Hicham Maged's blog Inquisitive curiosity paves knowledge path

Modesty of the Mind

This year seems to be an exclusive one for the case of “niqab (burka)” either in Egypt or the Arab-Muslim world due to the controversies that aroused as the aftermath of many calls for banning it either locally, regionally or internationally. In this blog entry, however, I am not interested in participating in the niqab wars since pro-niqab and anti-niqab have covered this topic on various media outlets; I am rather interested in going beyond the whole controversial for another perspective about modesty of the mind.

Modesty of the Mind

Society and Women

Let me start by asking a simple question: who are targeted by these controversies? The answer is simple: They are mainly women who represent in Egypt almost half of the society (49%) according to a recent study at the beginning of the year 2009.

I am not happy with their situation as I see that the rise of such controversies backs-up my unhappiness because it is a clear sign for how Arab and generally and Muslim women particularly are still socially oppressed in our societies.

In other words, I am sad that we are about to cross the threshold of first 10 years of the 21^st century yet we are still debating about the woman’s body issue which is supposed to come at a very late position on our priority list behind more complicated issues regarding the situation of women. On contrary, you find topics like empowering women are unfortunately lagging behind in various controversies which seem to be one of the direct outputs for what had been settled down in our minds in the form of women stereotype images since 15 decades or so. Hereby, I mean by stereotypes the actions taken by both sides:

• Left Mentalities: Those who call for liberating women from all type of shackles;
• Right Mentalities: Those who call for adhering women to all types of shackles.

I intentionally used the term shackles since it represents what both teams see as preventing women from moving forward especially while debating about Muslim women. Surprisingly, if you read deeply about Islam, you shall find that both mentalities are mainly related to what people used to practice either as part of cultural misleading applied by the first team or social obligations applied by the second one, more than being related to the obligations that Islam calls for and barely applied.

Modest Minds

In other words, our societies are still dealing with women as own property not as human beings and hence you find the whole discourses presented in the mainstream media are just spinning around the female portion of the women; in movies, talk shows, newspapers, and advertisements while ignoring the rest of the person.

This kind of sexism prevails when hot or not behavior is the main stream while dealing with women whereas our human intellect is ignored. In my perspective, this is a core problem that leads to other complex issues and this is what we are facing nowadays and may explains whey people are fond of spotlighting on who wears what vs. who puts-off whatever more than discussing development problems in our societies.

Nevertheless, I hope you have not scanned the post quickly because this definitely is neither a call to take off nor put on clothes; it is rather a call that we – men and women – put aside exaggerations on both sides and start wondering and pondering about our problems.

When this is implemented, we shall go for intellectual discussions that can lead to better solutions for them by all members of the society in a country like Egypt and other Arab-Muslim societies especially in empowering women and maximizing the power of civil society and this shall prevent the beast from chasing beauty not only because priorities will be clear but also because modesty of our minds shall lead us to better understanding.

Mn/Women: Not Alike

I am to discuss this in a future post but generally speaking, it seems when I say empowerment of women that another stereotyped image pop-up into our minds which is the trial to make them superior and fighting men, which is far away from what I mean because when Islam came as a revelation from Almighty Allah (swt) – GOD – to The Prophet Muhammad via Archangel Gabriel since 1430 years ago, one of the basic messages was the equality between men and women in terms of rights and obligations yet they are not alike in terms of mentality and personality. Now take look and tell me what kind of equality do you find in our societies? You shall find nothing real; just retouching for the image but if you scratch the surface, real problems are found underneath which appears in all of our discourses; the left and the right.

In a nutshell, if we want to move forward, we are called to stop hiding our heads in the sand either by accusing others of everything or circling around problems that appeared due to the lake of priorities and go for a series of intellectual discussions that push Egyptian society forward; we need to find solutions that match with us in this current era away from the exaggeration either by imitating other civilizations or by reverting back to imitate the situations of thousand years ago.

Consequently, when this happen many of the body-and-clothes related issues shall fade out because in this case people will take decisions based on both conviction plus understanding not based on what people want , what people think or what people force others to and this is what we should be concerned about. Moreover, the integration of all the members of the society in solving such problems is a must regardless their religion.

Finally, I wonder whether this can happen while I am alive or not so let me end my post by sharing this supplication with you that was twittered in Arabic few days ago:

Related Quotes and Sayings

Oh Allah! I want to see this day when we spotlight on our main issues same as we do for our secondary ones. Amen! — Hicham (via twitter)

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Tags: human intellect, man/woman, sexism, social oppression
Categories: Critiques
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