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My cousin is a doctor in rural Pakistan. When she diagnosed women w breast cancer, they became afraid because their neighbours and family will think that they got breast cancer as a curse for unveiling their breasts to someone. Consequently they don't get treatment & die.
Once in a while it's worth remembering how awful women's lives are and have been for centuries upon centuries, and then maybe one can gain an inkling of an appreciation of why some women might "overreact" to the slightest hint of misogyny.
It's worth remembering how religious myths, eg curses and ideas of God's justice, can be absorbed into misogynistic justifications.
Inability to have children is often considered the women's "fault" in South Asia. If a man is infertile, he will simply remarry, as it is presumed that it is the woman's fault. Male infertility is not punished. Women's (non-existent) infertility is.
The sex of a child is also often considered to be the women's responsibility. If a couple repeatedly has daughters, the man may remarry in order to have sons. Needless to say, this doesn't work, as sperm is the major (though not sole) factor in sex determination.
A Caucasian woman in Canada told a group of healthcare workers about her South Asian female patient who pretended to be more sick than she actually was, so that she didn't have to go home and have to return to cooking/cleaning. Her husband refused to do it.
But please, continue to lecture women about how we are too sensitive & catastrophize. On the Day of Judgment, God will punish you and every other sexist man, because He has stated that He has made you accountable for how you treat us.
Please, continue to think that's because of your inherent superiority, rather than your innate weakness. So weak that your powerful misogyny will make you powerless to stop yourself from God's eternal Wrath.
Be terrified of eternal and unrelenting punishment.
God knows you have made us afraid our whole earthly lives. Who do you think you are fooling with your pseudo-Islamic justifications of misogyny?
God knows you have made us afraid our whole earthly lives. Who do you think you are fooling with your pseudo-Islamic justifications of misogyny?
(TW: sexual assault)
I am sorry to keep posting these, but it is important that people know.
Women are sometimes murdered by their familiar for having been raped if it is discovered. This "dishonourable" fact is discovered upon her becoming pregnant.
I am sorry to keep posting these, but it is important that people know.
Women are sometimes murdered by their familiar for having been raped if it is discovered. This "dishonourable" fact is discovered upon her becoming pregnant.
Sometimes a groom is given a white cloth for his wedding night to test if his bride's hymen breaks as a sign of her virginity. If she does not bleed, he may divorce her-the merciful option-or subject her to violence. (Yet hymens can break for various non-sexual reasons.)
Women are fed better if they are pregnant with or breastfeeding a son. However, if they are pregnant with a daughter, they will be ridiculed, mocked, or abused. Sometimes they are so abused that they miscarry. They will suffer from malnutrition, as will their daughters.
Women will be "encouraged" (forced) to keep having children, years on end, until/unless they can deliver a boy. They will often have 7+ children to this end. This so weakens them that they often suffer from uterine rupture, which can lead to death & significantly harm the baby.
Women are taught that their husbands are "majazi khuda," i.e. a manifestation or route to God. If they do not please their husbands - remember, the same husbands who will burn you if you don't give them dowry - then they will go to Hell.
If more educated women begin to engage with Islam & begin to assert their Islamically-mandated rights, their husbands may start ridiculing them or even preventing them from learning about Islam further because it is "disrupting the balance" & "breaking apart the family."
Women: learn your Islamic rights & demand them. We have to make our rights a SOCIAL NORM. We have the RIGHT to work. We have the RIGHT to divorce. We have the RIGHT to refuse to marry someone. We have the RIGHT to refuse sex. Keep advocating no matter how b**chy you come across.
Write whatever the heck you want in your Nikah nama (marriage contract). Write down that he can't marry again, that you have the option to work, that you have the right to khula. If he doesn't want to sign it, it's his loss.
Men & their families are entitled to 0.00 dowry in Islam. You don't have to give them a penny. He HAS to give you a dowry. Make it as high as you want. If he or your parents dissuade you, know that that is AGAINST ISLAM.
If some Mullah or man tells you that your dowry should be the same as Hazrat Fatima's and should be like 28 rupees or some other pathetic amount, ignore them. They will be punished by God for their lies in His name.
Educated Muslim women are powerful; we have some control over our destinies. We have to set social norms that protect ALL women. Seize your rights.
"Recently there was a man who was in a motorbike accident with his wife; he told people not to touch his injured wife to help her. He was injured himself, but she could die as long as no random man touched her." https://mobile.twitter.com/taimoorr26/status/1200112359748120578
On Islamic sexual ethics within oppressive cultural norms. Stop believing that parts of Islamic rulings can be siloed from the general context and harmony that they are presumed to exist within. https://twitter.com/winnie4prez/status/1200177517782548480?s=20
To every woman who has been told that she is required to have sex with her husband in Islam, otherwise she is cursed:
The mindset of hating women - to the extent that in pre-Islamic Arabia, the Arabs would bury their baby daughters alive (!) - is severely criticised in Islam and the Holy Quran. Islam ended that practice, yet cultures continue to keep it alive, metaphorically if not literally.
Muslim cultures will absorb a lot of Islamic practices and ethos into cultural practises. Indeed, enormous cultural diversity united by religious belief and ethos is one of the most remarkable features of the Muslim world.
But we still have some way to go to internalizing and exemplifying Islamic principles regarding women. Misogyny is buried deep in cultural practices and mindsets.
