I’m glad to see the great impact of the Omani social media in tackling at length issues that were not relevant to our conventional way of life, Omanis were not familiar with the concept or the movement of Feminism or its fundamental goals therefore most of the posts & comments were just a tirade of rigid & narrow opinions reaching to the level of becoming a tenet rather than opinions, the detractors were not in a position to understand feminism as it is reasonably justified and understood but to malign and distort it for no reason but mere hatred upfront.

The new born concept into our society has become the most controversial issue ever discussed, some have considered it as the epitome of women’s salvation in the country while others proclaimed its sinful nature and an act of wickedness to be fought.

All that made me wonder why the idea of feminism is locally feared & broadly attacked when the cause itself is just and far away from gender-centrism?

It’s profoundly disturbing to find a long history of women’s sufferings & strife for their rights and indispensability at home & abroad is being aborted in sheer ignorance, just because of some women are crowding out feminism by their individual statements of self satisfaction & actualisation doesn’t give them the right to become stumbling blocks for the rest of women who are still struggling hard to get their rights.

It’s understood that liberating & egalitarian concepts like Feminism is ought to be opposed by the vested interests mostly out of self-righteousness & mansplaining patterns of behaviour but even though considering Feminism as a form of extremism is a far fetched corollary that won’t find a reasonable interlocutor depicting it that way, reason is not common here when it comes to the rights of women’s topics.

The woman is not a lower being made for total submission and menial duties, she is a whole human with enormous capabilities matching & even exceeding in many posts those of men. She doesn’t need a protector to resolve her problems and extricate her congeniality like in Disney Land’s archetypal pictures. We have to understand that Feminism is not ruddered by a sole principle but by a ramifications of values, philosophies and ethics, it unfolds in many forms of justice implementation& rights proclamation. 215 BCE in Rome the Lex Oppia, was enacted; it ruled that women could not wear more than half an ounce of gold upon their persons and that their tunics should not be in different colours, that was the first when women of Rome marched for their rights and presumably the first instance of Feminist movement in action.

Mary Wollstonecraft, the English writer philosopher and advocate of women’s rights in the 18th century said “I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves”, and she one of the greatest proponents of egalitarianism where she said “Virtue can only flourish among equals”, her broad view of rationality was evident in the advocacy of women’s rights, “Make women rational creatures, and free citizens, and they will quickly become good wives; – that is, if men do not neglect the duties of husbands and fathers” she said, women are not inferior but lacking education a big emphasis on the importance of education for all; “If women be educated for dependence; that is, to act according to the will of another fallible being, and submit, right or wrong, to power, where are we to stop?” We are more obliged to ask the same now than ever.

The French Suffragettes is another victory in women’s immortal epic of birthrights. The ME TOO movement echoed in the corners of the globe reaching to our Arab communities to combat sexual harassment & abuse, all that and more testified to the just cause & intrinsic goodness of Feminism for fighting injustice and all kinds of discrimination against women and not what the patriarchal chauvinists say that it came for the destruction of families & societies. Definitely there are extreme stances from some hardcore feminists but the benefits will always outweigh the odds.

There are those who say Feminists are by nature Misandrists calling for the hatred & abandonment of men, it’s the primary libelling that remains the master transgression imputed to feminists when everything else fails to attach Feminism to the source of all ugliness, such trivial and baseless accusation comes from hardliners fearing the forfeiture of their assumed supremacy, however women will not acquiesce to “The Dominant Male” doctrine over their lives, they are independent & indispensable right from birth and no compromises upon that, the community has & ought to change its myopic mumpsimuses towards feminists & women in general.

I and most of my female peers totally disagree with Valerie Solanas the radical feminist who wrote the SCUM manifesto to the end of fixing males intervention in the world by eliminating the male sex, no reasonable mind would agree to that but we sympathise with her troubled childhood that she had been sexually abused by her father, that’s why we have to be rational and differentiate between sound Feminism and the touting of extreme measures to achieve it, abused childhood explicitly justifies its vindictive attitude and that’s something no one could deny just plainly.

