Even though Middle East is influenced a
lot by Western Culture, women’s rights in the Middle East are quite different
from those of women in Western countries. For example, in the Middle East, without the written
permission of her husband or male guardian a woman cannot work (women rarely
work in the Middle East) or travel, and they cannot file for divorce without
their husbands’ consent. However, the husband is permitted to file for divorce
and is granted the divorce by simply filling out the required documents. Women
in some Middle Eastern countries are not granted full citizenship even though they
are natives of the country and are considered second-class citizens.
Iraq and Afghanistan are more modernized,
largely because of the assistance from the United States. Therefore, the women
in these countries have basic rights which they are entitled to (many countries
in the Middle East deprive women of their basic rights). A Recent rise in
female public figures such as Benzair Bhutto the former Prime Minister of
Pakistan, has allowed women to gain support for gender equality in a heavily male-dominated
society. Traditionally in Iraq, a woman had to walk three feet behind her husband;
however, through a gradual transfer of power started by the rise of female
politicians, women have gotten their voting rights as well as the right to education.
Today, in both Iraq and Afghanistan, women are now teaching children and are
taking on roles in their governments.
However, despite these pushes for
gender equality, Islamic women believe that Western culture is the product of
an age that will always change and shift due to the corrosion of time, since westernisation has had
major historical impacts on the Middle East over the past several decades. Many
Islamic women do not welcome these changes and see them as evil values of
Western Society. Unlike
Western society, where the individual is the basic unit of the state, in Islam,
however, family is the basic unit where family comes before individuals and
therefore the rights of women are expressed in their roles solely as wives and
mothers.
Additionally, cruelty against women is
very common in the Middle East (not to say it is not evident in Western
society, but not to the extent that it is found in the Middle East). For example, in Iran a death sentence was given
to a suspected female adulterer and the Islamic government sentenced her to
death by stoning which is a form
of capital punishment where a group of people throw stones at
a person until she is dead.
Some Arab countries like Saudi Arabia still adapt the social sin of sexual slavery. Women
are selected to be sex slaves for a head or a prince and they are forced to
live in human stables and harshly treated. Women subject to such a life are purchased,
raised, and then sold as cattle would be.
Saudi Arabia, a heavily dominated Islamic country is the
world’s most repressive nation. Saudi
Arabia is the only country that prohibits women from driving. Additionally, in
Saudi Arabia, men are in charge of a woman’s every decision, including which
school (many do not even attend school) to go to, whom to marry and even which
medicine or medical treatment they are permitted to take. There was a
documentary featured on CBC which had a ‘white’ non-Muslim nurse working in
Saudi Arabia. An Islamic woman had come in bleeding profusely and needed
stitches for the bleeding to stop, a simple procedure. The Islamic woman’s
husband, however, would not give the nurse permission to remove her veil and
perform the surgery and in turn the Islamic women bled to death. When the nurse
was being interviewed she quoted the Islamic woman’s husband as saying “Jana-they,
jana-they. Mur-ja vay.” Translated, this meant “let her go, let her go. Die she
can.”
In conclusion, women's rights in the
Middle East are two sided. On one hand, countries influenced by Western culture
and that have received the aid of the United States have elected female prime
ministers, and given women basic rights
such as the right to vote, attend school, marry who they choose and not be
subject to the cruelty of men. But on the other hand, many countries in the
Middle East still maintain the cruelty of sexual slavery, mutilation and
stoning and refuse to dignify women with their basic entitled rights.
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