Don’t Tell Me I Should Be Ashamed
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| From my Instagram account |
I know this is a style blog, that it’s meant to be light and filled with fashion. But I cannot hold my tongue any longer.
So lets get a few things straight:
I love my country.
I love being Arab.
I respect the religion I was born into.
I respect my family.
I do not, however, have any respect for how women are treated in Arab countries. I have none whatsoever. But perhaps what is worse is that women perpetuate this treatment. We fight so hard for our political rights, for us as women to stand on equal ground in the eyes of the government with men, but we turn around and allow ourselves to be taken advantage of socially. AND WE HELP IT HAPPEN! As mothers, aren’t you ashamed to place the same constraints on your daughters that you yourself are frustrated with?! Yet you do it anyway because a man says so. Because you’re afraid to shame the men around you by dressing how you please, acting how you please, doing as you please. I’m not saying run around naked. You know your moral limits. They don’t need to be dictated to you by a male be it father, brother, uncle, husband, whatever.
Tell me why I should be ashamed of my blog, and I’ll tell you why I’m not.
Tell me what it is I’m doing wrong in the eyes of God, not in the eyes of man.
Tell me you want to be equal to men, then turn around & cower in a corner as they do all that you’re not “allowed” to do for fear of your reputation.
And then point me to the men that have that same fear.
Point me to the men that cower in fear of never being married because their pictures are on Instagram.
The reality is, you won’t find him.
Any woman that wants political equality needs to remember that they do not have complete control over how the government sways, but they have ample control over how they behave.
Change your social equality, because THAT you have the power to change immediately. Stop attributing your constrained behavior to the fact that you follow a religious rule. It isn’t religious. It’s cultural. And you’re following it blindly because for some reason, us Arabs tend to confuse the two.
Love always,
AKF