I came across a title in the news about the marriage of Phyllis Leon (84 years) and Del Martin (87 years), and for clarification, Phyllis is a woman, and Del is a woman too. Recently, in California, a law was issued allowing Gay Marriages. The moment I saw this I just remembered the President of Columbia University while he was directly attacking the Iranian President because in Iran they do not respect the gay rights.
I will consider trying to be more “civilized”. What does the President of Columbia think about polygamy? (In case of a male marrying several females as in Islam) What happens in the West is that polygamy is a crime from a legal (punishment with jail and fines) and social point of views.
It is just related to different cultures and different definitions across different civilizations. In our old (Islamic or Arab) history, polygamy was introduced and it wasn’t that offending to the public. This social state continued for thousands of years with nearly no change. And if went back in time to the other side of the ocean, we will find that the Greek and Roman civilizations didn’t despise homosexuality. In the contrary, they considered the female as a disgusting creature; a creature who bleeds, and suffer protrusions which negatively affects the beauty of the human body. Females were just created for preserving the mankind, and males must beware of them. Real love is between a man and a man. It is the noble, pure love, for there is no children are begotten and there is no required commitment of any kind to force one of the partners to continue living with the other. It is just love and love only. You can see that in Plato’s book “The Republic”. But in the same time, it was prohibited in the civilizations (The Greek and the Roman) for the male to marry more than one female. The thing that made the Romans call our (Egyptian) Queen Cleopatra by the name: Egyptian Whore because she married Caesar while he was already married.
I understand the differences between cultures and I do accept it. But this glorification of homosexuality happening nowadays in the West to the extent of adding being high emotional, artistic, intelligence, and creativity to homosexuals is the normal evolution to the Western heritage and civilization (civilization as history). What I really don’t understand, why the West (and the United States specifically) doesn’t understand that our perspective towards homosexuality is just the same as their perspective towards polygamy? And that their crimination of polygamy and their refusal of legalization of the many affairs of men (outside marriage) is just the case as our refusal to legalize homosexuality though they are existing in our societies?
I find it trivial and playful to draw caricatures of Plato or show him in a movie while he is putting a gum in his mouth while wearing make-up and dancing playfully. But the Westerners, though there is no comparison between our Prophet (Peace be upon Him) the most Gracious in our hearts, culture and history and Plato, made of fun of our Prophet for nothing but marrying more than one woman.
The West considers us (the Arabs) idiots, and I want to clarify that we see them as idiots as well. A famous saying among the Arabs: Americans are idiots. But this comes back to our definition of idiocy. They think that the idiot person is the one who does not know how to read and write correctly, is not brilliant in Physics and Math, etc. While we consider reading and writing, computers, Physics and Math as skills with an availability to be learnt easily. But in the other hand, in our culture, We understand life and variations in abilities between different human beings, their richness, differences, and accepting this while searching for the common among them without altering them. This is the real wisdom. We do not think like Westerners think that who is not with us is against us.
5 Responses to The Bride for the the bride – By Nawara Negm