Feminism did not come from the thin air putting in front of us all the travails women had to suffer and carry with them throughout history with no hope but them running the gauntlet trying to left it off. Another distinctive example for injustice invoked on women is Susan Sontag the American original author of the book “Freud the mind of the moralist” which she relinquished her authorship right to the book just to get the custody of her son after divorcing Philip Rieff, he remorsefully apologised after 60 years admitting to Susan’s authorship of the seminal book. Marry Shelly the English novelist who wrote the first science fiction in the genre “Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus” in 1818 not publishing her name for no one would believed the author was a woman, women were always underestimated, marginalised & underrated.

To the women who sees everything through rosy vantage points I would love to say; Omani women do not need a special day to commemorate them with pomps & ceremonies but otherwise to look into their contemporary issues in which they are deemed lower than their male counterparts, legally & socially they are not considered to be equal to men just through lip-servicing & sweet spiels the males in-charge claim bombastically & bluntly to empower the distaff side where in reality they do not.

Lots of girls made to abandon their abroad higher education because the local tribal tradition makes it impossible without having free male guardians looking after them, Why Omani women married to foreigners can not pass their nationality to their children?, and why the breastfeeding hour to mothers at workplace are subjected to the permission from the employer and not promulgated by law?, Why FMG is still not incriminated in Oman? In Murder cases Why it’s half the blood-money settlement given if the murdered happens to be a woman?, women’s lives are cheaper than men’s in our Arab Muslim societies. Marital rape is common when wives are not ready or unwilling to fulfill their nuptial duty on bed, lots of exploitations & extortion in the name of men’s rights in calling their wives to submissiveness when the spousal bond is supposed to be of a complementarian nature and based on mutual consent not coercion. Why in the so-called “honor crimes” the penalties are reduced for male culprits? What about the equal vocational opportunities for men & women in the jobs market? The list will go off charts

We can not limit women’s role to housewifery and raising kids, although we do not underestimate the role of housewives and dedication towards their households & children upbringing if they wholeheartedly opted for it, a financially independent woman is a free woman, free from the bondages of alternate sustentation & the control of Svengalis . Quite a numerous women accept miserably the physical & verbal abuses from husbands because the latter are their sole breadwinner so they compromise not by choice but out of fear alone. In my opinion the most miserable of all women happen to be the ones seem financially independent but are not sufficiently free to choose the colors of their own clothes.

The famous French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir in her magnificent book “the second sex” aligns the fate of the colonized with that of the subordinate woman, riveted to the peculiarities unjustly allotted to her by the conquering force therefore when a woman gets exposed to violence & sexual harassment she must not be taken out from the place of her work or studies etc to appease the oppressor but rather to remove the root-cause that endangers her. Saying that Feminism spoils the souls and minds of the young girls and driving them to commit suicide is a futile lame claim hiding the facts for more lavish persecution under the hood of traditional local conservatism .

Suicide is a very abstruse matter, a package of factors conditions and circumstances much inclined to & coexisting with the instruments of oppression in a society and has nothing to do with a movement that was established and historically verified to be the only unswerving hope for women’s rights & untwisted liberty.

By Huda Hamed, Journalist and Writer

This article was translated from Arabic

By: The Goads

“I’m not going to hell I’m out of it” -A too meek person wrote & ascended to heaven.

The too meek person to walk this emotional sentimental hell on earth had to tell us on the way out the way to salvation, a way of thinking that May emancipate us from the old heavy yokes of hijacked lives, she knew some other ways for deliverance that will spare us the agonies which no one will volitionally opt for! The Quest is Now on us! How was that hell?! Hell No! What was that Hell?! Hell Yes! 

We could have known better if we would have the right story from A to Z, but since we don’t we have to infer and infer intelligently depending on the tiny sparky small hells inside each one of us. What was that Hell that a too meek person could not bear and had to choose to end her life to pass a message of a utopian non promised life. It needs more than a nation of disturbed minds to pass an immortal advice like the one we had without working for it, it was like a free work a faith that forces no one to believe in it But once embraced someone had to become an apologist for it.

The message or the advice is not to commit suicide to end one’s sufferings, that universal burden a messianic onus needed only one person to put her life for the rest of us and the gain is our awakening to the Hell we live in every day. On the way out and on the night of her last walk she was not asking those who will read her note to do anything but to have their eyes and minds fixated for awhile on every word she had to say and expecting nothing good from most of us, the masses of straitjacketed emulators of someone else’s ideals & “inherited piety”! She was telling us what we all hate to admit but blindly follow just to appease the smallest & the biggest circles of Straight-minded self-appointed guardians! The instant tranquilizing squads of sheeple societies ,ready-to-step-in force when the imperturbable people’s peace is threatened by a girl seeking her own peace of mind on her way at her terms.

