Talking about honor killings done in some Arabian countries, I remember my chat with my first online boyfriend some time in 2000. One day he had a chat with a very young girl, in her early twenties. She told him about one of her cousins killed by the family that found out she had sex out of wedlock. She said, “She deserved to die because she could not keep her chastity.”
“How about the man with whom she had sex? Was he sentenced to death too?” Rick asked her.
“Of course not. Different from a woman, a man is not heavily burdened to keep the chastity (?).” The naïve young girl said.
“Don’t you think it is an ugly policy?” Rick asked her again.
“No. She deserved to die, I have told you.”
*****
The naivety made the girl not think further that the different treatment toward man and woman who do exactly the same thing can be included into a crime. Her naivety can be caused by her ignorance. But it can also be caused by the prohibition of women to get more education, difficulty to access books anytime they want, and also religious (wrong) indoctrination that women’s sphere is fully at home so that they do not need to equip themselves with knowledge.
Have you ever heard that men are afraid of intellectual women? Intellectual women will be rebellious? Not all men of course, but inferior men.
Naïve women will not question why they are treated differently. They will consider it as naturally created from God. Moreover, if it is wrapped with religious teachings.
This is one of my worries with the spread of Islamic syariah in Indonesia.
PT56 12.15 130507
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