I received an email from an aunt, which was headlined “Check this out and pass in on, Maori Women beware of Shariah Muslim Law” These sort of emails fill up my inbox everyday which at times is very annoying. However, I don’t know why, but I opened this one up. In this email it was a cutting out of a newspaper discussing a recent review on a book written by Nonie Darwish, a ex Muslim now born again Christian who recently came to New Zealand to discuss her new book titled “Joys of Muslim Women.” Darwish came to New Zealand as she had heard that the Maori Women were in the forefront of society and considered ‘equals’ with their fellow men. This in her eyes was a great opportunity to discuss the seriousness of the Shariah Muslim Law. To pin it down in a nut shell, Shariah Muslim Law gave all rights to a Muslim Husband to class his wife as ‘property’ to him for the rest of her life.
I as a Maori was astonished and petrified that this law may come in to play in New Zealand law in the future. Because of this I felt that it was important to spread the word and forward this email to all my aunties and nannies on my email list with the message “Whakaarotia ki o tatau tamaahine, mokopuna kotiro e heke iho nei. Tukuna hei tirohanga ma te ao whanui. Think of our future daughters, granddaughters. Pass this around so the world can see.
At face value this message to me was saying to stand up for women’s rights, however a reply came from a female cousig saying “would this incite fear and hate towards muslim followers? This now changed my view towards the situation, in my opinion, causing a very dangerous mindset. Is this classed as propaganda?
After consuming all this information? How does one take information like this from emails into perspective? Do you take it with a grain of salt, or do you become gullible and believe everything that is on the internet?
He whakaaro?
Anei oku whakaaro:
ReplyDeleteI too received this email and was not really quite sure just how to interpret it. I had to read this three times and then i still had to think again. It seemed that my thougts went the opposite way to yours in the sense that i felt that their culture was their culture, and that people who were unsure of what they thought about muslim people would use this as a way of creating a conflict of some sort. As i pondered on a little longer it seemed that my feelings began to change as i thought more about the oppression these women must feel and the treatment they must receive as a result of being labelled another persons property. To me it was like watching the process of colonization and all i could think about was our Maori women who had spent alot of time as equals with their male counterparts and then becoming a material object htat could infact be discarded at the owners whim. I've gone a litle off topic, but what i was trying to say is things need to be considered a little while longer irrespective of the fact that some things really do come at face value and that more thoughts and opinions should be made after some research has been made.(Not a sling at you tuhapo)