woo hoo! Women in Kuwait have just been given the power to vote and run for government positions! 

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200505/s1369904.htm - http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200505/s1369904.htm

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10125914 - http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=1012 5914

Due to Shariah law, women and men will have to have separate voting places, so let's hope they provide enough for all the women.

Women are now able to vote in every Islamic country that has elections, except for Saudi Arabia.

Kim...

heh heh heh - too true.

I like your use of the word "overdeveloped". I think "over-inflated" would fit, too.

However, is there a system better than democractic elections? I don't think so. They just need to be made more foolproof. And, in most cases, involving compulsry voting. They're more difficult to rig that way, I believe.

Kim...

To be fair to the Saudis, they just gave men the vote... so I doubt the Sisters will have it (if ever) for many many years. 

Now the next step is for more women to actually get out and vote... throughout the world.  Women here in the US have a really embarrassing voting record.  Too many take the right for granted.

Of course, it would be nice if there were candidate out there worthy of voting for...

umsami wrote: Of course, it would be nice if there were candidate out there worthy of voting for...

Which there never will be as long as being elected doesn't depend on getting votes so much as having the ability to be evil/wheedling enough to make a LOT of money.

Another plus for compulsory voting...

Kim...

http://www.usavotenet.com/turnout.htm - http://www.usavotenet.com/turnout.htm

I'm not sure if the graphs show that 55% of the voters were women in 2000, or whether only 55% of women actually voted...

Also:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/polls/2004-08-25-female-vote_x.htm - http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/polls/ 2004-08-25-female-vote_x.htm

Kim...

And jsut fro interest, or fairness, or something... 

http://www.aec.gov.au/_content/What/voting/turnout/2004.htm - http://www.aec.gov.au/_content/What/voting/turnout/2004.htm

Kim...

?????????

So women, therefore, are more aware of what is needed among people living in ordinary society. Which some men cannot know because they spend all their time in the office.

Men in power make decisions that affect women's lives, so women should be able to help choose who makes those decisions.

Women are more sensitive? Maybe. It's also a proven fact that men are FAR more likely than women to be either geniuses or insane.

WHO is more sensitive? Men are genetically "inferior", having no second X chromosome to counteract any dodgy genes they might be carrying around. Therefore, they are more prone to mental illnesses and the like.

And we let them vote and be in power?

If women are more sensitive, then it's THEM who should be in power because they are able to better know what people want and need.

Your points are ridiculous, insulting and mostly irrelevant.

Kim...

Assalamu alaikum,

Seems to me that men have pretty much run the world up to now.  Seems to me they have done a very miserable job.  Let's face it, the world is in a real mess.

Perhaps if men listened to their women a little more, things could change for the better.

I do agree with brother Zaman that women are best suited to work at home, and should, excepting cases where they must work outside the home from neccessity. 

But, I firmly believe all people should try to keep themselves informed about issues in their homes, communities and the world at large.  All people should work together to build better families, communities and society.  And most certainly, all people should have a say in the decision making processes that affect them.

Peace, ummziba.

Ummziba, who do you think would make a better gynaecologist? A woman or a man?  Who would make a better counsellor (medical, psychological, whatever) for women? A woman or a man?

Just some examples. Chances are that many women are BETTER at certain jobs than men. Should these women be forced to stay at home if it is NOT absolutely neccesary for them to work (like, if their husband earns lots of money). These women could be out doing a BETTER job in the workforce than many men. Would you have them stay home? Islamically speaking - how many women would _prefer_ to see a male gynaecologist? Do you think if they couldn't see a female doctor, they might just stay home and suffer in silence?

But I agree with your other point - everyone is part of society, so everyone should have a say in the running of their society, and this includes voting for the people they want to make the decisions on their behalf. (ie: the politicians, not their husbands!)

Kim...

There is no BETTER or WORSE when it comes to discussing genders... In Islam there are appropriate and not so appropriate occupations when it comes to genders. A female gynaecologist is not so much "better" but appropriate... A "male gynaecologist" in stricter terms Islamically is an oximoron...

Who do you think will make a better mother? A man or a woman? Sounds absurd, doesn't it? But with current world affairs you never know how deep into absurdity we shall dig... and how soon.   

