By: Ahmed ELNAHAS – Montopoli, April 29th 2013.
It took me quit a voyage in life, so far, to coexist peacefully with my many defeats and few victories. For they were all fruits of the choices I have made.. Choices founded on good or bad interpretations.. Some were even impulsive choices.. But I have no regrets or complaints, because these choices were mine.. And mine alone.. And that’s how I’ll be judged on the final day.. According to the choices I have made.. Alone.
My mother (May she rest in peace by the mercy of Allah), have always kindly criticised my ‘Liberal’ tendencies and have tenderly, yet firmly, opposed the eccentricity by which I manifested them. I hope you’d grant me some room of your patience and a lot of your understanding to bear what I have to say.
It needs no genius to know that it is the woman who decides. A man may exhibit for a lifetime his peacock beauty or his bullish virility, yet he will never convince a woman to pull down her defensive walls unless SHE decides so, and for her own convenience.
A tender aged female speaks long before a male does.. Woman is more intelligent.. She’s more tolerant.. She’s more understanding.. She’s a lot more rational.. She’s much more selective.. And even physiologically a woman is more bearing to prolonged physical efforts than a man.. I believe that there is a sense in all that, as much sense could be in the fact that a man’s ejaculation produces billions of potential beings (sperms), while a woman’s orgasm delivers only tens of her ovular cells! My reading is that, for pro-creation purposes, man is the tool while a woman is the reason. Maybe that would explain the Matriarchal Governance of most ‘civilised’ primitive tribal communities.
And that’s why I can’t understand Her complete submission to HIS twisted interpretations of the VEIL and its uses.. Some women I know have chosen to wear the veil and I respect their choices; as long as it was a free individual choice, and not the dominant imperative of a father, a husband, a friend or a community.
I believe that the Veil does not by force incorporate the moral concepts of “Chastity” and “Decency”.. That’s why I believe, and recommend if ever I may be qualified to do so, that parents should teach their children, to the best of their abilities, the basics of “Brain Decency” and “Mind Chastity”, and then respect their choices; knowing that their children have become morally well equipped to meet life’s endless challenges; instead of obliging them to put a Veil at the age of seven just to satisfy an elderly ego by obeying an abstract order. Otherwise she would be performing an act of mere ‘Social Convenience’.
Even much worse; the society which strains its women into similar practices, by molding them into that kind of tribal dominance, obliging them to abide in complete indisputable blind obedience without questioning, and denying their right to a free choice; is a society that commits exactly the same primordial crime of burying alive the new born females commonly exercised more than fifteen hundred years ago; or like the genetic mutilations performed over females in many societies of our present time; all are depriving HER from the right of self expression, self determination, and self esteem.
Thus driving HER to totally mistrusting the society, and to find ways to escape its traditions by using the dominant imperative’s much gratified appearance to camouflage the real being she treasures safely under her skin. Otherwise I can’t figure out any justification, or just a mere consolation, for a woman who was completely wrapped in a Chador type Veil while boarding the flight from Cairo to Rome, along with her husband and two young children; so that the moment the belts signs turn off, she hurries to the closet for sometime, out of which she comes out an entirely different person: walking proudly showing a tight low waste jeans, tapping the floor over high pin-heels, in a colourful silky shirt, exhibiting her beautiful curly long dark hair and filling the cabin air with her dazzling blend of perfumes!!
On the other hand, it would be equally important if my fellow men start evolving by following, to the letter, our doctrine’s initial order - “IQRA” - and to wisely apply its implications: observe, analyse, reason, read, define, debate, evaluate, chose, decide and do.. When the order was to “Look down” and not to stare; it did not intend only that superficial physical glance of a daring eye, but far deeper than this; it invited us to tame the mind as to exercise ‘chaste’ interpretations, and guide the brain to produce ‘decent’ ideas.
That is the Veil I can think of, the one I understand and wish for.. The veil that was intended for both men and women.. Of course there are certain cultural and traditional principals to observe, but also to carefully consider how valid is their necessity to our times.. And that is not only depending on our fundamental belief, and in the most absolute certainty, that the doctrine “is adaptable to provide answers for ALL new challenges and meets ALL the demands of ALL times, until God inherits the earth and what’s upon it”; but in a much demanding way it depends on OUR will to apply and OUR moral strength to do.
The difference between ‘appearing’ and ‘being’ is the focal issue here.. The other two Monotheistic Doctrines understood that and have already made their considerations, and reached the conclusions by which they were able to redefine certain traditional ideas, rigidly considered as untouchable taboos.
If we, the Muslim community, are seeking domestic change and aiming for an international comprehensive acceptance, we must apprehend all our moral efforts and cultural wit to address the taboos of our minds, and exorcise the totems of our brains.
Ebrahim (peace upon him) and Mohammad (prayers, peace, and blessings upon him) did precisely that, right before destroying the statues featuring the pagan divinities of their times.
In fact, that is the essence of ‘Secularism’.. (And Allah is the most knowledgeable).
Pass On The Word.
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