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Nearly all
universities teach courses in United States on women’s
issues, I happened to come across one; I picked up the
brochure because the course title was very catchy “Killing
Us Slowly”. It was about pressure on women to be thin and
no such thing for men. The designers in Milan and Paris make
a dress and tell the models they have to fit the dress; the
dress is not made for them! To be considered beautiful a
lady has to look like a reed or else be prepared for
scornful looks. After so many centuries women have finally
realized that to look thin is not in their best interest or
healthy. Diets don’t work and if they do it’s for a short
while and then the person puts on the same weight again.
Needless to
say our country and the neighboring India are also engulfed
by this purely superficial and Western phenomenon. Every
country accepts this idea faster than any local theory
because since the world superpower has this custom it must
be right. If they laugh at over weight people, then it’s our
duty to do so. Not realizing that they are a rich country (I
don’t consider anyone but God Almighty as a sole
superpower), it is because they robbed and continue to rob
other countries. Since they have the media, their culture is
considered the norm everywhere, whether we like it or not
but it becomes the model of our existence and mannerism. We
have our own norms of eating, we are instructed to eat so
that one third of our stomach remains empty and that is
healthy; states the Hadith. Thank God for this guidance.
Looking at cultures that don’t have it, strange things are
eaten to achieve the desired goal of staying thin by the
ladies.
The then NBC
TV anchor Katie Couric reported one fine morning around two
years ago that ever since television became widely available
in the country of Bhutan, women have started to starve
themselves to look what they consider to be the required
look acceptable to society. She was concerned about the
negative effects of TV, she thought it was sad that even bad
things are accepted as norm just because they are on TV. The
Americans have learnt through trial and error that their
system lacks many things to be called acceptable. Now that
the American population has become obese, they are hiring
models that look close to reality of human measurements, not
artificially starved to death reed thin models who don’t
mind being bulimic to look acceptable. In the past it used
to be even worse.
It is a
well known fact that women in the 19th century
America used to eat tape worms to stay thin; the idea was
that the parasite would eat all the food and they will stay
thin, they woke up with immense stomach pain but put up with
it due to their society’s pressure to stay reed thin or they
would be considered ugly. The clothing they put on was
designed in a manner that made them feel pain with every
breath, yes the dreaded corset. They now wear clothing that
is actually comfortable but its hardly there in the summer
so that is another degrading thing the women in the west are
putting up with without actually realizing it. We in South
Asia have always made the ladies of the household wear loose
fitting clothing, elegant and comfortable. Thank God.
The women’s
rights issue is now brushed aside since the upper class
women have gotten their rights. This is the latest
development in this regard. Even to solve a noble thing like
getting women the equal status, the caste system is being
followed! Women in our part of the world have always been
paid equally, this may shock American ladies.
What does it
mean when someone says Women’s rights anyway? It means
Women's economic rights, and they still have a long way to
go. We need to work hard to build such a society. We all
come from Adam and Eve. Just because American society works
on the basis on rich vs. poor we need not follow suit.
I had once attended a very interesting lecture by an English
feminist in London England, who said if it wasn't for the
Islamic patronage of science in its entire realm, we in the
West would still be burning women at the stake for
practicing witchcraft. Everything from a headache to a major
disease was attributed to black magic even years after Queen
Victoria's death. Thousands of women were burnt at the stake
for being witches in England, France, US (in fact they were
widows, midwives, those that practiced home made remedies).
Home made remedies were laughed at even at the beginning of
the 20th century only to be taken seriously in the recent
times. It wasn't until 2005 that it was found what the cause
of the suffering of those victims was! They were suffering
from ergot poisoning. Ergot being the name of a herb.