MOCKBA wrote: There is no BETTER or WORSE when it comes to discussing genders... In Islam there are appropriate and not so appropriate occupations when it comes to genders. A female gynaecologist is not so much "better" but appropriate... A "male gynaecologist" in stricter terms Islamically is an oximoron...

Ok, but if a society happened to decide that women should only stay home because they're better at staying home than men, one assumes they would not be allowed to become doctors, because there would be no point. ie: All women get married, all women stay home, all women have no need for education.

Do you see what I mean?

And since a male gynaecologist is an oxymoron in some societies, where do women go?

Kim...

Hmmmmmmmm if it is true that women should not work out of their home....what will you all do that have maids? Cook your own food? Take care of your own children? Clane your own house?  That is insulting that a woman should stay at home because she is better at it? I support my whole family on the paycheck and WORK that I do. It is my insurance they use when they need a doctor and it is my money that buys the food on the table and the house we live in. So, without this woman working........my family would starve and have no shelter or medical care. And as for weaker?   I have taken 200 kg men to the ground before. Not all women are made and taught they are weaker.

Have a wonderful rest of your day!

Lamees

Lameese! There you are! We haven't seen you in ages, I think!

Or have I been hiding under a rock...?   

Nice to see you again!

Kim...

I got married....that is enough to keep you busy! And had a son!!!! I am a mommy now!  And I have been back for awhile but not posted but have soooooo wanted to! This I could not resist because it is redicilous to me. I would love to be a stay at home mom but there is no chance when I am the bread winner in this family!

It was nice that you remembered me! And it is nice to be back on a more regular basis!

Thanks for saying hello! 

Lameese

No worries - and Congratulations!  

A hubby AND a bubby!   

Kim...

Assalamu alaikum,

I didn't mean to turn this into a thread about whether women should work or not!  I was only saying that I do believe women are inherently suited to being wives and mothers.  Of course, I don't believe in forced anything.  If a woman wants a career, that is her choice. 

Perhaps it is because I feel too many women (here in Canada, anyway) have chosen not to stay home.  Our kids are raised by strangers in daycare.  After volunteering in a children's organization for 27 years, I've seen the terrible changes in our society and how they have affected our children.

Divorce, "blended families", single parent families,  the demise of the extended family, and children no longer raised by their own mothers are causing huge problems in society.  Our kids are the ones paying the price.

Kids here (for the most part) are morally bankrupt.  They are selfish, uncaring and without conscience.  Belief in Allah is disappearing at an alarming rate.  Now, it sounds like I'm laying the blame squarely on working mothers, but when I look at children here today, I can't help but feel this way.

How can a child learn religion (faith, morals, ethics, right from wrong...), manners, proper behavior in the society, love, empathy, etc. from strangers?  This is the role of mothers.  One cannot be a mother when they only spend two or three hours out of a day (or less in many cases) with their children.

Yes, some women must work.  And some women greatly feel the need to.  But, if one is to be a mother, that is the most important job on earth.  I feel that many mothers put their own wants ahead of the most important thing, raising children.  Or, they falsely believe that being a good mother means being able to buy things for their kids.

Most women I know who work, don't need to, don't even particularly want to.  They work so that they can have more material things.  Bigger houses, more cars, more gadgets and toys, more vacations, more clothes, more, more, more.  The children and the society are the ones losing out in this worship of the almighty dollar.  Avarice is the new driving force in this society.

I know this post will not make me popular.  But this is the way I see my world and my heart breaks for the children.  Being a mother is not about being a "super mom" who does it all, it is about raising loving, caring, socially conscious and well adjusted children.  Being a Muslim mother means raising children to learn to love worshiping Allah.  In this society (and I am sure many others) our mothers are failing miserably because they have got their priorities mixed up.  Children come first, material things are not important what so ever.

And may Allah shower mercy and blessing upon the mothers who must work, they have the hardest job of all.

Peace, ummziba.

If you are with children all day long and see all these things (because I worked in a daycare before too) what are you teaching them while they are there if you believe they are becoming "morally bankrupt". I am not saying it is your job, nor the daycare institutions job to teach these children but what is happening with them in daycare? It is very hard on the women who have to work.

My son does not go to daycare. I work all night from 7p-7a and come home and have him until 4:30p  when my husband comes home. I do not want to work at all but I do not have a choice and it is not to get bigger or better things. It is for healthcare and money to live on. And I do it all on my own. My husband makes minimum wage and we could not live on that.

