A+Woman's+Life

Women's rights have yet to happen in the Middle East. Women are second-class citizens and men are the dominant sex. Women are looked at as objects. If a man wants to marry her, she often does not have a say in it. The father has more word in her marriage and choice of men than she does. The punishment for women are much harsher then men and more unfair. If you look at the picture below it shows a common dress code of the Middle East. How can you tell them apart? What separates them or makes them unique? ..
 * Can you imagine being a woman in the Middle East?**

In the movie, Osama, women and girls aren't even allowed to go walk around without a man escorting them. A young girl was forced to cut her hair and pretend to be a boy. Women aren't allowed to work and her family was starving. Her mother could finally go on the streets because "Osama" was escorting her. She ended up getting caught and her punishment was she was sold to an old man who already had a number of wifes. She got rapped by him and was forced their until he said otherwise. Women and girls are looked at as lower class.

How they are treated varies on where in the middle east you are. In Saudi Arabia women are not even allowed to drive cars!! How does your sex have anything to do with driving? There's never been a proven fact that females can't drive. The top position in government, according to strict Islamic laws, is denied to women. It seems they haven't had reality hit them yet that the rest of the world has come to sense that there is no dominant sex. According to the Interparlia-mentary Union, the political representation of women in parliaments in Arab nations lags behind all other countries of the world, and Kuwait has yet to grant women the right to vote! [|Women in the middle east]

The Koran (is the central religious text of Islam) degrades women and proves that they are thought of as objects. In verse 223 it says "Your wife are a tilth for you, so go in you tilth when you like..". This basically says even if the wife doesn't want to, her husband can choose to have intercourse with her at any time. The Koran states as long as four witnesses testify a wife is guilty of an indecency, then they go to a jail or get killed. The book grants men the right to replace their wifes under certain circumstances. Divorce is completely different then in America. According to the Koran, both people don't have to agree on it and sign a piece of paper. If a man decided he wants to divorce his wife he should not have sex with her in the last four months of their divorcing process. Though if he decided his hormones are just too demanding it is forgiving to go ahead and have sex with her. Once the divorce has happened a woman is demanded to wait three courses until having relations again. 

Bibliography:
 * Lois Beck and Nikki Keddie, eds., //Women in the Muslim World// (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978).
 * [|www.fpif.org/briefs/vol5/v5n30women.html]
 * Koran
 * Hand out- Ch. 2: The Cow - Divorce
 * Osama
 * [|www.themodernreligion.com/women/harsh-reality.html]