Apparently, ISMA Still Hasn't Gotten The Memo That Says It's 2016...
IMHO, ISMA wants to control Malaysian women with their stone age mentality.
By Sadho Ram — 27 Apr 2016, 09:59 PM
There's absolutely nothing more frustrating than coming across people with stone age mentality who are so convinced about their regressive and patriarchal stereotypes about women and men that no amount of reasoning can have any positive impact on them.
One such (and only the latest in line) person is Islamist group Ikatan Muslimin Malaysia's (Isma) President Abdullah Zaik Abd Rahman.
According to the "wise" President of ISMA:
. A woman's main priority is at home.
. Women cannot prioritise their career over their basic roles at home.
. If they do there will be an extraordinary void in the family institutions.
. Women who work will create an emptiness in children.
. Women have a specific responsibility to educate their children.
. Women are no longer seeing family as a priority due to feminism.
. Feminism has a negative impact.
. Feminism is appropriate in the West, just not in Malaysia.
. Feminism has given women too much "space" and robbed men of theirs.
However, his biggest grudge is the fact that women are now able to do the kind of jobs men have laid sole claim to since centuries
"In fact, some women are considered more competent. Women can enter all fields and this constricts the space for men to function and there are no longer fields specially for men or specially for women," he was quoted as saying by The Malay Mail.
While women are struggling to get equal pay for equal (and at times more) work in comparison to their male counterpart, Abdullah suggested that we should reduce women's workday to half day but give them same salary so "we can save the family institutions"
As if all that was not enough, he also blamed women's "unfettered" Internet habits for problems plaguing the family institution, claiming that women have grown so absorbed with socialising online that they have not time to communicate with their husband or children
"This social network has broken down all barriers, barriers that even if they're sitting at home and the doors are shut, they're still accessible on the Internet that is wide open. And the time, even if it's 10pm or 11pm at night they should be limited to sitting at home but the Internet doesn't limit them," The Malay Mail quoted Abdullah as saying.
Abdullah wants women not just at home, he wants them at home with no access to the outside world in any form whatsoever.
Men like Abdullah are scared, scared of women's growth, scared of how their masculinity is no longer celebrated and how women are fighting to lay claim to the world dominated by men.
This story is the personal opinion of the writer.
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