Quote:
Originally Posted by charity
in regards to oppression, murder was never on the subject. murder is not about oppression, that is some other human sickness irrelevant to culture or religion. yes yes i know there are fundamentalist and extremist who exercise murder or death as part of some religious doctrine, i'm not talking about "those" people. crazies exist everywhere.
all i'm saying is wearing head gear, made to cover up in public and different cultural/religious customs does not make for oppression. like i tried to say sometimes it is a sacrifice, willingly made in devotion to ones faith, family, and culture. these are things americans cannot understand.
dont get me wrong, if a woman chose to assert her independence from faith, family, and culture, she should have that right. anyone should. but the fact is for any given woman in the ME, in any number of situations, each decision to practice these customs or each decision to rebel against their own culture is a personal one. there are so many factors involved that NO ONE can wrap up a single culture into one and say all these women are oppressed. i have met, i have seen, i have known ME women...they are VERY spirited, VERY.
have you ever tried to give a cat a bath? thats a woman in general. they cant be forced to do too much against their will for too long. they just cant unless they too can benefit or see the advantage to their situation. maybe that is naive, i dont know.
|
As far as I'm concerned, legal murder
is oppression. And the legal requirement to cover one's head, is part of an oppressive system common in primarily Muslim countries. I
never said "all ME women are oppressed", or "all ME are spiritless". But parts of Islam (like parts of Christianity) are regularly twisted to support oppressive, unfair legal systems. The system is oppressive, even if not all within it are downtrodden.
I'm a big fan of women wearing whatever they want on their heads...or not. I regularly wore headscarves for YEARS, and I was not oppressed...because I was free to wear them (or not) as I chose. Likewise, the Muslim women I've worked with in the past were not legally oppressed, because they were free to wear their hijab in public, and at work. I understand the choice to wear (or not to wear) a headscarf, even though I'm American.
But when it becomes a legal requirement (or a practical requirement, to avoid harassment), and that's only the beginning of the restrictions on women, it's part of oppression.
Because the restrictions and unfair treatment never stop at mandated hijab.