Also, you are in part blaming working mothers. Where are the fathers in all of this? They just don't count because they are working too? They have a moral responsibility in all of this too.

Hopefully you never have to know how it feels to HAVE to work and leave your baby behind because it is not the ALMIGHTY DOLLAR that drives me. It is being able to provide FOOD, a ROOF over our heads and HEALTH CARE for my son. And if I did not have to leave him everyday I would not. I would stay right here with him.

Lameese

Assalamu alaikum, Sister Lameese,

Please give me the opportunity to clear some things up - I am not saying you are wrong in your choice to work, or that your child/children will grow up badly. 

I did not say I worked in a Day Care - I said I volunteered with a youth organization.  I have not worked since I married, I stayed home to raise my own.

I did not assign the gender roles (woman=mother/wife, man=provider).  In Islam this is what we believe Allah wants.  It is the Muslim man's job to provide for his family.  It is the Muslim woman's job to nurture and teach her children and keep a happy home for her spouse.  I do not believe the father has a large role in shaping the children - he provides, the mother teaches (this is sound Islamically - not something I just made up!).

I believe if you read my post carefully, you will see I have the utmost respect and empathy for women who must work.  I also asked Allah's mercy and blessings upon them as I realize they have a very difficult job.

Please don't feel I am frowning on your choice to work - you do what you have to do.  You could live on your husband's wages, or he could get a second job.  Yes, this would be difficult indeed - we make our choices and then we live with them.  If you feel you must work - then I support you 100%, as I said, I don't believe in forced anything.

You assume too much from my post by saying you hope I never know how it feels to HAVE to work, in fact, I do.  For MANY years, my husband and I struggled financially.  He was laid off many times.  We lost our first house, a hurt that may never heal.  For years we had little to eat, no money for entertainment, no vacations, even things like paper towels, hand cream, napkins, shampoo, and meat were things we couldn't afford.  We even had to live in a tent trailer for a short while, many years back

My point is, we made the concious choice to have him be the provider and me the mother/wife.  We had to live with that decision (one I have never regretted) and all its consequences.  I do know poverty, hunger, worry and fear.  And still I've never regretted staying home, for me, this was the right choice.

After years of struggle, finally, ease.  Allah is most Merciful.  Now, in our middle age, we are finally living in our own house - very small, but a mansion to me.

You obviously love your little boy very much.  Please don't feel I am telling you that you are wrong - you must make your own choices and then live with them.  I did not say all today's children are morally bankrupt.  You can work and raise fine children, if you keep that goal in mind.  I was simply saying that many, many women seem to have lost sight of the purpose of being a mother.

You see, Sister Lameese, if you do not let material secularism over take you, you can be an incredible mother, no matter what your situation - this was my whole point.

Now, go and hug that precious little boy, and may Allah grant you courage and conviction in raising him, and may Allah grant you ease in your life.

Peace, ummziba.

I was not mad at you when I wrote that post. I am aggrivated by the situation I am in. My husband is foreign and Muslim, and we live in a very small town in the USA, you might say almost in the south, and he tried for 2 years to get a job and no one would hire him. Why? Prejudice. I supported us for 2 years and he finally got a job with a foreign doctor here. I would leave here but my mother has had open heart surgery and I cannot leave her, she is 75 years old.

It is very hard to leave my son, I would rather not ever have to work and be able to raise him. But that will not happend until my husband decides to go back to college and earn a degree that can support all of us. At least I have the option to work at night while he is sleeping and not have to leave him with strangers during the day, because  I worked in a daycare.........and NEVER will I leave my son in one.

Take care,

Lameese

Bismillah,

I Vote!  Forced voting sounds like it would have to have a punishment attatched.  How about a free ice cream if you do vote?

Working and not working effects the family, yes.  But having two parents who communicate, love, and respect each other is the vital factor for raising healthy, responsible, Muslim kids.

If women are more sensitive, then it's THEM who should be in power because they are able to better know what people want and need.

There have been women rulers in the past and they haven't been better than men rulers. They have also waged wars and have been as corrupt as man rulers. There is nothing in history to prove that women rulers will be better than men.

Assalamu'alaikum,

What can be better for a woman than being free to stay at home to take care of her children, take them out, have fun and bring up family values in them, to be there to attend to them at any time, experiment with new dishes in the kitchen... provided, of course, that husband fulfills his responsibilities.

