Between a woman’s honour and offending men

September 1997. Laila had gone into labour.

Arriving at the hospital, she and her husband’s first wife, Mariam, were turned away; the Taliban has forbidden women to be treated in the same hospitals as men.

There is only one hospital in the city for women now, and it has no supplies, no clean water, no oxygen, medications, or electricity.

The waiting room at the women’s hospital is in chaos. Clearly there were an overwhelming number of female patients than there are doctors and nurses.

Only female doctors and staffs are allowed to work there, and they're forced to wear burqas, even during surgery.

When a doctor finally saw Laila, she was told she must have a caesarean, as the baby was breeched. However, there is no anaesthesia in the hospital.

The female doctor removed her burqa in order to perform the surgery, with a nurse standing guard at the door of the dirty labour ward.

Laila went through the procedure fully conscious, fighting the urge to scream as long as she could while crushing Mariam’s hands for support.

She gave birth to a son who is then favoured by her husband over her firstborn daughter, simply, for being a son.

The above is a chapter summary from Khaled Hosseini’s 2007 book, “A Thousand Splendid Suns”.

The fictional novel was set in Afghanistan, spanning the period from 1960s to the early 2000s, written amidst a backdrop of societal change brought upon the country from Taliban rule.

While the story is fictional, reading it, one can’t help but wonder whether there exist such parallels in real life to the fictional characters, living through the experiences depicted in the book.

Reading the local news headlines in what was the first week of Ramadan this year, I can’t help but worry if the above is the future awaiting Malaysian women.

Extremist ideas do not form overnight. While some of us may discount the story above as merely the inner workings of a liberal Afghan mind, painting a bleak discourse on Taliban rule due to his American upbringing; one must never forget that storytelling is the most ancient way of sharing experience and even dispensing caution.

Of Hosseini’s works, “The Kite Runner” depicted the male perspective of Taliban rule while “A Thousand Splendid Suns” showcased the women’s side of the story.

Both works depicted the slow yet sure progress of societal thought control, encroaching ideas of extremism, of how power corrupts, how class and social status depicts one’s fate, and of how institutionalized religion was hijacked to oppress, to maim, to punish, and to eradicate humanity from human beings.

Of how in the race for the afterlife, and the promises we seek in the Gardens of Paradise; we destroyed our own heavens here on earth.

As Dumbledore wisely acknowledged, “Humans do have a knack of choosing precisely those things that are worst for them.”

Today, we see the seeds of extremism being slowly but surely sown into our society. The victims? Malaysians girls. Malaysian women.

It seems that Malay, Muslim girls cannot pursue our passion in gymnastics, ballet, running, or anything requiring outfits deemed too revealing by the religious authorities.

The hard work and dedication we girls put into the efforts of achieving our dreams is considered secondary to what is “right”, and to what would not offend men.

Even giving birth is considered offensive to men, as it reveals women’s nether regions to strange men who are not their husbands.

Never mind that these strange men are explicitly trained to ensure the safety and health of both mother and child.

Giving birth is a situation that is unfortunately gender-specific biologically due to us women having the necessary reproductive organs to incubate a living being in our bodies and then expel them through our vaginas.

The fact that some men would find the conditions of labour as a dishonour to them and their wives due to the fact that she will expose herself to male ob-gyns, to the extreme of having the wives covered up in maternity pants, is purely idiotic.

Offending men is considered offending divine law ordained by God, as if God only prefers and acknowledges men. As if God is sexist, when God is the Most Gracious, Most Benevolent, Most Merciful.

I can only come to the conclusion that oppressing women is the only way some men can justify and exert their ego and the need to dominate.

They start by controlling the obvious – they way we women dress. The fact that we women are intelligent human beings who can think for ourselves and make our own decisions seem alien to these men.

A woman is a human being with dreams and aspirations, and we should be allowed to achieve them.

We should be allowed to live as who we are. No matter of whether we don the tudung or not, wear skirts or pants, to dress up or dress down according to situations and occasions, whether we want to marry, or bear children and especially how much pain we want to endure during labour. We do not need men to make decisions for us.

To this, I borrow the words of the late Dr Zaki Badawi, head of the Muslim College in London and the Muslim Law (Shariah) Council UK: “I urge you women to revolt!” – July 1, 2015.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.