She just wanted to retain her hijacked life and not to be in anyone’s image but her own. That’s the Hell she had to be crucified for and pay the hefty price just to pass through the thick skin of her fellow earthlings, the fallen ones who are not heeding their ongoing fall, 24/7 in denial attitude to any call for a second thought of realistic introspection but masters in brandishing their judgmental fingers when it suits them. 

It is an immortal combat with the real disturbed people-not aware of their conspicuous disturbance behind their rigidity- that we have to fight for our own identities in suppressive environments which depict all different paths from theirs in all hues of immorality, their most powerful tool of setting things right. No one travels that passage unharmed, you have to get your own share, it might be big or small but yet you still suffer sentimentally so deep and frown a million times before the end of the day, and that is every day under the indifferent though impartial heaven. 

Like in the Hunger Games of Suzanne Collins the kids have to compete to death and the survived may die in a new game against some other kid, it’s all in the system and we are all controlled by it and we are already the walking dead with false pride we strive to keep unblemished . In the futuristic “nation of Panem” survival is a capacity shared with no one. 

She who committed suicide leaving a golden weary note had closed doors on the feigned shame alluded to free thoughts and opened many doors to the vastness out there left uncharted in our people’s perceptions of life & how it must be conducted according to them and them alone. If Weltschmerz did not kill her I won’t wonder what did not!

Now ,no one dares to talk about the incident or mention the name of the girl, there will be legal consequences if anyone tries. Speaking from this Hell and swearing by it too how can we not preach the girl’s suicide note that was written by a tormented soul who loved us all to leave that note for us. It’s not just a death note, Not At All! Her note is a true Guide to the perplexed on this Hell of Hells.

Agents of Hell relent not! Rejoice Not, Gloat Not individually nor gregariously for Salvation is redefined & getting updates without your permission. 

May her memory be a blessing

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of OAHR

In 1994 my mother who is an Omani citizen returned with her siblings from Tanzania to Oman in search of a better life for us. Then I joined her with the rest of my siblings in 1996. We were still young and were seeking a good education. My father did not hold Omani citizenship, but we did not expect the matter to take very long until he obtained it, after he submitted all the applications in Oman, as his origins are Omani. Especially since his brother had obtained Omani citizenship before him. Consequently, at this stage my father had no choice but to stay in Tanzania in order to pursue his own business for he did not have an Omani residence permit while we moved to live with our mother in Oman. My siblings and I also did not have the Omani nationality, we couldn’t receive it under Omani law even though my mother is Omani, we were only allowed to stay in Oman as minors and children of my Omani mother.

But the matter lasted a very long time and remained the same for many years. However, my father did not give up hope and was constantly following up at the Ministry of Interior, to no avail. And when there is something new from the ministry, it was always a refusal. He then started all over again and submitted new applications. We stayed like this for years until I was about to finish my high school diploma.

Throughout the school years, despite my high sense of belonging to this country, I used to feel that I was from a minority, especially when I was asked at school to submit documents to update my students’ records. The strange thing is that I and others like me from the minority of people that are of Omani descent but did not have citizenship looked like the majority. We did not notice differences between us in the educational environment in terms of physical features and the name of the tribe, except for the nationality.

Perhaps this is why the school administration registered us as Omanis, even though we did not have all the supporting documents. Of course, for me as a child and a teenager, I felt great joy and peace of mind because of this mistake, which I do not know if it was intended or not, because I will not have to explain to my schoolmates about my different situation.

Sadly at the end of 2007, when I reached my final year at school, during the exam period for the first semester, we got news of the death of my father in Tanzania, who was the closest person to my heart. But because of the long distance between us and the separation of our family due to the complicated Omani laws which kept us apart as a family, we were prevented from living together until the last days of his life.

I remember now my mother’s words after his death: “I have nothing to give you except education, for I sacrificed to live apart from your father for long years in order to get you an education, and this is your only weapon in this life.”

Our plan, after completing my high school studies, was for my father to take care of the expenses of my university studies abroad. I wanted to study medicine or engineering, therefore we began to look for countries where I could study these disciplines with a limited budget. Despite the traumatised conditions that I went through, I was able to maintain an advanced level in my studies until I finished high school with good results.

