For two years, my mother was married to an Egyptian man. She
visited Egypt for a month - this is back in 1984 and of course,
things were likely different then. Women being escorted was
perceived as a safety issue against rape and violence. Most
women were happy to be escorted. A woman's true power, as my
mother experienced, was in the home, just as is true worldwide
in marriages it seems. She puts on a show out in public and they
both know it's but a show for "the guys" but she rules the
marriage in the home. This is just a single example of a few
families, in a short period of time, in Egypt. They were a very
poor family; no roof but since it didnt rain, it didn't matter.
The TV at the time was universally funny sitcoms. They were
Egyptian comedies, slapstick. They couldn't believe that Mom was
laughing at all the right parts but, that's because, it's
slapstick; worldwide people understand it. The nagging wife, the
long-suffering husband, the smart-mouth kids... same worldwide.
The woman is usually the smart one at the end, or the children
and the man is usually a little dumb, but he occasionally wins.
They were and presumably are still, just regular people. I'm not
saying that there aren't people who wave the flag of Islam and
say, "WE REPRESENT ISLAM" and cause trouble. Those people need
to be dealt with. My thing is this: They DON'T represent Islam,
as much as they quote verse and chapter, as much as they say.
1.6 billion muslims and a small amount are troublemakers, and
unemployed young people with nothing better to do, join in for
brotherhood and acceptance and "something to do". There needs to
be a political response but I don't there is anything that is
fundamental about Islam the religion itself that is a problem,
nor something about "the people" that is wrong. There are
extremists that need to be dealt with but as a global community
we must be very careful not to stigmatize an entire religion
based on these things. 1.6 billion muslims. Even if there were
100,000 terrorists claiming to speak for Islam [I doubt the
number is that high, but it *could* be of course) - still that's
0.0000625. Make it a million and it's still NOT statistically
significant enough to justify stigmatizing an 1/6th of the
entire PLANET's population of people. We have to deal with the
troublemakers without ALSO denigrating an entire religion.
