Mr. Abdullah al-Mashnouq, owner of the newspaper "Beirut–al-Masa," is a measured man of letters of deep culture, of the generation that carries the message of good and of forward striving. Women's circles wondered at this harshness, dealt them by so great a writer at the very hour when their voice rose among the voices of the world, declaring that they want their right... Or it seemed to these circles that Mr. Mashnouq was a new enemy stepping forth into the arena...
"The Woman's Voice" asked the owner of Beirut–al-Masa to favor it with his opinion on granting the Lebanese woman her political rights, and he graciously sent us this piece. We do not know whether Mr. Mashnouq has truly retreated, or whether he still stands armed and at the ready... And may woman not lose a champion like Mr. Abdullah al-Mashnouq —
— The Editors —
It is a fine thing for a man's voice to rise in "The Woman's Voice," and finer still that this voice should be in harmony with the woman's voice, so that together they form a chorus playing in concord the melody dear to the heart of the Lebanese woman: "the symphony of woman's rights."
They claim — the pronoun refers to certain women — that I am woman's enemy number one in Lebanon: that I would send her back to her house never to leave it, that I would bolt in her face the door of the university and of higher learning, that I would bar her way to her political rights!
And the threats come to me, one after another: that the women have made up their minds and will wage against me a raging war without truce or mercy; and that — as our great woman writer Wadad Sakakini al-Mahasini said in the Damascus magazine al-Mu'allim
al-Arabi — "they will mount against the Ustad a pitched war beside whose peril, I should think, the peril of al-Basus would count for little in his eyes. The weapons of these young women will not be swords and lances, nor shells
or rifles; rather they will take up the implements of the kitchen — every fork and spoon and pot" — thank you, madam, for forgetting the wooden clogs! — "for Mr. Mashnouq wants the girl for the kitchen, wants her only for bearing children, wants her never to leave the house, etc..."
Had these warnings been confined to notices published in magazines and newspapers, the matter would have been light; but the problem began to swell, and its spray reached my own house. Here is my wife receiving threats in her turn from her women friends: advise your husband to give up this assault upon woman... or else you will be answerable for the consequences... (O Protector!)
Nor does the dear Mrs. Wadad Sakakini al-Mahasini stop at this limit; she goes further still, and recounts to me the tale of her prowess in the battles she once waged against the two great writers al-Aqqad and al-Hakim, saying:
"No blame attaches to me if I
remind our dear colleague Mr. Abdullah al-Mashnouq that this tune he keeps repeating — or this grudge he carries in his breast — was repeated before him by Mr. al-Aqqad and Mr. al-Hakim in Egypt; and I had encounters with them both, beyond speech and correspondence, over this subject (gently now... what might those have been, I wonder?...), for I stood as their excuser in the enmity they affected toward woman, when they did not know her as she truly is and did not believe in her competence and her merits. But Mr. Mashnouq is one of the directors of education in Lebanon, and one of those who profess the march of the age — how can such harsh contrariness, not to say the traditional enmity, insinuate itself into him?"
There is a misunderstanding here — that is certain — and it pleases me to clear it up in the pages of "The Woman's Voice."
First, I am among the champions of granting woman her full political rights without restriction or condition. I do not bind these rights with the restriction of higher education, as His Excellency the Leader Husni al-Za'im has demanded; for how can these rights be made conditional upon higher education in the woman, while illiterate men are permitted to exercise their political rights?...
And in this desire of mine I go far — very far indeed — we men, in politics as in love, know no middle course — farther than His Excellency the Prime Minister Riad al-Solh, who said that he would strive to grant woman these rights when the fitting opportunity arose. I call for granting these rights at once... now... today, not tomorrow... and tomorrow, not the day after...
It is only natural that I, as a journalist, should warm to woman's rights: for the woman who occupies herself with politics finds herself obliged to read the political papers, and that means that women will become new readers of the newspapers, new customers... So welcome