Understanding Moslems, 3

If you think Islamic thought is alien, then try this!

Islam and women

Conversation between Stenham and the Arab boy, Amar:
"Words are for people, not for women."
"Aren’t women people?"
People are people. Women are women."
"If women aren’t people, how does it happen that they go to Paradise?"
"They have their own place in Heaven.  They don’t go inside where men are."
"Its like the mosques, is that it?"
"That’s it."

"If Allah had meant women to talk to men (thought Amar)  He would have made them men, and given them intelligence and discernment.  But in His infinite wisdom He had created them to serve men and be commanded by them……women, however delightful they might seem, were basically evil, savage creatures  who desired nothing better than to pull men down to their own low state, merely to watch them suffer.  In Fez it was often said, half jokingly, that if Moroccans had been really civilized men, they would have devised cages  in which to keep their women."  As it was women enjoyed far too much freedom of movement."

The views of Amar, from "The Spider’s House", by Paul Bowles

One Comment

  1. You have to qualify the above by saying that it was written 50 years ago. Since then Morocco, for one country, has changed enormously. Mass tourism is one major factor. So the words put into Amar’s mouth might be extreme, except of course in Saudi Arabia and other Wahabi-dominated places in the Moslem world.

    Dreadful, all the same.

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