Iraqi Women’s League.

Our women after 2003 in Basra/Iraq.

“Despite the relative improvement in the security situation, our Iraqi people continue to live in an atmosphere of general chaos that is unprecedented for Iraq or other countries.

 Perhaps the most important manifestation of this chaos is the lawlessness, unbridled terrorism, insecurity and the spread of organized crime. This situation has claimed the lives of more than fifty women during the second half of this year, with the murders being carried out by extremist and reactionary forces and criminal gangs, under various social, religious and political motives and pretexts.

Iraqi women, who are subjected to various forms of discrimination, oppression and exploitation, and who face violence on a daily basis and through various means, are today facing mass killings because of the widespread terrorism targeting them. Most heinous murders are committed against them, in broad daylight with impunity. The killings of women in the city of Basra are but a terrible proof of the barbarism of their perpetrators and those who stand behind them.

Despite the condemnation of these crimes, the government and the relevant authorities have not taken the necessary measures against these crimes, to put an end to them and punish their perpetrators.

 We, in Iraqi Women s League, strongly condemn the crimes of killing women in Basra and other Iraqi towns, and denounce all forms of violations of human rights in Iraq, and call upon international organizations, the Iraqi Government and relevant authorities to:

1 - Send an international fact-finding mission to Iraq, to be organized by the UN High Commission for Human Rights with the participation of international human rights organizations, to investigate the crimes against women, help the Iraqi authorities to identify the perpetrators and work to stop these crimes.

2 - Reveal the criminals and those who stand behind them, and bring them to justice.

3 - Disclose the outcome of the investigations.

4 - Take measures to safeguard personal freedoms that are constitutionally guaranteed.

5 - Take deterrent measures to ensure the safety of citizens and protect their lives.

6 - Act firmly to improve the conditions of women and facilitate their involvement in the reconstruction process.


Iraqi Women s League / Co-ordinating Committee Abroad

3-1-2008”

http://www.ahewar.org/camp/i.asp?id=111

Brave Mother in Basra.

This is a story of brave woman in Basra/Iraq.

Article:

BRAVE MOTHER OF HONOR KILLING VICTIM GUNNED DOWN BY MUSLIMS

I am going to SCREAM! They killed this woman. Leila Hussein had the courage to leave the barbarian that STOMPED HER DAUGHTER TO DEATH for talking with a British soldier. The brutal killer, the father, was then allowed to walk free from the police station. Is this what we spent all our blood and treasure for? Where is feminist outrage? Where are the damn womens groups, the leftards, the commies, the socialists, all the full-of-shitniks? Why wasn't this women protected? She was being threatened daily.

 Five weeks ago Leila Hussein told The Observer the chilling story of how her husband had killed their 17-year-old daughter over her friendship with a British soldier in Basra. Now Leila, who had been in hiding, has been murdered - gunned down in cold blood. See the Observer story below for Islam's insatiable and depraved misogyny.

 

 

  The crime, so grotesque, is not the worst of it. After stomping to death, the father was released from custody, "'Not much can be done when we have an "honour killing" case. You are in a Muslim society and women should live under religious laws". Read her story her.

Rand's Story :

The crime, so grotesque, is not the worst of it. After stomping to death, the father was released from custody, "'Not much can be done when we have an "honour killing" case. You are in a Muslim society and women should live under religious laws".

This is not the exception, but the rule

Her crime was to fall in love. She paid with her life The Guardian hat tip Yisrael

Investigation by Afif Sarhan in Basra, Mark Townsend and Caroline Davies

How Rand met Paul & what happened after that?

The two had met while Rand, an English student at Basra University, was working as a volunteer helping displaced families and he was distributing water. Although their friendship appears to have involved just brief, snatched conversations over four months, Rand had confided her romantic feelings for Paul to her best friend, Zeinab, 19.

When Rand Abdel-Qader, 17, told her closest friend that she was in love from the moment she set eyes on the young British soldier working alongside her in Basra, and she dreamed of a future with him.

It was an innocent infatuation but five months after Rand, a student of English at Basra University, met Paul, a 22-year-old soldier posted to southern Iraq, she was dead. She was stamped on, suffocated and stabbed by her father. Several brutal knife wounds punctured her slender, bruised body - from her face to her feet. He had done it, he proclaimed to the neighbours who soon gathered round, to 'cleanse his honour'.

