My first reaction to reading about Doctor Walton’s conversion to Islam, was:
“how can an educated western woman with graduate degrees
enter a religion that is so demeaning of women?”
But with our looming General Conference session,
intent on institutionalizimg Adventist women
as second class citizens, I felt that my reaction was untenable.
The Catholic Church canonizes the Virgin Mary and all other,
women are second class citizens.,
.
The Adventists place Ellen White on a pedestal,
and all other women are second class citizens.
However, the treatment and position of ALL women in Islam is ABYSMAL.
.
The wearing of the hijab or head scarf, is for me,
the ultimate stigma of their women’s second class status.
On a recent cruise, I spent a hot, sticky, humid day on the Greek
island of Santorini. Returning to the ship, I witnessed an almost collapsing
Islamic woman (a fellow passenger). swathed in floor length robes and heavy veil…
She had spent the day ashore and was at near collapse from the heat.
Her husband and adolescent sons were clad in tank tops and shorts,
befitting to the heat of the day. As we boarded the ship she was rushed
to the ship’s hospital with heat stroke.
The inequality of the comfortable garb of the men and her entirely
inappropriate garments made we wonder how the Islamic women
in the Middle East survive in the desert heat.
My Parisian friend, Roberta, told me about her trip,
with a group of French women to Teheran, Iran.
They asked the government appointed male guide:
“Why are you not wearing a tie?”
“In this heat?” he answered.
Well, the French women rejoined, “You make your
women wear those tight constricting head scarves”.
“Our women LOVE to wear the head scarves” he replied.
My Paris friend reported that on the return flight to
Paris, every Islamic woman was wearing a head scarf
on the departure from Teheran, but only three women
still had the scarf on when de-planing in Paris!
Showing how much they really loved that head dress!
In today’s Internet ease of freely accessing the history of the "prophet"
Mohammed, a war lord, who beheaded hundreds,
----thought to be the most violent man of the seventh century;
a polygamist with multiple wives, one of whom he married at age
six and comsummated the marriage at age nine
(today, we would label him a pedophile)
– it is easy to understand how one could be born into
Islam, but difficult to understand how an educated westernized
ethical person would want to convert and align him/herself with a religious
leader of such tarnished, tainted pedigree!
