...In the Man's Opinion

It is the man's duty today — among the first of his duties — to face the question of woman in our country with a realistic, frank, bold confrontation, one that draws a dividing line between what has been and what must be.

It is the man's duty to face this question with what is due to him in it and what is due from him. In it he has a right, and upon him in it lie obligations.

And let the man, as he faces this question, strip himself of his selfishness, of his past, of his traditions, so that he may put an end to this chaos that reigns over his relation to woman and woman's relation to him. For the question has passed out of its narrow circle into a circle more comprehensive and far graver.

And what does woman want?!

Is it true that she wants to turn the social order upside down, sweeping away man's dominion in order to build woman's dominion upon it?

Is it true that she wants to desert the earthly paradise in which God placed her, and in which He placed for her the birds of paradise?

Is it true that woman inclines to renounce her great and sacred mission, for whose sake all humanity has existed, and woman herself has existed??

Is it true that woman would sell the sanctities of the beautiful, immortal divinity — all the inspiration, beauty, and majesty those sanctities hold, all the humanity that is in them — in order to turn ferocious as man turns ferocious, to blaspheme as man blasphemes, and to bargain as he bargains? No. No. So says, at this hour, a man who believes from his depths in the truth of this great creature — woman. He believes in her as a human being, than whom God has fashioned no more wondrous human; and he believes in her as a creatress completing God's work from the day God set about creating the world piece by piece. And he believes in her total, unbounded power in upholding the spiritual forces in man.

No... Even if woman herself wanted that, the hidden power that appointed her to creation and to making would not permit her to do it, for that same power will never forsake the fulfillment of its mission through woman. A great mission, which none but woman will ever carry out!!

What, then, does woman want?

What does she want, as she holds conferences and founds associations, and her voice rises in every corner of the earth?

Woman, having become fully conscious of her truth and conscious of her human mission, wants only to put an end to this long chain of torments, pains, and oppression, in which she has tasted deprivation of every kind — even deprivation of the blessing of enjoying motherhood in the fullness of its meaning.

Woman among us — among us in this long, wide Arab world — is a palsied limb, incapable of carrying out a mission or the semblance of a mission. It avails us nothing that in some Arab countries she has begun to break free and to blossom; in those very countries, for all her blossoming and breaking free, she is still unable to push the carriage forward.

And I do not know what "forward" man can ever reach on this earth if the strongest thing in him, the noblest thing in him, the most majestic thing in him — woman — is helpless and paralyzed.

Woman among us, in the Arab world, has two causes: her cause with man, and her cause with herself. As for her cause with man, man himself must solve it. He must move out of her way. Let him throw open the doors of the schools before her... for learning alone will save her and save society. Learning first, and after it everything else comes.

And if man refuses, then let woman work with every means at her command to remove him from her path.

And we are with her.

As for her cause with herself, she must solve it by herself.

Let her beware of sudden flare-ups. Politics alone is not a right. Politics has not given us men our rights; our rights in politics are a fable.

And let her remember always that she is the trustee of the sanctities of divinity in man. Humanity will never find a guardian more precious than she over the great sanctities.