The unified admission center system to apply for university was still new, and out of curiosity I said to myself, what will I have to lose if I try to apply to colleges and universities and register my options for the majors that I aspired to study, even though I was almost certain of the rejection and the words of my uncle who always reminded me that I have no right to overseas studies as a non-Omani in order to protect me from having hope and be disappointment. But I was surprised when the system accepted me and it opened the doors for me to register all my options for overseas scholarships, as I later discovered that there was a technical error in the system.

I registered all my 15 options in the system, and I started with the overseas scholarships, such as medicine and engineering, etc. When the time came to announce the results, I found my name published in the local newspapers and that I had obtained an overseas scholarship. It was a moment of joy, filled with uncertainty, because according to current Omani laws, I doubted that I would be granted an overseas scholarship.

Indeed, I was correct with my instinct, when I noticed the extent of shock when I submitted my registration papers to the Ministry of Higher Education. They were insisting that I submit proof of my Omani citizenship, after I submitted my Tanzanian document. My response to them was that these are my only recorded documents at school and I never submit others. I saw their surprise and confusion about how this mistake occurred, being registered in school over the years as an Omani! While I looked at it as a good thing for us, I requested a suspension of the scholarship, justifying that I could get citizenship very soon. At that moment, I decided to set a goal, I decided to fight the whole world in order to obtain this scholarship and overcome this obstacle of not holding the Omani nationality in order to not lose this opportunity and achieve my goals in this life.

In the following months, I intensely followed up with the Ministry of the Interior, often floundering, left and right. Every time the committee met, it rejected my application for citizenship, even though all this happened after my father’s death.

The last resort was to approach some family individuals in Oman with connections to seek help, hoping that they could explain my case to the officials from the humanitarian point of view, given that I am a daughter of an Omani woman, a widow who can’t work. And she is totally dependent on her children in taking care of her and helping themselves.

It is impossible to forget that day in January 2009 when I called, as usual, the Ministry of Interior to follow up and spoke with the person who knows my case. His usual response was: Sorry, your request was rejected again. I sadly thanked him, but later he came back and said to me in a cheerful voice: Wait, congratulations on your nationality and you deserve it.

In fact, I do not have words to describe that moment! I was with my mother and all my siblings standing at the public phone next to the court in Al Khuwair area, finishing the procedures to issue my father’s death certificate. I immediately started following up with the Ministry of Higher Education to complete the registration procedures for my overseas scholarship and travel to study abroad. Thanks God, after that my siblings did not have to suffer as I did.

By: Anonymous

Translated from Arabic by: Habiba Al Hinai

According to one study, girls outperform boys in school. In 2015, for example, girls outperformed boys in a reading competition in 69 of the tested countries. The norm in our societies is that girls are more concentrated in studying. That is why their grades are high, but on the other hand, not a little number of our girls do not go to universities or work after graduation. The number of working women in the Middle East is less than 1: 5 of employees. Now, let’s go further and talk about the status of girls and women in the Sultanate of Oman.

According to the Omani Law, article 13 of the Cultural Principles, “Justice, equality and equal opportunities among Omanis are the pillars of society guaranteed by the state”.

But the gender gap for university seats has widened in Oman. It is no secret to anyone that the first university in Oman, the Sultan Qaboos University (SQU), suffers from clear discrimination in terms of competitive rates, as shown in the table below:

For example, in 2009 the engineering department of the SQU rejected 723 women who could have obtained a seat in the College of Engineering based on their grades in the entrance exam, but unfortunately the problem is not in the grades, but rather because they are females in a university that applies a male system. According to the acceptance rates and the strategy used at the university, the chances of admission for men are more at SQU, as males represent 9 out of 10 students in the academic admission test.

The “male quota” is the system which is followed by the SQU in the distribution of percentages and seats, but the problem we have here is that competition is not between the two sexes, but rather all sexes compete with their peers, so males compete with males and females compete with females.

Accordingly, higher percentages are imposed on females than males. The result is that male students get seats that they do not deserve Although there are more females deserving of the university seat and consequently, females students lose their seats even if their rates are high, and despite fulfilling all the admission requirements for the required specialization!

Isn’t this unfair to female students not to be accepted at a similar rate to males only because they are “females” while we know well that both sexes study the same curriculum ?!