And as Rand was put into the ground, without ceremony, her uncles spat on her covered corpse because she had brought shame on the family. Her crime was the worst they could possibly imagine - she had fallen in love with a British soldier and dared to talk to him in public.

Rand was murdered last month. That the relationship was innocent was no defence. She had been seen conversing intimately with Paul. It was enough to condemn her, because he was British, a Christian, 'the invader', and the enemy. The two met while he was helping to deliver relief aid to displaced families in the city and she was working as a volunteer. They continued to meet through their relief work in the following months.

'But the thing she used to like talking about best was how he praised her beauty and her intelligence. She told me he called her "princess".said Zeinab (Zeinab is Rand's best friend ).


Despite knowing how dangerous the consequences of her actions could be, and the punishment she faced if caught, her passion for Paul grew stronger, said Zeinab. 'She never did anything more than talk to him. She was proud to be a virgin and had a dream to give herself to the man she loved only after her marriage. But she was seen as an animal,' said Zeinab



What the father & two brothers did with Rand?
Rand last saw Paul in January, two months before her death. It was only on 16 March that her father, Abdel-Qader Ali, learned of their friendship. He was told by a friend, who worked closely with police, that Rand had been seen with Paul at one of the places they both worked as volunteers. Enraged, he headed straight home to demand an explanation from his daughter.

'When he entered the house, his eyes were bloodshot and he was trembling,' said Rand's mother, Leila Hussein, tears streaming down her face as she recalled her daughter's murder. 'I got worried and tried to speak to him but he headed straight for our daughter's room and he started to yell at her.'

'He asked if it was true that she was having an affair with a British soldier. She started to cry. She was nervous and desperate. He got hold of her hair and started thumping her again and again.

'I screamed and called out for her two brothers so they could get their father away from her. But when he told them the reason, instead of saving her they helped him end her life,' she said.

She said Ali used his feet to press down hard on his own daughter's throat until she was suffocated. Then he called for a knife and began to cut at her body. All the time he was calling out that his honour was being cleansed.

'I just couldn't stand it. I fainted.' recalled Leila. 'I woke up in a blur later with dozens of neighbours at home and the local police.'

According to Leila, her husband was initially arrested. 'But he was released two hours later because it was an "honour killing". And, unfortunately, that is something to be proud of for any Iraqi man.'

At the police station where the father was held Sergeant Ali Jabbar told The Observer last week: 'Not much can be done when we have an "honour killing" case. You are in a Muslim society and women should live under religious laws.

I thought we liberated Iraq. Read it all and weep.

'What they did to her was ugly and pathetic. Rand was just a young girl with romantic dreams. She always kept her religion close to her heart. She would never even hurt a petal on a rose.'

Last year 133 women were killed in Basra - 47 of them for so-called 'honour killings', according to the Basra Security Committee. Out of those 47 cases there have been only three convictions for murder.

Mother who defied the killers is gunned down Guardian UK hat tip Davida

Hussein lived her last few weeks in terror. Moving constantly from safe house to safe house, she dared to stay no longer than four days at each. It was the price she was forced to pay after denouncing and divorcing her husband - the man she witnessed suffocate, stamp on, then stab their young daughter Rand in a brutal 'honour' killing for which he has shown no remorse.

Why weren't the Americans protecting her? This is why we fought and died? To institute sharia?

Though she feared reprisals for speaking out, she really believed that she would soon be safe. Arrangements were well under way to smuggle her to the Jordanian capital, Amman. In fact, she was on her way to meet the person who would help her escape when a car drew up alongside her and two other women who were walking her to a taxi. Five bullets were fired: three of them hit Leila, 41. She died in hospital after futile attempts to save her.

Her death, on 17 May, is the shocking denouement to a tragedy which had its origins in an innocent friendship between her student daughter, Rand Abdel-Qader, 17, and a blond, 22-year-old British soldier known only as Paul.


She died, still a virgin, four months after she had last seen him when her father, Abdel-Qader Ali, 46, discovered that she had been seen talking 'to the enemy' in public. She had brought shame on his honour, was his defence, and he had to cleanse his family name. Despite openly admitting the murder, he has received no punishment.

