How is your week going? Good, I hope. This morning while fighting off a migraine (I won!) I listened to a lecture by Sheik Imam Hossein on Youtube-no, not because I’m a Muslim, but because he has a comforting voice, is rather brilliant and often funny. Oh, and we are both big fans of Jesus and his mother Mary.
He told his audience that it was stupid to consider all Christians their enemies and gave the example of Rachel Corrie, an American who went to protest Israel’s bulldozing Palestinian homes for new settlements. She stood in front of the bulldozer and the bulldozer ran over and killed her.
Later in the lecture he described a godly woman as modest (covering her hair) and shy. That’s where Sheik Imam and I parted company. Rachel Corrie did not have her hair covered. And Rachel Corrie was not shy. “Shy” implies feelings of inferiority and sorry Sheik, you don’t get to throw half the population of the earth into the inferior bin, not when God looked at ALL that he had made, male and female, and said, “It is good.”
Pictured here is another not-shy woman. She is wearing a hijab, but that is just a detail. Her name is Ashira, she is Palestinian and she is telling off an Israeli soldier. I don’t know what she is saying, but the body language is eloquent-in both pictures.
I don’t know if I would have the courage of Rachel Corrie. I don’t know if I would have the courage of Ashira; maybe, I’ve done similarly crazy things (with similar results.) But I do know that women (and men) who stand up for what is right are not shy. They may be scared, they probably are—the definition of courage is doing what is right when you are scared.
As for modesty, that is totally subjective cultural preconception, based as far as I can tell, on whatever happens to turn on the guys in charge.
Thought for today>Courage is doing what is right when you are scared.
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