The Bride for the the bride – By Nawara Negm

Nawara Negm wrote this article (in Arabic) in ElWafd newspaper, sent to me via Zeinobia. I like her presentation and translated the thing, here it is…

‎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.‎

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