“The real threat from the west.

Looking through photography, watching television, or walking up the street, I view the above image. The image is of a woman dressed from head to toe in complete burqa. What is normal in some regions of the world, is offsetting to me and my upbringing. Growing up in the Midwest United States, the burqa, which consist of full body covering, with even the face covered, where you only see the eyes, is a new experience for me. Don’t get me wrong, I grew up going to school with both Muslim males and females as well as having respect for other people’s cultures. But the women were not fully covered with a veil over their faces. Mixed emotions are felt by many when seeing such an image like the one above. Especially when the individuals criticizing the image are women, mainly from outwardly liberated countries. Me on the other hand, now that I am an adult, I see the real threat from the West to the Middle East: freedom. But I don’t mean freedom of press or speech, I’m talking in regards to the women’s liberation.

I have noticed a shift from the older generation of conservative women who are Muslim that have long covered their bodies and faces, to a more relaxed liberal age group who barely wear their hijab. Well why is this a threat to the Middle East. Well, when you are a man living in the West versus the Middle East, our women not only are more free to casual wear anything, but we have become used to it. Men throughout the Middle East are not used to their women going over them fashioning themselves in whatever they please. Why is this so hard for men in the Middle East. Well, given that men in America have gone through various movements with women while they gained rights and privileges to act, work, talk, and dress how they please, we know how to work around the push back from women. Meaning, men in America have had to learn to adapt skilsl to get women’s attention rather than women becoming submissive to us.

Men in the Middle East don’t have to deal with the same level of competition for women as men in America. The women are more in line with how the men want them to behave. Not only in line with behavior, but what they must wear and work, if allowed to work. Now this is where the threat comes into play. As the West becomes further and further stretched out globally, the Islamic world faces a threat by way of the women. You can only keep people in line as long as they don’t understand or know about the outside world where they dwell (N. Korean, for example). The only problem is that technology and innovation is gaining in access that eventually the women will start to become more disobedient to the men. Why, it’s not a rebellious attitude as much as it is woman. Meaning, women in America at one point in time were just as obedient to their men. All it took was for a small group of women to open their eyes and convince them.

The scary aspect of the Islamic world is that how would the men deal with such matters. If women yanked off their burqas and hijabs off in mass and started protesting for instance all over Saudi Arabia, what would be the reaction from the men? Under normal circumstances, there would be some sort of punishment. But on a mass scale, you couldn’t really do anything. Why you ask, because the woman is the cradle or bearer of a civilization. She births all of us, so the Saudi men couldn’t attack the woman because a threat to her is a threat to everyone of them. Which brings us to the terrorism. Maybe the real terrorist acts are because the men are afraid. Maybe afraid that the liberation from women in the west could cause questioning from their women in the Middle East. Without prior experiences to deal with such matter, the men would be forced to succumb to the women’s wishes. How could this hurt the men? Well the same way it hurts American men.

In the past, when women in America were submissive to the men for the most part, every guy could get a woman to some degree. Now that women have the rights and voices they do, they ask for more from men: physically, mentally, economically, and spiritually. So many men view this as unrealistic and subsequently wound up alone in America. That fear I sense in Middle Eastern men. Can you imagine? A wealthy, more attractive Muslim man wouldn’t be affected, but the average schlub would feel hurt. So the fear of having to compete or the fear of losing something is always lurking. Until the fear diminishes, this is one topic that will always cause problems between the two worlds: the West and Middle East.