Does Anyone Else Find This Quote Extremely Disturbing?

Canada
March 18, 2009 8:44pm CST
I copied this quote from my Newsweek Magazine, from the recent issue with the cover story about radical Islam. This disturbed the hell out of me!!! If we give the money to the widows, they will spend it unwisely because they are uneducated, and they don't know about budgeting. But if we find her a husband, there will be a person in charge of her and her children for the rest of their lives. --Mazin al-Shihan, director of a city agency in Baghdad that plans to pay men to marry Iraq's war widows. It's absolutely UNBELIEVEABLE the bull$hit that women around the world have to put up with. Anyone ever said anything like this to me, I'd smack him silly, and then smack him again.
9 people like this
30 responses
@GardenGerty (157551)
• United States
19 Mar 09
Unfortunately, if she did smack him silly, she would probably be executed. Change comes slowly, luck for our side of the world it has come in many ways. Still people who think that way, though. Actually, if they give the women money, they may purchase things to start cottage industry, and books to become educated, and become independent, and never need a man again, except as it pleases them.
19 Mar 09
lmao
1 person likes this
@spalladino (17891)
• United States
19 Mar 09
This is the mindset over there and in many other parts of the world...women are second class citizens, incapable of many things. I find this outlook to be very insulting to women and, like you, wouldn't tolerate it myself but, like me, you have freedoms that some women don't have.
2 people like this
@GardenGerty (157551)
• United States
19 Mar 09
Unfortunately, if she did smack him silly, she would probably be executed. Change comes slowly, luck for our side of the world it has come in many ways. Still people who think that way, though. Actually, if they give the women money, they may purchase things to start cottage industry, and books to become educated, and become independent, and never need a man again, except as it pleases them.
1 person likes this
• United States
19 Mar 09
that is messed up!! so sad that that kind of ignorance is still around
1 person likes this
@nympha687 (940)
• United States
19 Mar 09
That's really demeaning! Women are far better in handling finances than men. Being in charge of money and kids need no education. It's crazy such views still exist when women have already proven themselves.
1 person likes this
@bbtort (47)
• Singapore
19 Mar 09
This is just another example of cultural differences in different country. While I do not agree with the quote (and would smake him silly too) he has to be responsible for what he says. I'm very sure many people all over the world are indignant with his comment. Just be thankful that we are not born in that country. I would recommend that you read "Give Me Back My Daughter".
• Canada
19 Mar 09
Is it "give me back my daughter" or "Not Without My Daighter?" I've read the latter, and a number of other books about the plight of middle eastern women.
@winterose (39887)
• Canada
20 Mar 09
yes in many parts of the world women are considering stupid, and most women are powerless, it wasn't long ago only a hundred years ago that was the same in the west women were not considered persons until the early 19 hundred, before that they belonged to their fathers and then there husbands, just like livestock.
@polachicago (18716)
• United States
19 Mar 09
This is why we should never be involved. I hate what is going on in Islamic world. female has no rights whatsoever. How the hel* someone can be in charge of woman and her kids? Hard to believe. They create total dependency with no access to education. I is hard to believe we are in 21 century....
@Darkwing (21583)
24 Mar 09
I think I'd go further than that... I'd shove his money where the sun don't shine and tell him to keep it for any poor fool of a woman he came across and wanted to control for the rest of his life! I guess the women in those countries whose cultures go this way, just put up with things for a quiet life, but heed the warning Mazin al-Shihan!!!! Do NOT ever say things like that in a liberated country! ha ha. Brightest Blessings, my friend.
@albert2412 (1782)
• United States
19 Mar 09
LOL! I would like to watch you beat him silly. The real answer for people over there in the Middle East to have a better life is to convert them to being good Christians. We need to send missionairies over there to convert these people. I feel sorry for the people in the Middle East. They need our help.
@Debs_place (10520)
• United States
19 Mar 09
You would not have to slap them silly, they already are silly. Or would that be stupid? We are in the 21st century here, obviously the middle east is not. I guess we should be grateful that we were born here and not over there.