Where is justice in that? Why are not equal opportunities given to both sexes, and each of them can apply for the university seat based on his diligence and competence?

While the common sense says that both sexes are required to prove their competence by competing for the academic seat under the same conditions without discrimination.

It is strange what happened about two weeks ago when the admission results appeared, and the girls demanded their right to obtain seats without discrimination and expressed their objection to the system through the hashtag “no discrimination in the allocation of university seats”:

”#لاللتمييزفيالمقاعدالدراسيه“

A large segment of society justified the inequality of these percentages, and they rejected any change in the system with false excuses and traditional arguments and considered it a normal matter. It is a double standard, when the Omani women demanded a political quota (the Shura Council elections), she was demanded to demonstrate her merit and entitlement to win a seat in the shura council (The Omani Parliament).

I think that the main reason behind this is the excessive pampering for males and the expansion of opportunities for them on a plate of gold, even if they do not obtain high grades, they will enter the educational institution at his low rate – compared to the girls – only for being a male.

Excessive pampering produces a burden. When male students are guaranteed the availability of all higher education facilities, the effort that he exerts will decrease, and his academic level will also decrease.

Not to mention the masculine ideas and concepts implanted in the minds of males and society that justify their neglection, and at the same time parents set high expectations for their daughters. Thus, males become more neglected and perform worse than females. Among the flimsy justifications used to justify discrimination is that “If the opportunities are equal, girls will get all the seats , while boys will get none” and that “the males have more obligations” and the list goes on.

A societal problem cannot be solved with a larger problem, the problem must be solved at its roots. If a boy’s life begins to depend on his masculinity and recklessly studying and ensuring a seat, how he will grow up as a matured and a responsible man who is capable to start a family?

Therefore, equal opportunities must be provided for both sexes. This may cause a drop in the number of males entering the university, but in the long run the outcome will be equal and more fair because they are based on their diligence, competence and entitlement to the university seat.

Meanwhile Institutions are required to study this problem and suggest solutions which causes male students to get low results then girls.

Sources:
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/09/boys-are-not-defective/540204/
SQU official account for admission and registration
Hashtag ”#لاللتمييزفيالمقاعدالدراسيه”

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of OAHR

To talk about women and their rights in our Arabian communities is an uncharted appointment with cruelty of fate rather than an assessment of norms which are more into mumpsimuses than misconceptions easily debunked for even when you are right about something people will still deny you the privilege of being right, and that’s for one reason only, they will admit their idiocy and wrongfulness the moment you have been proven right.
We are merely fence setters watching a history full of random anecdotes about an inferior though desirable gender, most seeked and most traumatised, attached to “it” all the evils even promoted as the source of evil throughout the entire told history of men. The supremacy of men was and still the only irrefutable history of all then comes religions in which we will find passages that will confirm this explicit or implied. The hedonistic nature of the Arabian man compels him to entertain his penile desires and not to adhere to one wife only but to marry up to four and have concubines too just to wield his flesh in the “source of evil” to show off virility and to prove his ancient-long dominion over the fair sex. It is the delights of many gatherings to talk about how men demonstrated their virile power on women and every foul-mouthed man of great grandeur would relate his own version of his self-made kamasutra just to pass the time with merriment and good spirits for himself and his fellow men who will praise him loudly and laugh. Imagine a whole race with one centred thought in mind and that is “woman” and a draft engraved in their collective mind on how to exploit and undervalue her and still that race is boasting about how they subjugate women and understate their value as persons equal to men in all rights & opportunities. To them women are and will only be inferior gender but a “beloved” one! No way to reconcile this paradox whatever they try to persuade you with, these chauvinists will always remain with the same collective mind and will often try to hide the chasms apparent in the lives they lead with their households and outside the borders of their subjugated kingdoms. No remedy, absolutely no remedy to such mentalities & mindsets except to counter them with reason and charismatic intellectuality & influence because they only deign to power and not the intellect alone which most of them do not have. 

