In this paper, we would like to dwell on some issues concerning knowledge, religion, and women rights. Things that would appear impossible to link are actually strongly connected. As an object for our discussion, we took a book ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ written by Khaled Hosseini. One of the main topics of the book is an unfair and abusing treatment of Muslim women and their luck of knowledge to deal with it.
What is knowledge itself? Due to the Oxford dictionary, it is a fact, information, or skill that a person receives through experience. This definition could be used to determine a general understanding of this notion. What we need here is an understanding of how this knowledge can interact with religion and influence women rights.
There are a lot of problems concerning a treatment of a woman in Islamic countries. This can be judged differently but still, we can say without a doubt that Islamic religion restrains women rights. To argue about this we should understand that Islam penetrates in every aspect of the life of Muslims. But, we have a particular interest in its attitude towards women. This attitude is unfair in lots of ways. The first one is an ability of a man to marry up to 4 women with a possibility to divorce. This is almost impossible for a woman. Actually, marrying even two women at a time can be judged as an offence of woman’s dignity in the modern world. The second injustice is that all the children carried by a mother are considered to be a direct property of a father (Papas, 2012). So, how can women expect the respect from a man if they are taught to think of a woman as a caretaker from the very childhood?
This unfair treatment concerns not only family issues but also everyday life. Women have often no right to vote. Women testimony at the court worths less than men’s. The last thing that has to be mentioned is Honor killing. It is a right presented to a man to kill a woman for disobedience or dishonoring a family (Papas, 2012). According to the statistics in 2014 near a thousand women were killed in Pakistan because of this honor principle (Pakistan Honour Killings on the Rise, Report Reveals - BBC News).
After all of information mentioned above a question arises why cannot we stop it? And here is the case where knowledge would be in use. The humanity succeeded in landing a man on the moon but we cannot deal with the cruelty of Islam. Scientists say that landing on a moon or any other successful experiment is easy in its way. They know how to do this. It is like teaching a child to read. A teacher already has knowledge and has to pass it to a child. It is teaching how-to-do (Caruso, 2007). And in the case with Muslims humanity has to deal with the faith.
The knowledge of believers is based on the faith. They believe in things they know are right. In this particular case, males are sure in their superiority over women because it is written in sacred writings and women are ignorant of the other treatment. It could be changed only with a desire to change their conditions. Muslim women should be given the right to get a proper education. Maybe, after obtaining basic knowledge women will look at the world differently and will try to deal with injustice and cruelty.
We cannot but mention that some of the Muslim countries changed some of the ground rules of attitude towards women. For example, women in Afghanistan can obtain the same education as men (Greg Botelho, 2016). They even can enter medical and other professional educational institutions. In Turkey, women are considered to be the most liberated of all Muslims. They are allowed to study, to participate in different contests (Eurovision, Athletics Championships, etc.). This gives us a great example and a hope that a change is possible.
Let’s return to the book ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ where the author provides us with the example of a Muslim family in which women are treated due to all the canons of Islam. The main characters are two women who met because of their mutual husband. The lives of both women are tragic. The first one is Mariam who suffers from shame from the early childhood because she is an illegitimate child. Also, she couldn’t give birth. She is described as isolated women and everything she needs is another person to live with. In this book this person is Laila. Laila is a daughter of a teacher. She is an educated woman who, due to circumstances was taken into captivity of Rasheed. We have two different women – one is eager to have a family, the other looks for fulfillment.
We can see that in this particular story knowledge would change everything. Education for both women would change their attitude towards Rasheed. They didn’t know that there exists any other treatment that was why they obeyed. Also, there was a slight opportunity that if Laila had known that her beloved Tariq was still alive she wouldn’t have married Rasheed. Here we have another definition of knowledge that could change everything. Even one could be much happier.
In a nutshell, the problem with faith and knowledge is one of the most controversial in the world. Only through knowledge we will be able to fight ferocious religions and unfair treatment. And it is not an easy thing to accomplish.
Works cited
"Pakistan Honour Killings On The Rise, Report Reveals - BBC News". BBC News. N.p., 2016. Web. 1 May 2016.
Caruso, Denise. "Knowledge Is Power Only If You Know How To Use It". Nytimes.com. N.p., 2007. Web. 1 May 2016.
Greg Botelho, CNN. "First Women's Studies Program Launches In Afghanistan". CNN. N.p., 2016. Web. 1 May 2016.
Papas, Voula. "Islam And Women’S Rights". Atheist Foundation of Australia Inc. N.p., 2012. Web. 1 May 2016.
