Why do muslim countries not have strong economy? |
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PattyaMainer
Senior Member Female Joined: 03 August 2008 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 352 |
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Yes, there should be a balance, Hayfa. I think what concerns me are those women who are starved to learn, to obtain an education. They are capable of doing many things other than highly professional careers. Many could successfully operate a safe, high standard day care center for women who are working. They could learn how to start and run a business of their choosing, such as a bookstore, art supply store, sewing business, etc. The opportunities are endless for a woman who has an education which will give her the basics of working for herself or at a job which she enjoys and find interesting. This would help her self-esteem, and bring money into the home to help with household expenses. Even for women who do not care to work outside the home, an education would enable her to feel she is equal in intelligence to other educated women. She would enjoy reading about a variety of issues, managing money more efficiently, etc. I think all women deserve the right to an education, and it is sad that some women are denied that right simply because they are a woman. I've known women in Eastern Kentucky, not far from where I was raised. They were not educated then, and they were very sad, unhappy women. Things are changing there now, but change comes slowly. I cannot think of any positive or good reason for depriving a woman of an education.
God's Peace,
Patty
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"FOR THOSE WHO DO NOT BELIEVE, NO EXPLANATION IS POSSIBLE. FOR THOSE WHO BELIEVE, NO EXPLANATION IS NECESSARY."
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Angela
Senior Member Joined: 11 July 2005 Status: Offline Points: 2555 |
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Tribal Culture is fine. There is no reason why adaptation will not benefit the Tribe. The whole point of a Tribal Structure is to provide a network of support and security. Tribes were formed in times before formal governments and today are a source of cultural identity. Many tribal cultures are being lost and do you know who is preserving them? Members of tribes who have left and become educated and came back to enrich and preserve. Just because you introduce education into a society does not mean that captialism and Western society follows. However, the prevention of education for fear of that encroachment is simply unwise. For example, many of your countrymen are farmers and livestock traders. Image how much more productive a man can be if his sons go to college and learn modern agricultural techniques. The farmers cannot make ends meet in some areas and turn to poppies because the money is better. But if they could learn to get a better yield from a more Halal crop, how is that not work in a tribal society. If he becomes more productive, he might be able to hire field workers, thus creating jobs. The thing is education is never wasted. I know a dear friend who has a degree in Biochemistry. She has two daughters and stays at home and does not work. As soon as the girls were old enough to start to learn to talk, she started to teach them to read. Her oldest daughter is barely 4 years old and uses a computer, reads easy books and can do basic math. She is a wonderful child. I'm sure the youngest who just turned one will be the same way, she's already showing interest in what her sister is doing. My dream of seeing education flourish in the tribal areas is not to destroy the Tribal society, but to enrich it. There are still some very stone age customs that thrive in areas where there is little education. Men who beat their wives (and this happens in poorer areas of the US too...), justice systems that are less based on evidence and fact than social standing and custom, and the abuse of children. When you look at your family and friends, what do you want to see for them? Sanitary conditions, schools, hospitals, employment, solid social programs to help the poor and the sick? Or do you want to see bad roads, poor health and rampant unemployment? Education is key to bringing prosperity. Educating women passes these values to their children. When a woman is educated, she is aware of her worth and she is even more prepared to help her family succeed. This does work in a tribal society. I will tell you at times I hear about the "tribal" customs of some regions and I cringe. The brutality that happened to 3 girls trying to elope and 2 women who only begged for mercy... done for the honor of the tribe. Husbands and wives being torn apart in divorce because one was from an inferior tribe. In Albania, in the tribal regions, for a woman to have equal rights to a man she had to swear to be an eternal virgin and take on the persona of a man. In Indonesia a Muslim community clings to pre-Islamic traditions of 5 genders and communicating with the dead. In India, tribal regions drag women from their homes and kill them as witches. These are customs that are unnecessary with education. They do not fulfill the purpose of a tribe which is to strengthen the family and provide security and support. Yet, in Dubai, a traditionally tribal region, education is flourishing. They now have the premier research facility in the world for Autism. The center was opened by a powerful and educated wife of the Sheikh. I talk to women from the UAE several times a week at work who are programmers and web designers. Who provides the medicine to the women in your tribal regions? I'm sure its not very Kosher to have male doctors doing gynecological exams? Tribal Culture and Economics need to be separated. Tribal Culture and the access to Education need to be separated. One has to look at their "culture" and see what is important and what has become a tool to oppress. In the old country, no one would think a thing if my great-grandfather drank himself st**id and beat my grandmother. There she was just property and should know her place. Here, her son's were educated and they stood up to their father and told him to clean up his act. Her life improved because of education. Even if it was indirectly. I think you've fallen into the trap of using "tradition" as excuse. |
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Hayfa
Senior Member Female Joined: 07 June 2005 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 2368 |
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I agree with you Angela. Unfortunately do to peoples' actions, outsiders who show no respect to other peoples' values, they are ineffective.
Education is one aspect to ending violence. Just one. one needs to work within the cultural construct. When I was in Pakistan I met a foreign woman trying to help women who were vicitms of violence using western models. That did not work. Instead she should o her reseach, respect the culture and needs of people, use other models from other cultures instead of imposing our model.
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When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy. Rumi
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Whisper
Senior Member Male Joined: 25 July 2004 Location: United Kingdom Status: Offline Points: 4752 |
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Angela We have had a long debate going in our part of the world about the difference between education and schooling. We have had some great scholars digging at it for almost good few decades. Schooling just trains a person to become a consumer. Education is something different and nobler, my own Foundation educates women but with a slightly different view we may have in the Its a proven fact that when a woman has an education, her children prosper better than women who do not have an education. This goes directly towards her ability to raise them. Prosper needs to be defined. Prosper in what sense? That�s of utmost importance in the But no one becomes homeless in cultures where traditional family housing is available to the whole clan or the tribe.