Notice how the dhimmi media always points out that she was still a VIRGIN. So what? And if she wasn't then there might be cause. The status of the girl's vagina has no place in this story NONE.

It was two weeks after Rand's death on 16 March that a grief-stricken Leila, unable to bear living under the same roof as her husband, found the strength to leave him. She had been beaten and had had her arm broken. It was a courageous move. Few women in Iraq would contemplate such a step. Leila told The Observer in April: 'No man can accept being left by a woman in Iraq. But I would prefer to be killed than sleep in the same bed as a man who was able to do what he did to his own daughter.'

They didn't protect this woman who had been beaten and had her arm broken?

Her words were to prove prescient. Leila turned to the only place she could, a small organisation in Basra campaigning for the rights of women and against 'honour' killings. Almost immediately she began receiving threats - notes calling her a 'prostitute' and saying she deserved to die like her daughter.

Even her sons Hassan, 23, and Haydar, 21, whom she claimed aided their father in their sister's killing, disowned her. Meanwhile, her husband, a former government employee, escaped any charges, and even told The Observer that police had congratulated him on what he had done.

All of our blood and treasure, for this. Why didn't the Americans arrest him?

It is not known who killed Leila. All that is known is that she was staying at the house of 'Mariam', one of the women's rights campaigners, whose identity The Observer has agreed not to reveal. On the morning of 17 May, they were joined by another volunteer worker and set off to meet 'a contact' who was to help Leila travel to Amman, where she would be taken in by an Iraqi family.

'Leila was anxious, but she was also happy at having the chance to leave Iraq,' said Mariam. 'Since the death of her daughter, her own life was at serious risk. And this was a great opportunity for her to leave the country and to fight for Iraqi women's rights.

'She had not been able to sleep the night before. I stayed up talking to her about her plans after she arrived in Amman. I gave her some clothes to take with her and she was packing the only bag she had. She was too excited to sleep.'

Mariam said that when she awoke Leila had already prepared breakfast, cleaned her house and even baked a date cake as a thank-you for the help she had been given. After the arrival of 'Faisal', the volunteer (whose identity is also being protected), the three left the house at 10.30am and started walking to the end of the street to get a taxi. They had walked less than 50 metres when they heard a car drive up fast and then gunshots rang out. The attack, said by witnesses to have been carried out by three men, was over in minutes. Leila was hit by three bullets. Mariam was hit in her left arm and Faisal in her left leg. 'I didn't realise I had been shot for a few seconds, because as I heard the gunfire I saw Leila falling to the ground and saw blood pouring from her head,' said Mariam. 'I was so shocked, I didn't immediately feel the pain.'

Two men ran from their homes to help. They rushed Leila to hospital and a passing taxi took the other two. But Leila died at 3.20pm, despite several operations to save her. As she lay in her own hospital bed receiving treatment, Mariam said that she heard someone saying that Leila had been shot in the head. But there were other mutterings that were clearly audible. 'I could hear people talking on the corridors and the only thing that they had to say was that Leila was wrong for defending her daughter's mistakes and that her death was God's punishment.

'In that minute I just had complete hatred in my heart for those who had killed her.'

Police said the incident was a sectarian attack and that there was nothing to link Leila's death to her family.

Read that again. This is the same police that let the stomping murderer go. Do we need to believe anything they say?

'Her ex-husband was not in Basra when it happened. We found out he was visiting relatives in Nassiriya with his two sons,' said Hassan Alaa, a senior officer at the local police station in Basra. 'We believe the target was the women activists, rather than Mrs Hussein, and that she was unlucky to be in that place at that time.'

These men should rot in hell.

It is plausible. Campaigners for women's' rights are not acceptable to many sections of Iraqi society, especially in Basra where militias have partial control in some districts and impose strict laws on locals, including what clothing they should wear and what religious practice they should follow.

Dhimmi media happy to assist the jihad!

Since February 2006, two other activists from the same women's organisation have been killed in the city. One of them was reportedly raped before being shot. The other, the only man working for the non-governmental organisation (NGO), and a father of five who was responsible for the organisation's finances, was shot five months ago.

There could be many with a grudge against such organisations. However, Mariam believes Leila was targeted, pointing out she had been hit by three bullets. 'When we were shot, they focused on Leila, not us,' she said.