Every so often we hear “Shame Killings” “Refusal of Rights” “Beatings in the name of family’s honour “ as they also kill to keep the family’s honour intact and without a blemish. Those are the ones of the most ugliest forms of women’s persecution but do you know what is more vicious than that? It’s the societal sympathy with the murderer & the persecutor instead of the victim. To our dismay even there are women who condone such deeds against their fellow women and consider it a virtue lost and needs to be retained. Patriarchy has ordained in lieu of the supreme being that women are inherently virtueless and must be monitored at all times not to bring shame if the surveillance on them is loosened or minimised, such spirit had been inculcated in young minds and is appealing to most of the Arabs indigenously as their primary motto to living with honour is “Feed women with fear to eschew their disgraceful natures” along with “Women are not worthy of education” and there comes “The woman that deliberates is lost”. 

One may say all that is from the past and they are no more, women are partners in life and an integral revered part of the society ,but that’s not true at all. Men particularly those of the controlling judgemental chauvinistically hedonistic type-mostly are-have learnt to masquerade their true selves and put on a charade of rationality and lengthy arguments to buy themselves credit a phoney one that won’t stand scrutiny if tried. If they are right and what they claim is truly found on ground why don’t they admit egalitarianism and give women all their rights and treat them with equal opportunities and dignity instead of fortifying their dominion through calling for the wrong form of complementarianism (women are wives and babysitters only while men are head of family and breadwinners)and shouting it out whenever women call them for reckoning and having truthful rights with zero concessions, of course that will be the day we all come out from the nod land to the reality we need to establish in deeds and not just lip-service performed by a skilful politician to a gaping crowd thinking him to be a saviour of some kind but will only reap applesauce.

When we were kids we had easy access to all gatherings private and public, no one heeds to our presence and we were able to hear the very true realities of people from their talks which they never reveal to others to keep their dualities and odds secret so won’t be exposed to mild or harsh criticism, everyone of the elders talked freely in our presence and so we listened so freely though could not understand the reasons of the wicked remarks and beliefs people say about each other and about women in particular, only kids can watch that comedy and not be able to see the tragedy in it. Charity begins at home, and for kids dogmatic atrocities are heard and seen there too. I know many had heard this like I did when I was a kid hearing various elders talking about how a wicked man is more righteous and better than a woman, lavishly they talked about the evils of a woman if not be suppressed at home and circumcised from childhood to maintain her modesty via circumcision till she gets a man in marriage and take that heavy burden from the shoulders of the father so he can then live in permanent peace knowing that he is no longer responsible for the modesty of the girl his daughter/daughters he raised at home with bitterness and anxiety for a long time, finally she/ they are no more burdens but had become assets measured in money and transferring their ownership to someone else who is normally a fetcher of a maid to look after him and his future progeny, the problem if the wife was a barren maid then he must leave her and fetch another maid who can tend to his pleasures and produce him children to carry his name so he can find one way to be proud of at any congregation and that pride has to be a son and not a girl daughter. 

I really did not perceive the whole “Father & Daughter dilemma” and the talk of the elders till I read it in one of the supposedly sacred passages, Sirach 42:14; which says “Better is the wickedness of a man than a woman who does good; and it is a woman who brings shame and disgrace”. The Book of Sirach or so-called the wisdom of Solomon is deemed holy in Catholicism. I gazed for long at the passage and read it many times and wondered, How is that passage holy? How on earth such doctrine has passed to Arab Muslims when it is not verbatim in our scriptures? I also read that men pre-Islamic era had this same notion of women and that’s why they bury their infant girls to end shame while in cradle. I now believe that the suppressors  of women around the globe share the same belief even if not heard about it but one of the same disposition in a different creed has interpolated it and made it holy and thus hatred is spread all over by thought and sacred writ, the most power instruments of persecution in history.

Literature! The fountain of intellect and the everlasting apostle to the multitude of readers had amid its voluminous works a great deal of anti women notions , they might be dragged to point to that culture of understating & undervaluing to seek the attention of the people towards more open-mindedness but they failed to realise that these anecdotes will remain a great source of historical authentication of how women were depicted mostly in the attire of harlots and vendors of love to the bidders and creators of cuckoldry and insatiable for making the beast with two backs with any traveller or wanderer of the land, the same picture is profusely shown in movies and on stages because this written-by-the-hands-of-men fate brings wealth to “men of understanding” and pleasure to the same “horny men” waiting to be gratified at the misery of lonely encompassed women having no defender nor a salvager from the premeditated Misogynistic masterplan since the fall of Man.

