azazel the cat wrote:Ah, I see. Let me be clear, as I suspect we have been attacking different points, then. I was not, presenting those two options as a dichotomy from which a person must take a side, I was trying to clarify which of the two statements you were implying, as it seemed previously as though you were conflating the two. My point in response was that the "whole country" will not be pissed off, only the bigots will be. However, I do see that I could have phrased it better so as to prevent the confusion. However, I have presented a with-us-or-against-us dichotomy regarding equality and I will stand by that.
You seem to be working off the assumption that the country will be p*ssed off because it interferes with them getting to discriminate against women, you aren't considering the fact that you are trying to make them comply with a Western liberal idea that is mostly alien to their culture. You keep looking at things in an over simplistic and binary fashion that may be driven more by ideology than reality. The fact is that countries lacking in education (as I have already said) will get most of their social norms from religious texts and be educated in religious schools, when those texts are interpreted as giving women less rights that becomes a social norm in that country (not condoning it, merely observing that fact). That is in no small part why Tunisia has the prevailing attitude that it does.
Your suggestion to force change on a culture by "fire" is just imperialism by another name. You are attempting to export a Western idea in complete disregard for the traditions and customs of that country. That is a recipe for disaster. The likely result of such a ham-fisted approach is not setting about the change that you want, but rather hardening attitudes and entrenching opinions against you, making the next attempt at reform even more difficult. You've seen how people in this thread object to your methods (but not the desired result) and your desire to force change. And that is dealing with a community that has Western standards of conduct and rights for women. The equivalent would be protesters trying to foist Sharia on Canada, a country that does not have Islamic values at it's core, and which does not have a hierarchy of rights based on gender.
By educating the people and showing them that their own religion gives more rights and prestige to women is the first step in achieving equality. That way you are not alienating the people that you want to convince. That is important to a culture that puts so much value on it's religion, tradition and culture. Then and you can start to marginalise the hardliners by using their own religious texts against them (I've already shown how the West has moved away from certain tracts in the Bible so there is precedent) and start to let the idea develop and flourish that women's rights are also an Islamic idea, that it's not just some imported concept from the West which will lead to immorality and anti-Islamic behaviours.
It's not seeing out to the status quo, it's not being an Uncle Tom or a coward. It is realising that there are things that cannot be forced and that must be nurtured and shepherded if they are to be successful.
You will catch more bees with honey than with vinegar. Do not let your distaste for religion blind you to the realities of life in other countries. You cannot make changes to a country based on what you want the country to look like, you have to work with what is there. Otherwise you're running the risk of embarking on a fool's errand
