Wednesday, December 16, 2009

What about the sons of the fathers? Have cultures actually supressed the teaching of Islam?

There is a report from an online newspaper on a 14yr old teenage girl having sex with 5 men in their 20s.

Put this aside, because my attention is directed at this male-fellow from work, who forwarded the the news in an email with a caption :




Kpd bapak2 sekalian & utk peringatan kpd bakal bapak2/mak2, tolong jaga & asuh anak2 pompuan anda btol2 supaya tak jadi mcm berita ni...
Susah nak cari pompuan yg btol2 DARA zaman la ni...btol ka?



I can't help but noticed betapa ceteknya pemikiran this male-fellow(mf) from work. why is it that many are typical so quick at pointing fingers at women and labelling them as "
Susah nak cari pompuan yg btol2 DARA zaman la ni...btol ka?".

If we look at the situation above, what I can see is, ada 1 perempuan yang rosak, akan tetapi, ada 5 lelaki yang rosak. Kenapa bukan,


"Kepada bapak2 sekalian & untuk peringatan kepada bakal bapak2/mak2, tolong jaga & asuh anak2 lelaki dan perempuan anda btol2 supaya tak jadi mcm berita ni...Susah anak2 muda nak maintain DARA zaman la ni..."


hm.

Here is an article i just stumbled upon on the very same day the email on the news above was circulated.

Harassment forces Arab women to cover up



The sexual harassment of women in the streets, schools and work places of the Arab World is driving them to cover up and confine themselves to their homes, said activists at the first-ever regional conference addressing the once taboo topic.
Activists from 17 countries across the region met in Cairo for a two-day conference ending Monday and concluded that harassment was unchecked across the region because laws don't punish it, women don't report it and the authorities ignore it.
The harassment, including groping and verbal abuse, appears to be designed to drive women out of public spaces and seems to happen regardless of what they are wearing, they said.
Amal Madbouli, who wears the conservative face veil or niqab, told AP that despite her dress, she is harassed and described how a man came after her in the streets of her neighborhood.
"He hissed at me and kept asking me if I wanted to go with him to a quieter area, and to give him my phone number," said Madbouli, a mother of two.
"This is a national security issue. I am a mother, and I want to be reassured when my daughters go out on the streets."


Statistics on harassment in the region have until recently been nonexistent, but a series of studies presented at the conference hinted at the widespread nature of the problem.
As many as 90 percent of Yemeni women say they have been harassed, while in Egypt, out of a sample of 1,000, 83 percent reported being verbally or physically abused.
A study in Lebanon reported that more than 30 percent of women said they had been harassed there.
"We are facing a phenomena that is limiting women's right to move ... and is threatening women's participation in all walks of life," said Nehad Abul Komsan, an Egyptian activist who organized the event with funding from the U.N. and the Swedish development agency.
Open discussion of the harassment issue first emerged in Egypt three years ago, after blogs gave broad publicity to amateur videos showing men assaulting women in downtown Cairo during a major Muslim holiday.
The public outcry sparked an unprecedented public acknowledgment of the problem and drove the Egyptian government to consider two draft bills addressing sexual harassment.
Sexual harassment, including verbal and physical assault, has been specifically criminalized in only half a dozen Arab countries. Most of the 22 Arab states only outlaw overtly violent acts like rape, according to a study by Abul Komsan.
Participants at the conference said men are threatened by an increasingly active female labour force, with conservatives laying the blame for harassment on women's dress and behavior.
In Syria, men from traditional homes go shopping in the market place instead of female family members to spare them harassment, said Sherifa Zuhur, a Lebanese-American academic at the conference.
Abul Komsan described how one of the victims of harassment she interviewed told her she had taken on the full-face veil to stave off the hassle.
"She told me 'I have put on the niqab. By God, what more can I do so they leave me alone,"' she said, quoting the woman.

