We Want a Comprehensive Renaissance for the Country

The most important mark of the present age is woman's blessed movement in all manner of fields. And the most important thing this movement is bringing forth is the desire to strike the political target. For we have seen woman share with man in his war and in his peace. And we have seen her standing to contend for her rights in the United Nations organization, that she may obtain them whole and undiminished.

This great world institution, which works for the good and welfare of the world in preparing the paths of human progress, and which has resolved upon delivering the generations from the storms that sweep over humanity, has decreed equality of rights among the various classes, races, and religions, male and female alike. There is no warrant, then, for Lebanon to lag behind any reform movement that aims at progress, civilization, and prosperity; rather, in its renaissance, regard must be had to competence — to personal competence alone — in the vital public services and the work they require.

As for Lebanon's constitution and its religious and traditional laws, there is nothing in them to prevent woman from sharing with man in the practical political field. Article Seven of the constitution lays down that: "All Lebanese are equal before the law; they enjoy civil and political rights and bear the public obligations and duties without any distinction among them." There is no justification, then, for neglecting woman and denying her the right of election and of parliamentary work.

Many of the opponents suppose that politics corrupts woman as it has corrupted many quarters of the world, and that this is a movement aiming at the ruin of the family, aiming to wreck its happiness. But we women know better than man the points of weakness in our own frame: woman has known the disease within families, and it is she who will open the way of good to the world, bind up its wounds, lighten its misery, and contend against humanity's evils and its wars. By her cooperation with man she aims to rebuild what has been torn down and to set right what has gone wrong, whether within the family or outside it. We do not want every woman to desert the home and go down into the field of politics; rather we want her equal to man, sharing with him the responsibilities and the gravest of affairs, with no law or statute barring her from entering upon any legitimate path in which lies work of reform for her family in particular and for her country and her countrymen in general.

Woman's mission in existence is too lofty to be confined within a narrow, limited circle beyond which lies nothing but the stagnation of her moral and intellectual powers. The world deserves rather to profit from those good powers which God has planted in the heart of every human being. For if those powers die, humanity loses whatever good and blessing and betterment it might have drawn from them.

Most peoples have awakened and grasped the realities of existence, so that man and woman now share the various paths together, equal in rights and in duties. But the current of traditions inherited from the ages of despotism has held down woman — even the educated woman — in our country, and has flung man — be he ignorant and callow — into the field of national work. And how many of them have corrupted themselves and corrupted their country! And how many a good, reforming woman has been represented in her stead by a selfish man who aims in his work at nothing but a private end and a personal gain.

This is what we want to see changed in Lebanon, so that the stamp of servitude may pass from its being and the mark of enslavement be erased from its thinking, lest it fall behind, in its renaissance, those countries where man walks side by side with woman in social and political work of every kind.

We want no sudden leap, nor do we desire antagonism or strife in which there is no good for the homeland. The safeguarding of the family is the first thing we aim at, for when the families are sound, the whole homeland is sound.

And if woman is treated in a country as the minor and the imbecile are treated, then the nation's being — the whole of it, or half of it — stands in need of guardianship and protection. Or say rather that most sides of its life — scholarly, constructive, social, and political — stand in need of domination, seclusion, and dependence.

We therefore ask those in whose hands lie the reins of affairs to hasten to raise woman's standing in Lebanon and to give her a share with man in the country's great responsibilities — applying Article Seven of the Lebanese constitution and giving her a share with man in the elections, especially since the coming parliamentary election is the first election since the country won its independence. From its conditions must be removed everything that conflicts with the principles of equality and clashes with the dignity of man.

Otherwise there is no good in the movement of renaissance, and its course must needs be slowed upon the paths of progress and reform. We want for the country a comprehensive renaissance and a noble forward bound, supported by all the country's people, men and women together, that we may form a national being firm of pillar and solid of foundation.