It was the taming of the shrew, Katherina was beautiful though independent, deterring the customs of the time to kneel to men or even be silent at their presence. So defying and worthy of leadership but called the Hellish Shrew and made obedient at the end of the play, and not only that , she was humiliated to spiel her fellow women about the graceful nature of an obedient woman and the lifestyle of being in yokes to her husband to do with her whatever pleases him, that was the end of Katherina the shrew, the rebellious girl who had been turned into a kitten without claws and preaching the “good news” of Obedience & the art of nuptial kowtowing to her peers. This very same spiel is the message given to all girls in our Arabian societies before they grow up and while they grow till they end up in wrinkles to pass the only same message to the young women about to marry and so on goes the wheel of suppression and lopsided teaching. What we expect of generations of women who are taught in the same way to be? Self-loathing & in total wreck and unable to raise balanced and educated progenies But no horny idiot chauvinist cares.

Men fearing the success of women will always seek authority over them and invoke the wrath of God & men whimsically & impulsively on women of independent characteristics to subdue them and maintain the Manish Supremacy. They are truly devoid of intellect because an educated & independent woman is an asset and a builder of healthy community that a subdued one can’t do. 

Our communities will always follow the ancient pattern in modern ways to keep women inferior despite the face proclamation of empowerment of women shown by holding extravagant ceremonies and bombastic speeches even delivered by chosen dignified women of the state, all that deception bolsters the mean idea of stark exploitation of women and choosing from among them ambassadors to cast and repeat the old inferiority complex fabricated by men. 

All that supports my belief in women being the least important figure-the promoted idea among patriarchs-in history wronged against and still the wronging is going on infinitely coexisting with my second half of my belief that women are really the supreme figure who made this world living despite the horrors and depredations maliciously invoked against. 

Free & strong independent Women are the lungs and heart of a prosperous planet, I will not say give them a true chance because they are so strong to snatch their rights with full dignity and persevering intellect and hard work too. I say only to men of stubborn necks to give themselves the opportunity to see a better world on the hands of women and see how they amend aptly what men has made ugly.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of OAHR

‘You swam the five oceans and want to climb the seven summits with the hijab on?’ one popular question I get asked frequently. People either think I am daring or ridiculous to opt for solo travel, but my love for challenges stems from my individuality, my identity, and my upbringing.

I grew up trilingual in a mixed household; my mother is of African, European and Arab descent while my father is Arab from a dominant ruling tribe. Growing up speaking Arabic, English and Swahili gave me a different sense of belonging. I was immersed in different cultures, which were similar in ways and different in others. Being multilingual meant that my perspective of beauty differed from those around me. With an outlook of accepting differences and coming together instilled within me, I was eager to learn and explore. Although transitioning between languages proves tricky at times, it is a fitting description of me; passionate about numerous social causes at once.

However, life was not all made of fairy dust and roses. Right after high school, I found myself in a polygamist family when my father married three women. Regardless of its negative connotation, the disbelief, and difficult adjustments thereafter, it was a blessing in disguise. I knew the meaning of a phenomenal woman from this messy debacle.

My mother decided to pick herself up and dust off the shock by beginning a new life at 42. During the time, I supported my family by working and studying at the same time while she enrolled in night school. Despite the difficult adjustment, my mother became the woman I aspired to be. The strong go-getter who never takes no for an answer. She ended up landing a job as a public servant and now assumes a leadership role by heading an entire department.

Going through this debacle made me realize the power of proving people wrong. I started growing more and more fascinated by the word ‘no’ which was all the rage within the men in my family, society and country. The word ‘no’ was my trigger to do better, to prove once and for all that I am capable of doing what men can if not better than them. Being a woman is tough and hard in my part of the world. As you grow up, you realize that you don’t share the same equal rights that you hear being preached all over. Now add to that being a mixed hijabi young woman and it makes the equation a lot tougher than it already is. At times, I feel like giving up and just quit what I aspire to do because of being undermined. But then, I remember my mother who despite all that society told her to be; not finish higher education, quit her job to raise her kids, and cover up for a jealous husband, endure an unfaithful marriage, come out to the other side stronger than ever. Her story is my motivation when I can’t go on any longer.

Her story is my fuel to my fire.

Who are we but the accumulation of small defining moments? Those twists and turns remain my motivation every morning to make a difference, defy the odds, and set precedent; even if I get labelled an illogically fearless hijabi woman. It is well worth it!

Translated to Arabic by Habiba Al Hinai

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of OAHR