@zandi458 (28102)
• Malaysia
19 Mar 09
What an outrageous thing said about women by men, very demeaning to womenfolk. I cannot but feel that in this day and age, the attitude of blaming women for anything and everything still exists. Trouble is some women sit and listen to this sort of rubbish, burn inside and say nothing. They are afraid that to protest is unfeminine so they let these things (since they thrive on intimidation, what else would we call them?) spout their nonsense and appeal to the worse sides of some people. If we are going to take the blame, let it be for allowing these insults to women to go on. It took a man, don't forget, to come out loud and clear and say we must always respect women because everybody springs from a woman's womb. And we women cheered. But we could have just as easily said so ourselves. Why do we have to always let a man defend us? Are we swallowing the male stereotypes about us?
• United States
19 Mar 09
In my personal opinion, which is rather common, I guess, it's hard to break the chains of what we've been genetically programmed to do. Whether a person subscribes to the Adam and Eve theory or evolution, men and women evolved with drastically different roles not only in society, but in the human race all together. Although I do believe that it's a man's ignorance for saying women can't do something, I also understand how a man is genetically programmed to simply not expect a woman to be anything but a mothering figure in the end. Our bodies and technology are both evolving faster than our brains. What we consider to be the "modern world," i.e. NOT Bagdad (lol), has taken great strides for equality - both gender and racial. In the context of history, that's no easy feat. We - most of the world - have changed more in 50 years than in the last 5,000 combined. I think we're approaching a time when all will be considered equal; but like it or not, both women and men still have roles to play in the world as procreators and nesters and hunters, etc. Once we get rid of the attitudes claiming that a woman can't juggle multiple things, we'll all be okay. I feel bad for American women struggling for rights, however. Unless you're a left-wing woman, your "rights" aren't fought for. A meaningful and necessary battle for equality has turned wholly political and threatens to set America's apolitical and right-leaning women back decades. But America is still a far sight better than Bagdad.
1 person likes this
@Zalvor (727)
• Turkey
19 Mar 09
You're right. It's an insult and probably political and intentional; so you should probably just dismiss it as nonsense. In fact it's the females who know the best about budgeting and it has its basis on motherhood. In Turkish we have a quote saying "Yuvayi disi kus yapar." which roughly translates as "the female bird builds the home (the nest)." Also in many religious philosophies (such as the Kabbalah) the female aspect of divinity is attributed to the qualities of organizing, managing and planning. Women are inherently born with a most unique quality called 'understanding'. They can know, they can sense. A man does not have that capacity. Man only cares about getting to the top, competing and being the best, due to the dynamic nature of the male aspect of divinity. Quite most of the time they will not understand whatever you're pointing at. It is possible that a man awakens to his feminine nature. But that is beyond the scope of this discussion.
• United States
22 Mar 09
it's never a good idea to allow one person control of another's money. she'll be lucky if it doesn't get spent and she and children end up destitute.
@balasri (26537)
• India
19 Mar 09
Well they have kept the women in dark behind the veil for ages and made them unwise so that they can marry and remarry them again.This can be the truth of that region.
@cream97 (29087)
• United States
19 Mar 09
Hi, danishcanadian! That is very mean to say to a woman, indeed! What gives a man to talk down to a woman like this? See, that is what I mean, we have so many men that think that a woman can't do as much as they can!!! They are forgetting that without us they would have never been born into the world! So, they need to give us the respect that we so claim our own!! Thye need to wisen up and treat a woman like she is supposed to be treated! Women know how to handle money just as well as a man can! As a matter of fact, there are many WOMEN managing businesses! They can do it as well as the man can. Men can be such pigs when it comes to the achievements of women!! He needs to be smacked, tossed and shaked for saying this about a woman! Silly of him to have to pay men to marry Iraq's war widows.. That is why men don't have respect for women because other men make it hard for them to. This is pitiful and undecent! I could not live in this country. I am proud to be an American!!
• United States
19 Mar 09
That doesn't surprise me, they think that women are a lower life form.
• Philippines
19 Mar 09
Good day.. I'm appalled that this kind of thinking still exists. I mean managing finances is not totally dependent to one's gender or race but to one's inherent ability on how to spend and save one's money.
• United States
19 Mar 09
Too bad someone doesn't tell them it's their own fault that the women are uneducated to begin with.
• United States
19 Mar 09
The first sentence of the quote, though demeaning to women, is a good point concerning being uneducated and perhaps not spending their money wisely. In America, we teach our students finances and budgeting techniques so as to spend wisely and be able to provide necessities while also finding the space for luxuries and savings. I used to work in a grocery store and you wouldn't believe the amounts of elderly widows who come in not knowing how to pay for their groceries because her husband always took care of the finances!