The pain of a woman
I read a story today about a 16-year old wife in Afghanistan who set herself on fire to try and escape the abuse that her husband and mother-in-law inflicted on her on a daily basis. She was married off when she was 14, and the abuse started on her wedding night. It didn't get better even after she gave birth to a boy. Apparently it is becoming more and more common for women to try to kill themselves this way in countries like Afghanistan or Pakistan. The clincher - when she gets out of the hospital in a couple of months she will be returning to her husband.
Can you imagine living that way. Having little choice in what happens to you. Being treated like a piece of garbage. Not being able to express yourself in any way. Saying no is not an option. This is what scares me about what is happening in the world today - the Muslim extremists are trying to infiltrate every country in this world to "take over" and impose their Islamic ideology on mankind. They hate the West because they blame all evils on giving women the right to do things. And to speak. And yet time and time again, history has shown that if you give women more power and equality then the world is a better place to live in.
From what I can see (in my narrow perspective perhaps) we are caught in a vicious cycle. Poverty breeds extremists who have nothing to lose and much hatred in their hearts. Women are treated like dirt whose one main use is to reproduce. They reproduce and overpopulate the world .... and too many people stretches our resources and causes poverty.
An end in sight? I doubt it. Mankind is it's own worst enemy.
posted by Marta at
6:47 pm
3 Comments:
No kidding. I've always said we need more women in power politics positions; you can bet your ass we'd see more spending on roads, schools and hospitals in developing countries than spending on tanks and military personnel.
And we women need to stand up for our sisters: we're at what, 54% of the world's population? That's more than half by my count.
11:34 pm
While I generally agree with you, I really doubt that poverty breeds extremists - not if the 9/11 hijackers, Osama himself is from an extremely wealthy family, and the recent bombers in London - all from well to do families with good educations etc. However these creeps use poorly educated (and therefore poor people) to do their bidding. You are right that the main drive behind their cause is a hatred for the "western' way of life that allows women to be full participants in life and to have control of their own lives (most women do not take advantage of it, but that is another topic). What really scares me is people in the countries like Canada, US, Britian who go out of their way to make excuses for Islamist extremists usually putting the fault at the feet of the Western world. I make no apoligies for our way of life - while there are many things I don't approve of, there is way more good things than bad.
12:27 pm
Good points anonymous (whoever you are ...). You think that Osama would do a suicide mission? Nope. Like you said, there needs to be backers with $, but the dirty work is done by people whose basic human rights aren't being met on a regular basis (food, water, shelter, etc.). They have nothing to lose.
5:03 pm
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