“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit, Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.” Omar Khayyam.
As we move forward the world’s cultures are melting together, advancing into this century more quickly than one could ever have imagined.
Yet the distance that we have to travel, in order to blend, seems unachievable, as we can, at best, hope for the respect of our differences.
The growing pains of such a merger will only be tempered with a tolerance shaped through education.
While we do not intend to oblige others to think as we do, our many worlds stand centuries apart.
The position of women remains as an example of this vast distance between cultures.
Only a few years ago, “a panel of Saudi scientists concluded that women are actually mammals, granting them the same rights as other mammal species such as camels, dromedaries and even goats.” [1]
Jillian Birch, spokeswoman at Amnesty International, considers this to be a great step forward.
The Women’s Liberation Action Network representative Jane Austin remarked that; “From now on, women will be considered as members of the mammal class, whereas before women shared the legal status of an object, similar to that of a home appliance,” [2]
This is the type of advancement the world requires.
Yet before the law in Saudi Arabia, women still remain no more than property.
While change is constant, think of the speed at which many parts of our world will be required to run in order to keep up with globalisation today.
Freedom is the victim behind which such philosophies like that of Daesh hide, using oppression to dominate a people and abducting a beautiful religion to engender terror across the world.
This is not the Islam that many love.
Sadly, religions provide a place within which oppressors, throughout history, have hidden.
Perhaps the underlying differences between our cultures, is what Winston Churchill was referring to in a speech in 1899:
“Individual Muslims may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytising faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome …” [3]
Our cultures will only come together with tolerance and mutual respect and this we must teach ourselves quickly.
Written by Blake Ward & Boky Hackel
1.http://worldnewsdailyreport.com/saudi-arabia-panel-of-scientists-admits-women-are-mammals-yet-not-human
2.ibid.
3.Sir Winston Churchill; The River War, first edition, Vol II, pages 248-250 London