We have a lot of schooled women in the A perfect example of this is the Golden Age of Islam. Khadija was a merchant, Aisha memorized the Quran and more Hadith than any other. It was the women who supported Muhammed (pbuh) and it was they who carried it forward. I have never for one moment discouraged women from education and ventures as long as she just doesn�t turn into some Honorary Man!
Angela, the Its not about trotting women out and making them slaves of a two income household. Its preparing them for disasters and helping them to strengthen their community.
The prosperous nations do not ignore the contributions from half their populations.
My friend, if the Muslim world is rife with such poverty then why is Uncle Sam and their cousins from the other side of the I told my husband I have a dream of taking the "$100 Laptops" and going to Plus how can anyone ever find foreign buyers for anything? The western countries have an embargo. Plus, I have experience of our women, they like their men to look after them. It may be very hard for people at the other end of the Great Divide (Rudyard Kipling) to understand that some women do enjoy being Full Time mothers. All the women know, they do. And a 3.4 million strong sample must carry some weight.
I am sorry, I had always thought that the Tribal Culture is fine. There is no reason why adaptation will not benefit the Tribe. Our experience is that imported concepts don�t grow in our cultures. In my world the tribe has not become something of collector interest as yet.
Society is a very different thing than the set up that has grown in the industrialised countries.
In some places life doesn�t just flow with productivity. In a SOCIETY there are many other ingredients. How do we enrich society? Just by making it more productive? When you look at your family and friends, what do you want to see for them? Sanitary conditions, schools, hospitals, employment, solid social programs to help the poor and the sick? Or do you want to see bad roads, poor health and rampant unemployment? Education is key to bringing prosperity. Educating women passes these values to their children. When a woman is educated, she is aware of her worth and she is even more prepared to help her family succeed. This does work in a tribal society. These values are not exactly the same in every part of the world. In some countries, a woman�s worth is defined by how many kids she has and how they INTERACT with the people around.
I could not have done that even if I tried my best, I have been educated in I learnt my lesson and left them to it. |
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Angela
Senior Member Joined: 11 July 2005 Status: Offline Points: 2555 |
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I should define what I call prosperity. Its not wealth...
One can be rich without being wealthy. My husband and I have a little car and an old SUV for the winter. We have a modest 2 bedroom house that we rent and most of our furniture is bought from IKEA and other discounted furniture stores. I consider us prosperous. We are not wealthy... we struggle in a poor economy, but I have enough money for food on the table and we have money for taking care of ourselves. I see every winter massive amounts of food aid going into areas that are poor... The people there do not have enough resources to provide for their families. They may have one meal per day and its not very nutritious. This is what I mean about bringing prosperity. Good jobs don't bring wealth, they bring a means to provide for a family. Prosperity is the farms producing enough food for the people in the area and the people in the area being able to afford (even through barter) to purchase that food. Enrich - what I mean by enrich society is by innovation. Muslim scholars brought us algebra, astronomy, poetry, innovations in cryptology and medicine. These innovations came from men and women who lived in the security of a Tribal community with traditional values. Its true that governments in the Middle East are wealthy. But, the average person is not as well off. Men and women in Bahrain require help from their Sultan for welfare and that is the richest country in the world. Pakistan is suffering from a split personality. On one hand, they are growing and on the other, inflation and poverty are hurting the poorest of citizens. I find it a bit of a paradox that we are so maligned by the rest of the world for our excesses, yet I see 1000s coming here every year for an opportunity they do not have in their home countries. There are those of us here in the US that would like things to be much simpler. I think we are feeling the pain of that excess with our collapsing economy. Greedy people buying homes they could not afford and greedy lenders taking advantage of people who don't understand the complicated world of mortgages. It would be nice to live with my family for 10 years and have the money to buy a house outright. However, I feel that I would have killed my father in law in that amount of time... It would be nice to be able to go to my sisters house and drop off my children if I had to work. Or watch her children if she had to work. I do feel you are being a bit optimistic that women don't fall through the cracks. Her father may be dead, she may have had no brothers or sons... Everyone else is marriageable in Islamic society. I would maybe be able to go live with a cousin or even my inlaws if I were widowed because in this country marrying your cousin is illegal. A muslim woman does not have those choices. She must quickly get married if she has no mahrams and society has not provided for her to be self-sufficient. I want to stay home when I have my first child and while they are too young to go to school. That is a desire of almost every woman. However, the idea that opening opportunity is a bad thing... that is beyond me. Perhaps its just that Afghanistan has been repeatedly smashed for nearly 30 years that things are so completely off kilter there. |
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Angela
Senior Member Joined: 11 July 2005 Status: Offline Points: 2555 |
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Hayfa,
That is one of the reasons why I would like to someday go to those areas and help women learn to use a computer. An Afghani woman doesn't want to go out and work like a man. I don't blame her. But she might be able to learn how to sell her sewing online all over the world and help provide for her family. Or she might even be able to work from home as a computer programmer or web designer and it would allow her to tend her children without worry about babysitters and daycare. Not to mention how she could help her children with their schooling using that same computer. I would not counsel a domestic violence victim in that part of the world the same way I would here. Instead of the "leave the bum" line that women get here. It would be more geared to her culture, her religion and her opportunities. |
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abuayisha
Senior Member Muslim Joined: 05 October 1999 Location: Los Angeles Status: Offline Points: 5105 |
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Really?! For some reason I thought only mother-in-laws were problematic.
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Angela
Senior Member Joined: 11 July 2005 Status: Offline Points: 2555 |
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I don't have a mother in law, she passed before we were married. However, my father in law is ummm, how to put this nicely..... insane.
I adore him. I love him like a father, but we have very different personalities and opinions. |
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