That being said, if you can't successfully pray because you're thinking too hard about banging the woman sitting next to you (who is, more likely than not, dressed from the eyelashes down in brown cloth), the problem may not be with the structure of your religion but the degree of your faith.
I would have said that the problem might actually be with your self-control... but then, I'm a bit radical. People like that make me feel incredibly stabby. It's probably a good thing I live in the US... someone probably would have beaten me to death by now if I lived elsewhere.
Islamic and Middle Eastern culture is very strict on the separation of the sexes for almost everything. Islam holds that men are distracted by women - I think that's very, very, very true.
Thus, while at a religious ceremony, the women are seated behind the men not to denote any sort of inferiority, actually, but rather because women are looked at as less lustful than men.
Say what you will about how much your Western views denounce this as a ridiculous notion - there is no injustice or oppression in a separation of the sexes during religious ceremonies.
You started off with a good point - Islam is finally beginning to respect women - but you ended on a point that has nothing at all to do with oppression - it has only to do with human psychology and biology and how that intersects with faith.
I saw that as a lament more for the fact that continued separation leads to other consequences; the seeing of women (collectively) as sexual objects rather than a group of individual people. It's harder to respect someone when you see their "place" before their reality-as-a-person. You can respect their role, but until you're comfortable seeing them as distinct from others in that role, it's not specific to the person.
The World of Islam has many problems. However, where the women stand during prayer, and the various other customs of that nature (such as men and women holding separate celebrations for a wedding) are not the problems.
I would argue differently. As the Warren Court put so eloquently, "separate [is] inherently unequal." I never said men were not lustful, or that men looking on women and thinking about sex was a ridiculous notion in my Western views. Just the opposite, actually.
Telling women they have to be separate from the men at prayer, at weddings, or anywhere else implies inequality. For that matter, telling the men they have to be separate from the women because otherwise they'll think Bad Thoughts does the same. My point was not that Islam had primitive and outdated views of biology. My point was that the ability to overcome our biology is what raises us above the animals*, and Islam should join the rest of us in accepting that though you may want to bang a woman, that's not a good enough reason for making her sit on the back of the bus.
* Except dolphins. Dolphins still totally kick our asses.
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I would have said that the problem might actually be with your self-control... but then, I'm a bit radical. People like that make me feel incredibly stabby. It's probably a good thing I live in the US... someone probably would have beaten me to death by now if I lived elsewhere.
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Thus, while at a religious ceremony, the women are seated behind the men not to denote any sort of inferiority, actually, but rather because women are looked at as less lustful than men.
Say what you will about how much your Western views denounce this as a ridiculous notion - there is no injustice or oppression in a separation of the sexes during religious ceremonies.
You started off with a good point - Islam is finally beginning to respect women - but you ended on a point that has nothing at all to do with oppression - it has only to do with human psychology and biology and how that intersects with faith.
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I saw that as a lament more for the fact that continued separation leads to other consequences; the seeing of women (collectively) as sexual objects rather than a group of individual people. It's harder to respect someone when you see their "place" before their reality-as-a-person. You can respect their role, but until you're comfortable seeing them as distinct from others in that role, it's not specific to the person.
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Telling women they have to be separate from the men at prayer, at weddings, or anywhere else implies inequality. For that matter, telling the men they have to be separate from the women because otherwise they'll think Bad Thoughts does the same. My point was not that Islam had primitive and outdated views of biology. My point was that the ability to overcome our biology is what raises us above the animals*, and Islam should join the rest of us in accepting that though you may want to bang a woman, that's not a good enough reason for making her sit on the back of the bus.
* Except dolphins. Dolphins still totally kick our asses.
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Hmm, I thought a significant minority of the Muslim world was making a lot of noise about it.
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