Since the attack the NGO has stopped its work in Basra. 'We daren't answer the phones because we have received so many threats since we gave our support to Leila's case,' said Mariam. 'Most of our members are preparing to leave the city and even Iraq if they can raise the money.'

 Iraq - the new democracy. Shining beacon of death.

A single mother since her husband was killed for refusing to join a militia, she too intends to move when she can. Faisal, who also survived her injuries, is still suffering post-surgical infection. She preferred not to speak, but her mother, who wished to remain anonymous, said: 'My daughter is very shocked at what happened, and my two grandsons can't stop crying since they saw her in hospital.'

Leila's burial was arranged within hours of her death by the husband of one of her cousins and Mariam's father.

The Observer visited Rand's father and two brothers at their Basra home, but they refused to talk beyond Hassan proclaiming his father's innocence. When asked if he would be visiting his mother's grave, he shrugged: 'Maybe in the future.'

Leila was an orphan, raised by an uncle who died in the Shia uprising against Saddam Hussein in the early 1990s. Hamida Alaa, 68, a friend of the uncle, said: 'The poor woman was killed and now her name and history is buried with her. No one wants to speak about it. She is just one more woman killed in our country who has already been forgotten by the local society.'

In the last days of her life, Leila was suffering from the pressure of having gone against her husband. 'She was sleeping with the help of sedatives,' said Mariam. 'She would wake up at night with terrible nightmares, even dreaming of being suffocated as her daughter was. She had been threatened so many times and that's why she was so scared. Her indignation over Rand's death is what led her to her own coffin. Their history ends here. But Leila was a hero. A woman who was strong enough to say no to Iraqi men's bad attitudes. Sadly most Iraqi women do not have the same strength and they will stay in their homes.'

Leila is my hero.

Mariam has moved out of her home. But within hours of speaking to The Observer a close friend went to her new address to deliver a message that had been left for her at her front door. It read: 'Death to betrayers of Islam who don't deserve God's forgiveness. Speaking less you will live more.' She believes it was sent by Leila's killers.

'They want this story to be buried with Leila,' she said. 'But I cannot close my eyes to all this.'

You can read more about this story from this link:

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/06/mother-of-honor.html

Be Wise!

I would like to share this story to all women to be wise when they start any relationship whether that through internet or when you meet someone.

I know a story for a long time ago, which is a real story about a young woman got know a young man through the internet.



As a relationship between them she was happy that he will come & see her to which city she lived at, but they are in the same country, he promised her to come & see her & meet her family to engage her (they were ready to start a serious relationship to get married) & he send her a picture of his apartment & tell her he isn’t married.

Day after day she was waiting him to come & see her, but no answer from him and then she asked someone to go ask about him in his city.



After searching it shows that he was MARRIED & he has a CHILD & he was a manipulated cheater.



So, I thought to share this story with anyone who read it, to make sure about other side when you get involved in any relationship, try to ask as much as you can, get information about other side so you can avoid problems in the future then you will not blame yourself later & don’t just follow your heart & emotions, don’t absent your mind, Be wise!

From Dark Past to Bright Future!

In many times when we forced problems in our life, we usually fight at beginning then give up, But for Quiana Childress, she didn’t give up, her determined to help her family & get them out from bad situation at that time & never lose hope to get a job after school & she was only 16 years old, but she didn’t want to see her family falling apart.

She supported her family but, she wasn’t known that support will lead her to be a doctor..!



"Sometimes, I would go to bed hungry," Childress recalled. "My mother would try to portion out the food for each one of us. Sometimes, it wasn't enough."



With 16-year-old Quiana trained as a nursing assistant and went to work.



"I guess my mother felt like it was too much for her. The problems were too much," she recalled. "And I came home one day and the boxes were packed. And she came up to me and told me she was leaving and that I needed to find a place to stay."



At 16, Quiana was homeless, sleeping in her only possession -- an old, used Pontiac.



She added "It was a scary time. I couldn't really sleep," she said. "Eventually, I just learned to pray and close my eyes."

She took on a second job while she was still in school. Every day began by waking up at 3 a.m. to study.



"I didn't want to be a burden on anybody," she said. "I did not want to take advantage of any situation. I just wanted a roof over my head, be able to go to school, play basketball, and just live what I would consider a normal life."



