Ever heard of ‘Cinderella complex’? A philosophy interjected in woman throughout there being hood and a reassurance which resounds that ‘a man will make your life happen’. So all a girl has to do is to wait for the prince to rescue her from her miserable lonely life and become her savior. Not that a girl has to do nothing, she has to become an embodiment of chastity and beauty for the prince to find her suitable. For reference the prince is hereby quoted from the story;
"No one shall be my wife but she whose foot this golden slipper fits."
So a man tells you to fit into his world, this slipper is not a joke lady, beware. You will see woman dying, tying, lying and many ‘ings’ and innings to fit the shoe. While teaching popular fiction in one of the prestigious institutions of the country I happen to have noticed that out of one hundred girls there was none who found herself sufficient enough. Who was brave enough to be thinking to lead a pack of men, or boldly face her own failures, cherish success, attain contentment or be herself? Now this bothered me, disturbed me and scared me. Why? Well that is because I have known the most beautiful, creative, prolific minds of woman who turned themselves in, to marry a man and became a strange ‘associative complex’ (can be defined as “someone having the fear of being no one, without the association of the ‘other’)
Now what my friends did and what I see these girls doing is awful. They diet, they worry about their complexion more than their hereafter and a few even scheme and plot. Even if they won’t or don’t than they are forced to ‘fit in’. Another quoted excerpt from the story is an apt example of what is being done to young woman:
But she could not get her big toe into it, and the shoe was too small for her. Then her mother gave her a knife and said, "Cut the toe off; when thou art Queen thou wilt have no more need to go on foot."
But she does need her foot even if she is a queen. She is never taught that all she needs to be is herself; all she needs to be is to rely on is her own powerful being. She needs a man as much a man needs her and if there is one for her, he will find a way to get to her and she will not die alone or even if so she might die at least in peace being what she is rather becoming she hates to be.
Systematically the girls are trained that they are being given education so ‘if needed they can support themselves’. NO! Dear girls you are being educated so you must do something out of it. I happened to have gone through the text books of one to tenth grade of two major book boards and throughout the book the only heroes girls read about, most of them are men. Whereas “The only savior the boy learns about is himself.”
We never read to them or taught them about Muslim woman and their courageous deeds, do they know Fatima binte Abdullah? Have they ever heard about Umm ‘Umara and her courage and mastery with weapons easily surpassed that of any of the male warriors? Umm Hakim, who at the Battle of Marj al-Saffar single-handedly dispatched seven Byzantine soldiers, and has someone ever told you “If we were to abandon the narrations only found by women we would be forced to abandon a quarter of the shariah”.
Do you know Zaynab Al Ghazali? (She was leader of Muslim brotherhood in Egypt);
The condition that she made to her husband prior to their marital bond is as follows:
“However, I believe one day I will take this step that I wish and dream of. If that day comes, and because of it, a clash is apparent between your personal interest and economic activities on the one hand, and my Islamic work on the other, and that I find my married life is standing in the way of Da’wah and the establishment of an Islamic state, then, each of us should go our own way.”(‘Ayyam min Hayati’)
So next, if someone ever snubs you to submit because Islam has told you to be the fragile protective being, tell them in Islam women have fought, wrote, taught and have done miracles, it were the dark ages when women were buried, Islam liberated women.
Too much for a shoe?
P.S: I do not intend to promote ‘singlehood’; all I want you to learn is that a woman can be a savior as much a man can be.
