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... was only nine years old! Her organs were not yet fully developed and having sex with a fifty-year-old man must have been very painful for the little girl, not to mention damaging to her body. While Muhammed took four wives, he discouraged his son in law from taking a second wife, saying that it may hurt his daughter. Everyone has his or her own flaws, but since Muhammed is claiming to be the prophet of Allah you would think he would practice what he preaches. If he tells his son in law to only have one wife, then he should only have one wife.
Imagine how different the Muslim religion would be if Muhammed only had one wife. He would not have had as many daughters, polygamy would not be a part of the modern day religion, and many other events would have happened differently, or not happened at all. On page 83 Muhammed tailors the Muslim religion to his own needs. He wanted to marry the wife of his adopted son, but that would have been considered incest. So, conveniently enough, Allah spoke to Muhammed and told him that it was a mistake for Muslims to consider adoption as creating the same ties as blood kin which allowed Muhammed to have his way and marry his adopted sons wife.
The whole thing seems a little corrupted to me. A typical house in the Islamic world is described in chapter five. The house gave nothing away from the street. Its huge iron gate shut out the world completely, securing the family's privacy within.
Privacy is a big deal in Islam because men arent allowed to see women unless the women are dressed in chador. Many times girls werent allowed to play outside because there might be boys out there (p 102). For women who convert to Muslim, these restrictions can be hard to get used to. Margaret, a woman Geraldine had met during her travels, had converted to Muslim and said that because Im a convert, I have to do everything better than a born Muslim just to convince them Im not still a dirty infidel. Jihad Is For Women, Too is about womens movements in Islam. A group of women called the Abu Society for the Awakening of Women dealt with educating women and teaching them to read.
In my opinion that is the best thing they can do to help. Education is the answer. Think about it, women are segregated, looked down upon, beaten, and forced to deal with their husbands other wives, why? Because they are told that the Koran says so. Well, if they are taught to read then they can read the Koran for themselves and they can read and write literature for other women who will join the fight for better treatment of women. Jihad is the term for holy war, but violence is not all that the term includes.
Jihad is also teaching of faith, or spreading the word through an exemplary life (p 109). That is what the women need to do, educate eachother. Women involved in the jihads lead to women in the military. Women in the military lead to womens feelings of equality to men (which was not always accepted by their families), it also lead to womens rights such as the right to own and inherit land, it also lead to the ban of genital mutilation.
Its about time that some positive changes started for women, Im just sad that it took until 1994 for it to happen. The Getting of Wisdom is a chapter about education opportunities opening up for women. Universities opened up and girls no longer relied on their mothers to teach them how to be a good Muslim woman. Now they were being taught history and reading and as I said before, education is the key to change. Women came back from studying abroad with new views and experiences and that can be quite refreshing after having a whole life of seclusion and shelter from experiences that would enrich their lives and help them grow. The women who come home feel like they have traveled backwards in time (p 152) and if it were me, I would think that is not a positive thing because once they have seen how life could be they are not going to want to go back to their original ways.
Women certainly do take advantage of the the getting of wisdom and they use that wisdom to take on new responsibilities, including jobs. Risky Business acknowledges that sometimes men just cant do everything by themselves. If a man cannot gain enough income his wife may also go out and get a job. However there are three main rules regarding this situation and they are as follows: 1. The husband has the right to terminate the wifes working whenever he deems it necessary. 2. He has the right to object to any job if he feels that it would expose his wife to any harm, seduction or humiliation. 3.
The wife has the right to discontinue working whenever she pleases (p 170). I think it is great that men realize that women are capable of having jobs, but it stinks that they can tell their wife to quit at any time. It seems that the Muslim men dont want their wives to become independent at all, they have been holding their wives back for years and continue to hold them back. Slowly but surely, however, women are gaining ground in the workplace and in politics. Its been a rough road for Muslim women in politics.
It was only after the Gulf War that women in Kurdistan were allowed to vote for representatives, and in many places, such as Kuwait women could not vote, nor could they rally because Muslim extremists objected to the sound of a female voice at a mixed gathering (p 184). These extremists need to get over it and realize that women wont be held back anymore. If they were willing to compromise, Im sure a happy medium could be found between the extremists and the women. They need to realize that women have good ideas for politics and they can make a difference. Women have been making changes for years.
One of their greatest accomplishments in my opinion was getting polygamy banned in Islamic countries. There were also men who helped women gain government access, such as Anwar Sadat, who set up quotas to get more women in government (p 189). In addition to becoming more involved in government, women also became more involved in sports. Women argued that the Koran states You shall excel in all respects if you are believers and that should apply to sports, including womens sports. And so begins the Muslim Womens Games, where only women are in the stands and male coaches have to wait outside. I agree that women should be allowed to participate in sports.
It makes me sad though, that their fathers and brothers and husbands cannot watch them because they are not fully covered while competing. It is a step in the right direction though. While women may have gained ground in politics and sports, the opposite began to happen in the entertainment industry. Women began to retire from belly dancing, singing and acting to put on the hijab and become good Muslims. By the spring of 1992 the unthinkable had happened; the musicals with dancing that had enlivened the nightly celebrations of Ramadan were banned as un-Islamic, depriving hundreds of artists of work (p 213). With all the controversy about dancing, the author decides to check out the Egyptian dancers and tries to learn what they do.
I think that her learning their dance is a way of her trying to appreciate their culture and customs and to experience it first hand. She is a woman who tries not to be ignorant of the Islamic traditions, and by experiencing things first hand she is better able to write about them and educate other people. I also think that her dancing in that nightclub in Egypt was for herself, so she could prove that she could do it. She did prove that she could dance to the beat of A Different Drummer. One of the perks of traveling all over the Middle East and meeting a lot of people is that you become well known. Geraldine Brooks certainly did her research for this book, and my favorite part is at the end when Salman Rushdie comes to her house for lunch.
His book, Satanic Verses, caused so much turmoil that he was actually sentenced to death. Luckily he fled and went into hiding for years. It must have been such an honor to have that man sit in her house and acknowledge her work. Another thing that I would imagine could be frustrating at times is understanding something that many people do not know about. When she goes to the trial of the Muslim man who killed his wife she is able to see the honor killing from the husbands point of view and from the jurys point of view. Im sure it is hard to watch the ignorant jury sentence the man for something that is a part of his culture.
What I have learned by reading this book is that Muslim women have a long road ahead of them until they can achieve equality to men. However, these women are strong and are already taking steps in the right direction by getting educated, by getting involved in politics, entertainment, and sports. Mt final thought can be summed up with one sentence from the conclusion. It is easy to see the grim figures in their heavy shrouds as symbols of whats wrong rather than whats right with women and Islam (p 233). Bibliography: This was written about the book Nine Parts of Desire by Geraldine Brooks.
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Research essay sample on Son In Law Point Of View
