Quotes About Culture

Until Islam's articulate spokeswomen such as Rana Kabbani target their misguided coreligionists with the fervor they expend on outside critics, the grave mistake of conflating Islam with clitoridectomy and honor killings will continue. And much more importantly, so will the practices themselves, at the cost of so many Muslim women's health and happiness.

Australians say 'pissed off.' Pissed means drunk. Piss is alcohol. To take the piss--that means to send someone up, make fun of them.

She would have had to keep her headscarf on, never laugh, never smile—if she smiles at a man he will think, 'Ah, she loves me,' " Mohamed explained. As

If Islamic countries can't come up with their own principles for women's competition," she said in one widely reported speech, "then the way dictated by Western oppressing countries will be imposed on us." Iran

The practice of mutilating women's genitals in Eritrea predated the arrival of both religions, and for hundreds of years neither faith had questioned it. The

Men raised in a culture of blood revenge do not change in a day.

My mother, my grandmother and my great-grandmother all told me it was right, that without it a woman wouldn't be able to control herself, that she would end up a prostitute," said Aset, a beautiful twenty-eight-year-old whose own genitals had been mutilated when she was about seven years old.

women had been sent back home, to manufacture male babies and avoid waste in household expenditures.

In either culture, women somehow managed to get the wrong end of the stick. Women bear the brunt of fending off social disorder in the Catholic

One program that deplored the high incidence of wife beating drew hundreds of letters from angry men, who insisted that beating their wives was a God-given right.

fundamentalists asked that a male answer questions directed to her, on the grounds that a woman's voice is too alluring to be heard in mixed company. Nadia

trouble is, these people don't understand their own culture," said

used personal and place-names in their transliteration

To the gnarled old imam, sending his daughters out of the home—to walk in the streets, even if veiled, to sit among strangers, even if all girls—was wicked. His

They argued that women of the prophet's era had ridden camels, the main mode of transportation of their day. The

With this assertion, many mainstream Muslims wash their hands of the twin brutalities that shape the lives of perhaps a quarter of the women of Islam.

Women of all ages are in-fantilized by the Saudi system. A woman, no matter how old, has to be able to show a signed permission from her husband, son or grandson before she is free to travel, even inside her own country.

Such laws can be even more humiliating for older women. A widowed grandmother, for example, may have to rely on the permission of a grandson if he is her closest male relative.

I started with Arabic, the language of the Koran. Only one in five Muslims is an Arab; yet Arabic is the language in which the world's more than one billion Muslims—a fifth of the world's population—talk to God.

She'd been married at twelve, before her menarche, and had been pregnant or lactating ever since.

These artists you propose to study, these"—she paused and dropped her voice—"White males. They are not so intéressant, I think. Not so important.

The women have been told it's written in the Koran that they must do these things," she said. She could tell them it wasn't but, as an outsider and a woman, her word meant little against the word of the village sheik.

one in five Muslim girls lives today in a community that sanctions some sort of interference with her genitals.

Even the genteel ladies in the high stands opened their delicate throats and pierced the sky with their soprano squealing.