Some even said they were reconsidering going to work or school because of the constant harassment in the streets and on public transpiration.
But even in Yemen, where nearly all women are covered from head to toe, activist Amal Basha said 90 percent of women in a published study she conducted reported harassment, specifically pinching.
"The religious leaders are always blaming the women, making them live in a constant state of fear because out there, someone is following them," she said.
If a harassment case is reported in Yemen, Basha added, traditional leaders interfere to cover it up, remove the evidence or terrorize the victim.
In Saudi Arabia, another country where women cover themselves completely and are nearly totally segregated from men in public life, women report harassment as well, according to Saudi activist Majid al-Eissa.
His organization, the National Family Safety Programme, has been helping draft a law criminalizing violence against women in the conservative kingdom, where flirting can often cross the line into outright assault.

Discussion of the law begins Tuesday.
"It will take time especially in this part of the world to absorb the gender mixture and the role each gender can play in society," he said.
"We are coping with changes (of modern life), except in our minds."
- AP

Now, evidently, even when parents educate their daughters, and the female members of the society educate themselves (thank God for the luxury of a thing called, brain aka akal), when male members of the society are left uneducated, they will still be a threat to the society, a national security issue. How embarassing.

I am beginning to think that sex being a taboo subject in muslim countries are driving the muslim men towards chaos. Aren't they supposed to be the leaders?
We certainly don't want to become like the western countries or cities where sexual opportunity is in abundance, this is just inviting God's wrath upon us to happen sooner that it is already feared, no, no.

So what is wrong with muslim men? Have we really taken them for granted while growing up and concentrated more on the girls?


Here's another example of what would happen when we 'forgot' to educate little boys and what they would eventually become. This case was committed by a muslim man on a muslim boy when all the other muslims in the world were celebrating eid. And the biggest slap to muslims worldwide is, this happened in a mosque.

Why?

Why?

Pakistani Boy Raped and Killed in Dubai Mosque Toilet, One Held

A young Pakistani boy was raped and killed in the bathroom of a mosque in Dubai on Friday. The man who allegedly raped and murdered the six-year-old boy has been arrested. Dubai Police said they received information that a Pakistani child was found dead in the bathroom of a mosque located in 
Al Qusais on Friday.
When the police reached the mosque, a man told them that he had come to the mosque for Zuhr prayers and that when he went to the bathroom to prepare for it, he saw traces of blood on the floor after which he saw the child behind the door. The boy’s pants had been removed.
The police, upon entering the bathroom, noticed that the child had been raped. They took the body to the General Department of Forensic Medicine and launched an investigation. Later, a Bahraini national was arrested on the suspicion of committing the crime.
He confessed to the crime during interrogation. He said he consumed alcohol late into the night on Thursday and went to the mosque to perform Eid prayers on Friday and returned home. He continued drinking alcohol and later went out to visit his friend to celebrate the festival.

Why?

Why?


What about the sons of the fathers? Have cultural rules or norms actually overcomes the teachings of Islam?

- it's OK for men to smoke but not for women. but the teachings of Islam says, anything memudaratkan is haram.

- for men being promiscuous is culturally a stud but women would be a slut. but the teachings of Islam says it is haram.

- a widowed men is hot item in the market but a widowed woman is wrongly labeled by the society.

- it is a culture for men to stare at women but not OK, no, wait, women just don't do that. and yet, the prophet said, lower your gaze and guard your modesty.

- women's circumcision is for the purpose of controlling women's libido, but circumcised men compare the size of their erected penis as they grow up. Disgusting? I think it's pathetic.

While we have pressed the cultural rules and teachings of Islam on the daughters, Have we, due to cultural norms too, neglected the teachings of Islam on the sons of the fathers?

Will we come to a point where there will not be a respectable male, someone we can look up to, admire or at least respect in our society all thanks to this cultural upbringing vs the teachings of Islam in our society?

I'm glad I can still point a few men around me worth a respect. Maybe there's hope after all.

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