‘Equal rights for women’

Other Voices

SBy Ahmad Al-Sarraf

ixty years down memory lane, I remember my first thought of the superficiality of what was taught to us in school as not in line with my thinking and concept, in spite of all that simplicity of my thought and concept. It was an optional beginning for a different path from my peers. The difference first appeared with the educational and official attitude towards women, which turned my attention more than anything else.

Although almost six decades have passed since the semi- primitive cultural shock I experienced, the public attitude towards women remains the same, and we observe it in the number of ways as we hear such as this woman is equal to ten men, or they are mentally deficient, or so and so is the sister of men, or that a man cried like a woman and many others, which shows the inferior status we chose for women, and the silence of most or all of them to this humiliating situation which perhaps is waiting for ‘the first man’ to stand up and object this notion.

When the last king of Andalusia (Abu Abdullah Muhammad XII) was forced to leave Granada, he gave a final glance at his city and wept. And here his mother said to him: ‘Weep like women for a kingdom you did not protect as men should do’.

Then the issue of drawing the image of a man who does not cry and is capable of everything will be repeated opposite to the helpless woman who collapses and weeps at the first

Al-Sarraf

problem she faces. This is proven wrong by the world’s leading leaders, in the East and the West.

There is no doubt that in ancient times a woman was considered inferior to man, but over time large parts of the world were able to escape this view of women, but we still suffer from such an outlook in our world.

Many believe that Islam has changed the status of women at the beginning of the message, and this is true, but as she has remained ever since the only one in the world that has not witnessed any change in the provisions of Islamic law related to her life and dignity. If the attitude towards women is true, what is the explanation for the success of women in various fields and their defeat of men – women such as Margaret Thatcher, Angela Merkel and Indira Gandhi?

Time passes and our intellectual laziness increases day by day, and our human backwardness in on the decline all because of our humiliating attitude towards women which is seen being as something only used at the time of elections.

This inferior view must be changed, and women should be equal with men, and this day will come to us whether we like it or not. We cannot ignore this fact at a time when it will be very useful to recognize the matter now and her equality with men in dignity, pay, respect and social status and look at her as a human being with full intellectual capabilities, no less no more than men of understanding and respect.

For decades, women around the world have been fighting for their rights. Women have succeeded almost everywhere except in ‘our world’, where they have made little progress. For example, look at Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Egypt, Iraq and other similar nations.

habibi.enta1@gmail.com