society, its manner of upbringing, and its conditions have stood between her and life, and imposed upon her kinds of living that degrade human dignity and bring it near the abyss. She lives and exists, but the kind of life she lives urges the noblest natures toward pestilence and corruption. She is beaten and degraded, and crime is sometimes committed against her; even the judiciary — I mean the Syrian judiciary — inclines, in its interpretations and its tendencies, to seek out discretionary grounds for the one who commits a crime against her when honor is the motive of the killing. It is true that the interpretation of foreign courts seeks mitigating grounds for one kind of crime, the crime of passion; but woman's share of that indulgence is no less than man's share of it — it is applied to her as it is applied to him.
In the face of this oppression, then, the Eastern woman is compelled to resort to lying and hypocrisy in order to save herself from it. She is thus neither free nor candid, and does not grasp the meaning of free candor, because the kind of life she lives is neither free nor candid, and because the conduct of the man of the lower class, and of part of the middle class, drags her down toward the abyss of morals instead of raising her to their summit.
Then why does woman slip so easily in our country? Is it because her natural disposition inclines her toward this slipping, or because the fundamental supports of morals are lacking to her? She slips through her deprivation of all the moral nourishments that polish her humanity and lift her soul above the circle of instinct into the spiritual air. She is deprived of a sound upbringing and of all that branches from it — inner and moral refinement, and then spiritual direction; deprived of the great shaper, nay, the greatest teacher of man in existence, by which I mean social life and the knowledge of people. And it is natural that man should dispose of woman's life however his whims and desires please, after he has monopolized it so completely: a single word from him can, between one hour and the next, transform her life and turn her conditions
upside down — either banishment from her children and her shelter, and hence an unknown fate and a life whose lot is misery and vagrancy; or banishment from her shelter and the shouldering of a burden she knows not how to shoulder, while society prepares for her no sufficient means with which she might seek help in carrying it. The environment wrongs her, and society casts her out, because economically she is not free.
Such is the condition of woman in most circles of the country; I have pictured it in the briefest of outlines, and a little observation and reflection will guide our eyes to the human tragedies of frequent occurrence in our land. And when observation guides you to these tragedies, do not call the causes of her decline by names that carry nothing of their meanings but the sound — now that you have
laid hold of the buried knot and grasped its secret.
As for how we may preserve our nation from social decay and chaos: we may achieve it by imposing compulsory education upon the young of both sexes; by applying the newest and most effective methods of education in the kindergartens; by founding shelters for the childhood cast adrift in the alleys, and undertaking its care and protection; and then by applying a law that fixes the conditions of divorce and forbids polygamy except in compelling circumstances, and lays the severest penalty upon whoever violates it. For if divorce is a necessity which the two parties, or one of them, cannot in certain circumstances do without, that does not mean that man should monopolize the right to dispose of it. ("The most hateful of lawful things to God Most High is divorce.")
SHEAFFER'S
The pen...
...with which the Charter of the Arab League was signed shares in writing a new page in modern Arab history
Sold at all stationers