I think there are many of Quiana in this world & many how want to be like her.

You can read more about it in this link:

www.abcnews.go.com/WN/person-week-quiana-childress-homeless-16-college-graduate/story?id=10652350

Story Of Martyr.

In anniversary of Neda Agha-Soltan.

On June 20/2009 in Iranian election protests, Neda Agha-Soltan breathed her last moments in this life.

She was killed during the 2009 Iranian election protests. Her death became iconic in the struggle of Iranian protesters against what they said was the fraudulent election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

She believed in democracy as she said “'I'm here, I also voted, and my vote wasn't counted”.



The story started on June 20, 2009, at around 6:30 p.m., Neda Agha-Soltan was sitting in her Peugeot 206 in traffic on Kargar Avenue in the city of Tehran.She was accompanied by her music teacher and close friend, Hamid Panahi, and two others, who remain unidentified. The four were on their way to participate in the protests against the outcome of the 2009 Iranian presidential election.The car's air conditioner was not working well, so she stopped her car some distance from the main protests and got out on foot to escape the heat. She was standing and observing the sporadic protests in the area when she was shot in the chest.

And the story continue: Hejazi ( Arash Hejazi is a doctor had been present during the incident) standing one meter away from her when she was shot, tried to staunch her wound with his hands. Hejazi said “At 19:05 June 20th Place: Kargar Ave. at the corner crossing Khosravi St. and Salehi st. A young woman who was standing aside with her father (He wasn’t her father but her music teacher) watching the protests was shot by a Basij member hiding on the rooftop of a civilian house. He had clear shot at the girl and could not miss her. However, he aimed straight her heart. I am a doctor, so I rushed to try to save her. But the impact of the gunshot was so fierce that the bullet had blasted inside the victim’s chest, and she died in less than two minutes.

The protests were going on about one kilometer away in the main street and some of the protesting crowd were running from tear gas used among them, towards Salehi St. The film is shot by my friend who was standing beside me” & he added “nearby members of the crowd pulled a man from his motorcycle while shouting: "We got him, we got him," disarmed him, obtained his identity card and identified him as a member of the Basij militia (government paramilitary). The militiaman, identified as Abbas Kargar Javid, was shouting, "I didn't want to kill her." The protesters let him go, but they kept the alleged killer's identity card and took many photographs of him. A recent documentary on the shooting contained a previously unseen clip of demonstrators capturing the militiaman seconds after the shooting.



Her last words were, "I'm burning, I'm burning!"



She died en route to Tehran's Shariati hospital & buried at the Behesht-e Zahra cemetery in southern Tehran.



Greetings to your soul, Greetings to your courageous & greeting to your humanity Neda Agha-Soltan.



Yesterday, there was Neda & tomorrow we will have like Neda in our counters!

Poisoning Girls At Schools In Afghanistan.

At least 13 girls have fallen ill after a suspected poisonous gas attack at a school in northern Afghanistan.

The government has accused fighters opposed to female education of being behind the attack.

This issue has touched my heart; how they can poisoning girls in their schools? they put some poisonous material in the back of the classroom.

If those people thinking they will kill their soul & ambition for education & learning they must be wrong.
Girls in their age were thirsty for learning, education & knowledge. I don’t know why they attack female? Cause they want to learn? What they are afraid off?

Despite how life is tough in Afghanistan but when you just think of these girls how they feel happy to get something new from their schools, how they fight to be in their schools in that difficult environment, it is the sense of life, sense to go forward, to achieve their dreams.

You can read more about it in this link:

http://www.english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/04/201042663711279658.html

Women’s Movement In Middle-East.

Women’s movement in middle-east during 6 years, has been increasing by calling for their rights over & over with their rights & women now feel they are responsible about themselves & about their lives but that movement is forcing many impediments , some are social structures, some are cultural traditions that inhibit women's development, domestic violence.



Women trying to fight for their rights, amid rising religious extremism or internal conflict.
There are many issues in her way to get her rights, But in the other hand she improved herself by giving her right to vote in 2005 in Kuwait, custodial mothers won recognition of their parental authority and proxy marriages were banned in Algeria but, these are few countries who accepted the change & it is still far away from a big change comparing with western counters; Despite the advances in literacy, educational attainment, political participation and economic role for women, but violence against women remains widespread throughout the Arab world.

