The impact of Islamic ideas in the Middle East
While you read the following story, try to figure where it took place. Where in the Middle East might you expect a woman to receive such humiliating treatment?
For good reason, the woman in this story (a physician) and her husband (an academic) decide to immigrate to the U.S. to pursue a better life; he sets off first to get established and she’s to follow, with their children. That requires obtaining passports for them. When the time comes, she applies for the passports in person and brings with her a legally valid power of attorney signed by her husband. But her application is flatly denied.
Why? The clerk tells her that the power of attorney gives her the right to dispose of her husband’s property, but “not the guardianship of his children.”
“But they’re my children, too, sir,” she replies.
“A woman is not the guardian of her children. Do you understand?” This apparently is the conventional Islamic way.
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