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medpundit |
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Friday, November 24, 2006"Your honor, I am not here to apologize, for I cannot apologize for things I did not do and for crimes I did not commit," he told Judge Mark Hannen. "The state has criminalized these basic Muslim behaviors. Attacking traditional Muslim behaviors was the focal point of the prosecution," he said. Are these really "traditional muslim behaviors?" Do women who grow up in this kind of environment just assume that they are less than fullly human, that the natural order of the world has men at the pinnacle and women are merely their possessions? Or does the human spirit naturally chafe against the bondage? This week's JAMA has a piece by a woman physician which suggests it chafes: What is uncommon, and of great significance to me, is that my Arab husband would sit down to listen to his wife's opinion with the utmost respect and thoughtful consideration. ..From the moment I was born, my freedom was withdrawn, my hands were cuffed, and I was placed under the custody of whichever man was defined at each stage of my life to bear my responsibility, starting with my father (or if he had been deceased, a brother, uncle, cousin, or even a district representative), followed by my husband, then my son, and so on, but never for the duration of my existence be capable of making my own decisions. I needed permission to go to school, to go anywhere, in fact, and God forbid to travel by myself at the age of 24 to another city two hours away....I was empowered with the tools to think yet paralyzed and forbidden from expressing or acting on my thoughts. Those tools rendered me not accepting, sorrowful, and very low-spirited. She calls her essay, which unfortunately is available only with a subscription, "Capturing Life," because she has spent her brief sojourn in a free society trying to capture as much living as possible. posted by Sydney on 11/24/2006 09:58:00 PM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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