So, what can be done to help the women of the Middle East?

Being one voice, helping each other, asking for International NGOs should continue the good work they've done to support civil society activities in the region, asking United State government & United Kingdom to help our eastern women by making a bridge of trust between their NGOs & our organizations that help women & that will not be done if WE don’t raise our voice if we don’t help each other if we don’t take our issues seriously, if we don’t fight.

The time is now & we should motivate each other to reach out our rights as part of human rights.

Fashion & Culture.

-What has been changed to our eastern women during 1970s till 2010?

  

-What was the ideology about our women at that time & who men in our counters looked to our women in 1970s & that style's of life?

 Does that related to mentality at that time? Or the corruption wasn’t appeared like nowadays? Or the challenges take other shapes in this century?

Dealing With Facts!

For a long time ago I was talking with a friend, she is a young woman about 32 years old & she has a sister & brother living with their mother, she is working a boring job.
I was asking her why you just go & live your life, choose your own?
She replied me: Who will take care of my mother? I refused to live my own life because I realized I will fight just myself cause no one listened to me so, I gave up on many things like to be creative or to go forward to study or to raise my abilities in any field.
I asked her: Why?
She said: Simply, no one courage me no one support me, you are living in culture that make you so limited, where should I go -as she said- go to where especially I’m a woman? How can I go forward without support without help?
Then she added: It is easy for man goes anywhere, whatever he wants, chooses his life, travels, do this do that, no one will judge him & tell him what are you doing?
Then I told her but that’s very bad situation, you will wait for someone to knock at your house door & tell you I want to marry you? Even if that what you are wanting but, nowadays that becomes an old idea an old tradition women & men now they are choosing the person who they want to be with, to live with, they want like a love story they want to know each other well before getting married & you are waiting for who?
Someone who may come or may not? & maybe you will agree about him or maybe not? Waiting for unknown thing?
Sadly, there was no other fact just that one “Waiting for unknown thing”
That issue is one of many women living like that way “waiting” or “pending” their life pending though they have abilities, skills, they have their dreams, their ambitions.

Then at the end of our speech she told me with few words: Easily, I retired from going forward to achieve my dreams or fighting culture or society, fight for this & that because it is useless & going in the same circle no one will listen to you.

The question is WHY SHOULD WE GIVE UP?
Is this what we want? I guess NO.
Is this because we are women? I guess NO.
Is this because we are less than men? I guess NO.

There are many young women living like that & when you are hearing about women rights & equality with men & a little bit of freedom you say “Oh, everything is okay then” but, that’s far away from our culture I can tell it will be the same even after 20-30 years from now if not more because these things has taken from generation after generation nothing change it, no new mentalities broken this wrong traditions like no new knowledge about how women should be treated by men & by culture; how we look to the woman as a human being not object, how we look to the woman as an individual person but till now we have this mentality about women should be at home, women should be housewives, women should not given their freedom cause they will go out of control, women should be beaten, women should be salve, women should be second after the man, women are just objects, women just for amusing.

We are in 2010 while the whole world advancing we are still living in 1800s. I wonder how women treated in the west or how she could take most of her rights while the west countries had been lived through first & second World War?


I will leave the answer to you.

Women's Rights Division

Millions of women throughout the world live in conditions of abject deprivation of, and attacks against, their fundamental human rights for no other reason than that they are women.
I just read that & how much effected on me .. "Millions of women throughout the world" !!
Doesn't that make you sad, just because we are women!!
That's unfair.
You can read more about it in this link:
http://www.hrw.org/en/node/82134

Day Of Struggle!

In last 3 or 4 days ago, I was in deep sadness cause problems every where in our life & women should be blamed, because woman is the weak person & always issues related her, I wonder how long will stand that?How much pain will keep it in her hearts?
Always people talking about freedom, women rights, women activities in the society..BUT, wait where is that in the realty? where is that in our life?
Women suffering, dying psychically, spirituality & mentality in our eastern countries & they are fighting & fighting to get a small part from their rights.
Today is the day to speak out, day to fight, day to be one voice that force all the bad manners against us, or teaching bad morals about us, it is day to tell people we are human too, we have voice too, we have rights too, we have ability to success in our life too, we have future waiting for us to do things too, starting from home, teaching our students our new generation form school, from college, I believe if we are teaching our small families we can get a better society, better treatment, better knowledge to how treat our women.

