Women Who Deserve To Go To Hell

I have always had my issues with religion. Of course, you might think some of them are inconsequential and some are like these three -  1. Why is a church pew always that much harder and aggressively brutal on the bottom compared to your average wooden office chair or the bench in the kafunda? 2. Is it possible to have a church service where you don’t have to keep on standing up and sitting back down every ten minutes? 3. Is there a chance that the church authorities might consider introducing a tea or coffee break on services that go past one-and-a-half hours?

Those are my trivial apprehensions. My graver fears, are centred round the preaching’s of Muslim and Christian Cleric in primary schools.   

While those of the Muslim faith are some ten days or so into the holy month of Ramadhan, I was particularly perturbed to come across a report that made for the most distressing reading. The Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted), is a UK government and is responsible for inspecting educational institutions, childcare, adoption and fostering agencies and regulates a range of children’s social care services.

So, the peeps from Ofsted decide to go and do what they do best – inspecting schools that is, and what they found in Muslim primary schools is very disturbing. Among the library books they found, one reads: ‘It's okay to beat your wife if she refuses sex’. Another library had a book that stimulated children to read a text that contrasted the ‘noble women of the East’ with the ‘internally torn woman of the West’ while one unabashedly, had a paragraph that reads: ‘Hell is mostly full of women because they are ungrateful to their husbands’. 

 

Egyptian Cleric - Mansoor Abdul Hakim

I had never heard of the Egyptian cleric, Mansoor Abdul Hakim – probably because I am not Muslim and I don’t follow Muslim clerics. Anyway, in his warped ‘wisdom’, Mansoor Abdul Hakim wrote a book titled - Women Who Deserve To Go To Hell which, I expect you to have already surmised is one of the books found in the school library! In his book Mansoor says: “It is wrong for wives to show ‘ingratitude to their husbands’ or have ‘tall ambitions’. One chapter of the book reads: “In the beginning of the 20th century, a movement for the freedom of women was launched with the basic objective of driving women towards aberrant ways.” Another chapter reads: “…Women who deserve to go to hell include disobedient wives, those who cut their hair, alter their attire, adorn themselves with makeup and women who grumble...” 

Other books found in school libraries said that in Muslim marriages “…the wife is not allowed to refuse sex to her husband…’ or ‘…leave the house where she lives without his permission…’ Other books centred on teaching boys and girls that ‘man by way of correction, he can also beat his wife’ while another book claimed ‘western women attract men and hang around aimlessly in cinemas and cafés’.

In one school, in a book titled Daily Life and Relationships, a pupil had written that men are ‘physically stronger’ and women are ‘emotionally weaker’. And wait for it, the worksheet was covered in approving red ticks from the teacher. Jeez!

Back to Mansoor Abdul Hakim. I trawled the internet looking for reviews on his book and found none. Did Book Reviewer find it not worth reviewing? While I wholeheartedly subscribe to the realms of free speech, there is literature that is most inappropriate and disturbing for primary school children to be reading, let alone it being derogatory to women with baseless comments like its wrong for them to have ‘tall ambitions!’      

Perhaps you now all understand why I have questions with religion….? 

Pictures: Mansoor Abdul Hakim, Internet