has that woman got any responsibility for any attempt the husband makes to commit adultery with her? I would say yes, she has provoked the situation. If the husband takes it one step further and crosses the line to rape, does that mean the woman did not provoke the friends husband, because it should be her right to parade around half naked in front of him?
There are two types of rapist. Violent men that commit crimes, which have nothing to do with the woman or the act of sex, it is about control. Then there is rape, which is a tense sexual situation that goes too far. It was the latter I was talking about and these sitautions are not entirely the 'criminals' fault.
I have to strongly disagree with you there. My former work dealt with rapists and their victims. I am also a victim of rape myself. Society does not generally stigmatise a 'true' rape. That being a case where a man violently attacks a random woman or child. The feelings of guilt have nothing to do with religious belief, social mores or conditioning. In these cases it tends to be self examination, trying to answer the unanswerable question "why me, what did I do to deserve that". It comes from within, in an attempt to understand what has happened to you and it never leaves you. Women that have 'provoked' a situation, which has then gone too far tend not, in my experience, to struggle with the same feelings of guilt. They often feel ashamed that their behaviour led to an attack but they usually feel more angry than guilty. They generally say the same thing "but I said no", as though that completely mitigates their prior behaviour. Yes men should take no as no but in some situations women must accept that their behaviour contributed to the situation. That does not make what the man did right in any way.
I would be very interested to read any links you could provide. Thank you.
Salaam