I'm A Woman!

After 4 months on our first post...

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Let me introduce myself.

I am a woman.

Not a secondary supplement to but the complimentary counterpart to a man. I too have dreams and desires and ambitions. I too am an individual and a part of a family. And I too can know joy and happiness and love and know pain and loneliness and sorrow.

As I sit in my family-imposed imprisonment in the middle-east, confined by an uncompromising, outdate culture I yearn for a voice. More than that, I long for that voice to be heard.

I am alone.

Not literally. My family is here, my “flesh and blood”, yet they deny me my inherent right as a human being to choose my own path, my own life because I am a woman. They deny me the fundamental right to define my own boundaries, to pursue my own dreams, to love whom my heart loves. They tell me I will ruin their reputation, I can’t possibly make such a decision; I haven’t the wherewithal to know what I want.

I am just a woman.

I am just a voice in solitude, locked behind doors, refused to feel the sun on my face. Yes, again I am being figurative, but it is still the truth. Once, I smiled. Once I felt the warmth of the sun upon my face. Now I know only the chill of loneliness and the spark of a want to speak. No, I’m still hiding my emotions; it’s such a bad habit.

Within my chest is a raging fire for the need to SCREAM!

What makes a man more capable of living his life better than me? What makes his life more valuable than my own? I too am educated. I too have a heart, a soul, a mind that can feel and think and reason. In my culture a man can’t even take care of himself. He depends upon women to cook and clean and do all the little things so he doesn’t have to. A man is often lazy and does maybe half the work of a woman. What makes him better? A man can’t even have children. In fact in this modern age of miraculous medicine it could be argued that we don’t need men at all. It would be a far less violent world, that’s for sure.

But I must confess it is not only men who have stolen my freedom, who have incarcerated my spirit just as they have denied my corporeal freedom. The women of the middle-east are just as culpable as the men. To allow such behavior, to accept the role of servitude only encourages such barbaric, outdated customs. Yes, there was a time when this was the accepted norm around the globe but that time has come and gone. We hear how bad the West is, how bad their women are, even Eastern women condemn them as sinful or immoral, yet who are we to judge? Who are we to devalue our own sisters in the world, whose mothers and grandmothers fought for their own freedoms over the years, decades, centuries?

I am a woman and I have plans, dreams, expectations.

I want to feel the wind of possibility whip about me and carry my voice far and away. I want to accept responsibility. No, I’m being demure again. I long to embrace my own decisions, right or wrong, as mine!

I am a woman. I can bring life into this world yet I must ask to go outdoors, must be accompanied, must obey archaic laws else risk being rebuked, beaten…or worse. Death is something that eastern women are all too familiar with; the threat, the execution…
But I feel I am already dead. I breathe, I eat, I wake to go to work, but am just the walking dead. This is not living.

I am a woman and I WANT TO LIVE.

Yes, most of my day I know broken-hearted solitude.
But I know I am not alone.

We are women, and WE HAVE A VOICE. We have waited long enough for the men of our culture, for our fathers and brothers and husbands to give us our liberty and it is evident that that they will not. They will not listen to the West, they will not accept that we are their equals. They will relent nothing, give nothing.

So I am a woman, and I am no longer asking.

I am a woman and I shall take my freedom.
Because what I understand that the men of my culture do not is that freedom is not free. Freedom does not come without the responsibility to fight for it, to sacrifice, and that it must always be guarded and protected. For some this is too much effort and slinking back to the dark isolation becomes acceptable because it is safe and familiar.

But I am a woman and I AM FIERCE!

I am a woman and THIS IS MY VOICE!

My sisters in the middle-east;
WILL YOU HAVE A VOICE TOO?
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I'm a woman who wants to breathe, I'm a woman who wants to achieve dreams, I'm a woman who wants to smell the freedom, I'm a woman who wants to fight for women's rights as a part of human rights, I'm an eastern-western composition...I'm a woman!

To All Women In The World...

To all women in the world...

To those who are suffering...

To those who are fighting for freedom...

To those who are fighting for their rights...

This website is for YOU!