Women in Christianity and Islam part one (hell, America, church)

[salma12006]

Whenever the topic of Islam is brought up among Westerners, it has been my experience that the first objection that immediately springs into their minds is: "But women are so extremely oppressed in Islam." And, "But women are second class citizens in Islam." For example, they see that Muslim women usually observe modest standards in their clothing and they automatically equate their modesty with oppression. They appear to feel that freedom is in some way directly proportional to how little clothing one wears, and that oppression is directly proportional to the degree of modesty one exhibits in their clothing. Although this topic does not directly relate to the main topic of this book, still it seems inevitable to touch on this subject even if only very briefly due to it's importance.

The problem is twofold: First of all, those people who make such objections usually only have a very superficial knowledge of what the true teachings of Islam, and secondly, they do not realize what The Bible requires of all believing women.

I was once passing through Canada with my parent's in law and their family. As we walked down the street a Canadian Christian girl (in her late teens to early twenties) passed by us with a group of her friends. She looked at my mother in law who was dressed in modest clothing and had a large scarf wrapped around her head such that only her face was showing. She then stopped my mother in law and said words to the effect of: "Why do you allow your men to oppress you?. Why do you wear these clothes?."

Now, my mother in law is a university graduate, a straight A student, highly respected by her peers, and gainfully employed as an inspector of the public educational system back in my home country. My mother in law has also distinguished herself in her study of the English language and it's grammatical structure. However, she did not have an extensive working knowledge of American and Canadian pronunciation and slang, and thus, she missed the tone with which this question was delivered to her.

[Tricky D]

Just because women can clothe how they want doesn't necessarily mean that they are free. Many Dutch women in Holland still bump their head against the glass ceiling. For instance they still make way less money than men in their position and often can't get ahead career wise since they are regarded as flawed since they still are women. The common belief in our Christian/Dutch culture still is that women will forsake their career at the drop of a hat once they want to have children.

[HistoryasIS]

I Dress in my own way.

Most of time I do not match at all.


some people might think I got bad taste for cloths or whatever etc... but the thing is I do what I dress because I like it.

But the thing is if those girls are FORCE to cover there heads then that where i draw the line I do not believe we should be force to dress like anything religion or no religion.

In my religion we can dress any way as long its keeps in the modest aera at some point.

Just as long we do not wear anthing that would go against we we stand for as christians.

Likem y self I am 22 at my church you got goths people that wear all black. eye peiceing nose eye brow etc....

we accpet all range of people In and we do not turn them down .

for people who say to use but you have to dress this way The only thing I ask them is

show me one verse in the bible where it says we must dress like

[Rushna]

some of you people are so stupid. you dont even know that we cover ourselves out of our own choice because we dont want to go to hell. no one is opressing us, why the heck would we be so scared of men, what are they gonna do.
by the way everytime you look at statues of the virgin mary what is she wearing?

[wildflower82]

Originally Posted by Rushna

some of you people are so stupid. you dont even know that we cover ourselves out of our own choice because we dont want to go to hell. no one is opressing us, why the heck would we be so scared of men, what are they gonna do.
by the way everytime you look at statues of the virgin mary what is she wearing?

I believe we do have a great misunderstanding of your religion. I guess what we see as when the Taliban and others oppressed women and we have been told they are forced to cover from head to toe.
I have been learning that this is a choice to wear head covering, by many Islam women who move to FREEDOM to SPEAK countries and due to there faith.
I believe SOME Christian women could use a little more covering up.
Most western pastors don't feel it's for TODAY. I really can't explain it much past here.

You are living in a free country, what about those in countries less fortunate to speak FREELY is this a requirement or the choice of the women?

[camping!]

I don't have a problem with modesty, as long as the women are not forced into it. I wish there was more modesty in my country! I have heard that in countries that are very Muslim, they have seperate beaches for men and women.....I would love that

I think where Christian women feel that Muslim women are being oppressed its because we have heard of things such as honor killings, spousal abuse being legal, no healthcare for woman in Afganistan because only men are allowed to practice medicine, and men are not allowed to treat women.

I do understand that the quran doesn't say this, and in fact was very advanced in views of women and womens rights. I think western women confuse the quran with Sharia law.

I would love to hear what Muslim women think of things such as honor killings and the extremism shown to their Muslim sisters in Afganistan (I don't mean this to be political at all, I mean in the social/religious sense.)
Thank you!