The oldest injustice in human history is the way we treat women.
The oldest injustice in human history is the way we treat women.
Couple years ago, I read and saw this video and it tore me up. While perhaps this case and this girl’s situation may be extreme, the mistreatment and abuse of girls and women are nevertheless still common. It is and continues to be the “oldest injustice in human history.”Don’t turn away. Read this article and watch this video: https://youtube.com/0fHqA4GQxsE (https://youtu.be/0fHqA4GQxsE)
It is the way that “we” view, treat, and oppress women.
It would be erroneous for me to say that Asian culture is entirely proned to be against women but I can share my personal experience that as a young Korean man, I was influenced – partly through the Confucian culture and worldview that women were born to serve their fathers as young girls, their husbands when they got married, and their grown sons when they were older mothers. Their lives and purpose – in part – revolved around men.I know that others may not have had similar experiences but for me, as a person of the Christian faith, I learned – in bits and pieces (both in subtle and occasionally in direct ways) that women should be our “partners.” They should be quiet, submissive and know their place. Obey and honor their fathers, love and submit to their husbands, and raise godly sons and daughters.
Why didn’t I learn that women and men are both created in the beautiful image of God? Why didn’t I learn that while we have different roles, we are also created equal in the image of God? Why didn’t I learn that through Christ, women and men can do all things through Him who gives strength and grace.
I still remember this email that I received from a congregant couple years ago after a sermon I gave at Quest regarding women:
But at one point today, you said, “Women,
you were created equal to men in the image of God.” I mainly write
because I don’t know if you realize how powerful that statement was. I
don’t know if you realized what it would feel like to hear that
statement coming from a man — what it would mean to me, and possibly to
other individual women and men. You didn’t even say it to me
individually…I have never been told by a man, Christian or not, that I
am equal to him. I have never been told by a man that I am equal to him.
And equal in that we are both created in the image of God…I cried all
the way home. How is it that I’ve never been told by a male person that I
am equal to him? That I am equally beautiful and broken? That we are
both created in the image of God?
…Women are deeply wounded by living in
this world, and wounded that men don’t fight for us. Instead, they fight
to rule us, and we…sometimes we fight, but most of the time we believe
them when they tell us we aren’t worth our weight (sometimes taken
literally). Today I felt like a man was fighting for me, not because I
can’t fight for myself, but because he recognized the wrongs in a world
and a Church that have benefited him unfairly.
So, I ask you a simple question for dialogue:
Why is it that women – across cultures, religion, and history – are oppressed?
I read this article today from Nicolas Kristof [NY
Times] about girls and women that have had acid thrown at their face in
an attempt to deform them. It is a brutal story. I wasn’t sure if I
should swear, cry, or pray and I think I ended up doing all three. The
quote that sticks out to me the most and it may be one of those quotes I
will never forget is from a 17-year-old girl Aghani girl named Shamsia. Some
men on motorcycles threw acid on a group of girls who “dared to attend
school.” In response, Shamsia told reporters from her hospital bed:
I will go to my school even if they
kill me. My message for the enemies is that if they do this 100 times, I
am still going to continue my studies.
Amazing. The world needs women and men like Shamsia. Please take a
few minutes to read the article and pass it on to others.
Terrorism in this part of the world
usually means bombs exploding or hotels burning, as the latest horrific
scenes from Mumbai attest. Yet alongside the brutal public terrorism
that fills the television screens, there is an equally cruel form of
terrorism that gets almost no attention and thrives as a result:
flinging acid on a woman’s face to leave her hideously deformed.
Here in Pakistan, I’ve been investigating
such acid attacks, which are commonly used to terrorize and subjugate
women and girls in a swath of Asia from Afghanistan through Cambodia
(men are almost never attacked with acid). Because women usually don’t
matter in this part of the world, their attackers are rarely prosecuted
and acid sales are usually not controlled. It’s a kind of terrorism that
becomes accepted as part of the background noise in the region.
This month in Afghanistan, men on
motorcycles threw acid on a group of girls who dared to attend school.
One of the girls, a 17-year-old named Shamsia, told reporters from her
hospital bed: “I will go to my school even if they kill me. My message
for the enemies is that if they do this 100 times, I am still going to
continue my studies.”
When I met Naeema Azar, a Pakistani woman
who had once been an attractive, self-confident real estate agent, she
was wearing a black cloak that enveloped her head and face. Then she
removed the covering, and I flinched.
Acid had burned away her left ear and most
of her right ear. It had blinded her and burned away her eyelids and
most of her face, leaving just bone.
Six skin grafts with flesh from her leg
have helped, but she still cannot close her eyes or her mouth; she will
not eat in front of others because it is too humiliating to have food
slip out as she chews.
Here’s a portion of another article:
But sometimes it’s very personal. It
wasn’t a government or a guerrilla insurgency that threw acid on this
woman’s face in Pakistan. It was a young man whom she had rejected for
marriage. As the United States ponders what to do in Afghanistan — and
for that matter, in Pakistan — it is wise to understand both the
political and the personal, that the very ignorance and illiteracy and
misogyny that create the climate for these acid attacks can and does
bleed over into the political realm. Nicholas Kristof, the New York
Times op-ed columnist who traveled to Pakistan last year to write about
acid attacks, put it this way in an essay at the time: “I’ve been
investigating such acid attacks, which are commonly used to terrorize
and subjugate women and girls in a swath of Asia from Afghanistan
through Cambodia (men are almost never attacked with acid). Because
women usually don’t matter in this part of the world, their attackers
are rarely prosecuted and acid sales are usually not controlled. It’s a
kind of terrorism that becomes accepted as part of the background noise
in the region. …
“Bangladesh has imposed controls on acid
sales to curb such attacks, but otherwise it is fairly easy in Asia to
walk into a shop and buy sulfuric or hydrochloric acid suitable for
destroying a human face. Acid attacks and wife burnings are common in
parts of Asia because the victims are the most voiceless in these
societies: They are poor and female. The first step is simply for the
world to take note, to give voice to these women.” Since 1994, a
Pakistani activist who founded the Progressive Women’s Association (www.pwaisbd.org)
to help such women “has documented 7,800 cases of women who were
deliberately burned, scalded or subjected to acid attacks, just in the
Islamabad area. In only 2 percent of those cases was anyone convicted.”
Irum Saeed, 30, poses for a photograph at her office at the Urdu University of Islamabad, Pakistan, Thursday, July 24, 2008. Irum was burned on her face, back and shoulders twelve years ago when a boy whom she rejected for marriage threw acid on her in the middle of the street. She has undergone plastic surgery 25 times to try to recover from her scars.
Shameem Akhter, 18, poses for a photograph at her home in Jhang, Pakistan, Wednesday, July 10, 2008. Shameem was raped by three boys who then threw acid on her three years ago. Shameem has undergone plastic surgery 10 times to try to recover from her scars.
Najaf Sultana, 16, poses for a photograph at her home in Lahore, Pakistan on Wednesday, July 9, 2008. At the age of five Najaf was burned by her father while she was sleeping, apparently because he didn’t want to have another girl in the family. As a result of the burning Najaf became blind and after being abandoned by both her parents she now lives with relatives. She has undergone plastic surgery around 15 times to try to recover from her scars.
SOURCE: EUGENE CHO
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