Or is it better if a woman were to just dump kids at the day care centre every morning, go to work and exhaust herself towards the seeming end of the day, grab some fast-food dinner on the way home, traffic jam, pick up the kids from the day care centre, attend to them, laundry, clean up, changing, shower, homework... a lullaby? You must be crazy!... all that when she thought her working day was over. 

Women in the West are shackled with their work, yet they dare to talk about liberation of women in the Muslims society... they bring up children who don't quite care about their parents, just because the latter were too occupied at their workplace... possibly their objective (of "concerned" women in the West) is to swap places?

Here we have the ability to stay home OR work, it's just that nowdays people have skewed values and believe they HAVE to have so much money.

Mind you, employers have skewed values too, because they insist that women cannot stay away too long after having children. And the women believe they cannot stay away too long, either, because everything moves so fast that the women don't want to stay away from work too long in case they got behind in their knowledge of what's going on.

Also, in a country like Australia, part of our wages get paid into a superannuation fund because there' little likelyhood we will be able to survive on the pension when we get old, assuming there IS a pension when we get old...  So anyway, if you are not working, your are not getting money put into your superannuation fund, unless you are lucky enough to have enough to be putting some in yourself while you are not working (VERY rare, I imagine).

Therefore, you are putting your finances in old age at risk if you do not just keep working and working...

See what I mean? Society is not set up for mothers, children and families. But hopefully things will change.  They will HAVE to, otherwise all the millions of old people we will have in our country soon will have no young people earning money and paying taxes to support them

Kim...

Assalamu alaikum,

Kim says: "Society is not set up for mothers, children and families."

This is true of non-Muslim society.  In Islam, the family comes first (after worship of Allah).  Marriage, children, family are all considered with the highest priority.  Men are the providers, which allows women to stay home and take care of the family. 

And, families take care of their own "old people", they don't put them in costly nursing  homes or 'retirement' homes.

One of the things that drew me to Islam was the beautiful way Islamic society functions.  Now, of course, I am not saying this ideal actually plays out in real life in all Muslim communities.  But, when Muslims live their Islam correctly, a well functioning, happy - family, community, and society is the result.

Now, if we could all just get our act together and live Islam the way Allah meant for us - wow!  Mean time, we need to help those who struggle.

Peace, ummziba.

Bismillah,

I know a particular muslim lady from Egypt whose husband was so abusive mentally and phyiscally, besides chasing women and drinking, that she had to separate from him.  But the burden was too much.  She stayed at home doing nothing being in a deep depression.  If I had known sooner, I would have helped her even though she lived far away.  Her children were taken away from her because of the filth and neglect they lived in.

You say this is an exception?  I have seen many depressed and incapable stay-at-home moms.  If you have a loving marriage, poverty should be easier to bear.  What about loveless, cruel marriages and poverty?  Working often provides an outlet for women in situations like this. And financial relief for the family.

 Each situations is different.  It's so easy to stand up and proffer what society should be like when women and children are suffering daily difficulties.  Let's stop ignoring our community needs!  Let's help each person and family together.

Assalamu alaikum,

herjihad wrote:  Each situations is different.  It's so easy to stand up and proffer what society should be like when women and children are suffering daily difficulties.  Let's stop ignoring our community needs!  Let's help each person and family together.

Sister, I believe we are all "tooting the same horn", just using different melodies!  No one here is advocating ignoring our community needs.  Most of us are saying, yes, let's help each person and family!

There is the ideal: living Islam - then there is the reality...we all know what that means.  So, yes, let's all do our best to help those who need it!

Peace, ummziba.

herjihad wrote: Bismillah, What about loveless, cruel marriages and poverty?  Working often provides an outlet for women in situations like this. And financial relief for the family.

An "outlet", but it does not solve the problem... perhaps it accumulates it to have a more destructive impact on everyone at a later date. We should be aware of our responsibilities, fulfill them and be reminded of them from time to time.  

Bismillah,

May Allah, SWT, bless the moms, stay-at-home and working.  ISA he will give us strength and courage to face all of the challenges we encounter.  Challenges are also called opportunites.  Each challenge we address gives us the chance to fulfill more responsibilities and Allah, SWT, showers blessings on us, ISA.