From: phd21@seq1.keele.ac.uk (A. Jaber)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.arabic
Subject: Re: Words Feminists Do not Like!!!!
Date: 21 Jul 92 16:19:31 GMT
Reply-To: phd21@seq1.kl.ac.uk (A. Jaber)
Organization: University of Keele, England

>From: oueichek@ngulu (Ibaa Oueichek)
>
>The system may be culturally-based, but in this damned piece of land called
>the middleeast, religion has definitly had a very big influence on the culture.
>Actually, most of the pre-Islamic cultures in the Arab world have been a
>subject of continuous revisionism until the beginning of this century. 
>And "women opression" wasn't practiced before Islam in what's known now as
>Egypt, Syria, & Lebanon (don't know about norht Africa). This opression is
>a direct result of Islam, i'm more than willing to admit that it's anti
>Islamic but facts are  here, women are opressed and there are very few 
>people who care for them. 

	Dear Ibaa allow me to add some corrections. 

	The communities who lived in  Syria
	Egypt and Lebanon before Islam were of many different
	backgrounds. I can speak of my own people who were Arabs and
	still  Arabs and lived in Syria and Palestine and Lebanon before
	and After Islam. My people were Christians before Islam and
	after Islam they converted to Islam. If you check any history
	book you will know what religion the Ghasasina Arabs were.

	The practices in these communities towards women did not depend 
	on what religion the people followed. It was rather dependent on
	their life style. People who lived in harsh circumstances like
	the desert where men were needed, then men acquired a higher status
	and the society became more dominant by men. I remember seeing a
	documentary about the Inuit tribes who live around the North
	Pole who leave their new born little girls when there are too
	many of them compared with boys  on the ice to die.
	This have nothing to do with Islam but it has similarity with
	the circumstances and the life style with the people who live
	in the desert. The desert is an extreme in being harsh like the
	north pole. The Arabs before Islam were doing exactly what the
	Inuits are may be still doing now by burying their daughters
	alive.

	If we consider that Islam came to a tribal society and spread
	from their to the Urban towns of Syria Palestine and Egypt we
	can understand that many of the practices that people take today
	to be Islamic are not of any relation to Islam. They are the 
	traces of the tribal habits which Islam is trying hard to remove
	from people's life styles. Not just Islam is affected by tribal
	habits it is the same for Christianity where Christains in
	Copenhagen are not necessarily the same as those of Central
	Africa where Christianity has been adapted to fit tribal habits.
	It might be true that some tribal nations like  in Arabia or
	Persia or Afganistan like to twist Islam as they wish to fit
	their customs and habits but this does not make these twisted 
	issues as Islamic ones.

	I might accept the fact that the people of Syria and Lebanon and
	may be Egypt were less abusive to women than say now but by no
	means this could be attributed to Islam but rather to people
	acquiring other people's habits from the fact of continuous
	movement of people in the area.

	I can say that Islam has failed in a way to bring the tribal
	people to accept the fact that things should change. There was a
	a great success for Islam in the past to improve the quality
	of life  to all its subjects being men or women and I see a
	great posibility in the near future HOPEFULLY that Islam will 
	become a great moving force when its followers give loyalty only 
	to their Islam and not to their tribal habits.

>NO AND NO AND NO, again it's RELIGIOUS, and this is very visible in the
>Muslim countries which have a non-Muslim population, look at countries like
>Syria & Lebanon, the first educated women after the independance were
>definitly not Muslim, this is not because Muslim women are "inferior" but
>because they were deprived of this right in education (and they still suffer
>to a lesser extent, but given that a high proportion of them get married very
>early they rarely have the occasion to have a university digree, or even to
>use the education they have already got).
  
	It is true Muslim women in Syria and Lebanon and Palestine did
	not get a chance for Education like their counterparts of
	Christian women. This was a direct result of historical facts
	that were taken place. For example  Muslim men as well did not
	have a chance for education. In my village there was no men 
	or women who can read or write 60 years ago, this is as adirect
	result of 500 years on Ottoman rule where the Ottomans did not
	open schools because they were busy in wars all over the place.
	At the end of the Ottoman days when they became weak they gave
	the  Europpeans concessions to open schools for Christian Arabs
	in Lebanon and Syria and Palestine and Egypt, those schools
	mainly catered for Christians. In the Colonial times the French
	and English discriminated against the Muslims in education and
	they never built a school for Muslims and favoured Christains,
	this is not the fault if our fellow Arab Christians but rather
	the  Europpean policy to divide and Conquer. I was told that
	in my village there was a school made of one room during the 
	British mandate built by our people and it was bombed by the 
	English Royla Air Force.
	
	After independence of some of the Arab countries and the
	introduction of  mass education the number of men to women
	in schools and universities some time is in favour of women
	because men go the the Army.  

	So the lack of education for Muslim women early this century
	was not just for Muslim Women buth rather for Muslim men as
	well and this was a direct result of Ottoman rule and Europpean
	colonialism.


Regards 


Adel Jaber