Incidentally
this laughing at some name of home made remedy is now done
in subcontinent including Sindh. If the person giving you a
home made remedy in Sindh it won’t harm if its doesn’t do
good but so called doctors trained by the western ideas tend
to disregard them as foolishness and so does the public due
to the doctors influence. Sindh and subcontinent have never
been through the Dark Ages so even the most illiterate
person has wisdom. Reading and writing is a skill that can
be learnt but all know the basic science of Quran and Hadith
which are complete guides to human existence.
The
research for the western medicine is done by the Americans
or Europeans and sometimes each finds a different answer to
the question due to technical process such as processing of
coffee or effects of honey on infants under one. In the
United States if you feed honey to an infant under one
he/she will most probably die, but this is not the case in
Europe or Asia. Why? Well it’s because honey is processed
differently in US compared to Europe. In US the honey is
processed in a manner which introduces certain bacteria
which can kill an infant under one. For coffee’s effects on
one’s heart too, US and European researchers found different
studies, the same reason, coffee is processed differently in
the two continents.
So unless
some American comes and does research on the herbs as well
other phenomenon in Sindh/South Asia, we have to take the
word of the local medicine man living in some village or
another. I am referring to the well known fact that if you
eat fish with milk you will develop a skin disease but if
you ask a doctor in South Asia, he or she will say no; that
is not true. You know why? Because its hasn’t been made into
a study by the medical researchers who live in the West so
the doctors are simply told that since its not in the
medical books its got to be untrue or just a local ‘old
wives tale’. Women weren’t believed in anything they said or
did. It was simply dismissed as gibberish in the West hence
the term old wives tale was developed.
In this
regards herbalists like Hamdard in Pakistan are extremely
advanced, they do research on local herbs/food items and
their effects. And they don’t produce medicine that cures
the disease and gives you 6 more diseases so that you buy
more medicine in order to increase profits for a
pharmaceutical company like in the US. My humble advice to
South Asians: trust the age old wisdom of our medicine
men/women.
Coming back
to women’s issues, one can’t help but feel sorry for the
women in America & Europe who are not allowed to join men
only clubs, or visit certain golf courses even in 2008 due
to them being reserved for men only. In an Islamic country
the women get barred from certain public things such as
playing games due to pardah; as a mark of respect. Women in
pardah are considered precious and taken well care of
whether they go to work or not but women in America are
barred because they are considered inferior. There were no
colleges for women in Europe and US until recently and those
that were there had inferior quality of education and
infrastructure. If a female student was invited to the male
college nearby, she was deliberately not allowed to visit
the original manuscripts of famous writers! As we find in
the writings of a prominent Western writer Virginia Wolf, it
was a pathetic state of affairs for the ladies; they
couldn’t open a bank account, work or be owners of their
inheritance. George Elliot wrote using a male name because
no one wanted to publish anything written by a woman. Women
have to change their surname once they got married as if
they were property. This is still the case but some women
have started to opt for two names (maiden-married) separated
by a hyphen. They have been having a bank account in their
own name since 1930s; however they are still paid 75% of
what an equally qualified and equally experienced man gets
in the same job.
That is the
state of the American & European ladies, while we the south
Asians are also suffering the ramifications of this caste
system prevalent in the Northern part of our planet. But the
main thing for us is the racial divide, recent Shilpa Shetty
incident in England proves that the old Roman ways are still
prevalent in the Western world and those of us that go live
there suffer immensely because of it. It does huge damage to
our psyche and growth and creative power.
Mahatma
Gandhi was asked once what he thought of Western
Civilization, and he replied ‘it would be good idea for the
West to get civilized’. Gandhi had experienced their three
pronged caste system (skin color, gender, wealth) first hand
and knew they used to confine people to insane asylums for a
mere headache instead of taking medication while telling the
Indians that Europeans are full of wisdom and goodness, they
are a superior race and the other races exist to serve them!
They forced every colony to treat their way of life superior
by sheer aggression and they demanded respect rather than
earn it. They were not better educated and civilized than
those whom they enslaved and oppressed. As a result the sun
forever set on their short lived brutal empire of hate and
discrimination. |
