Word: koranic
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Mecca). And Dante, in "The Divine Comedy," placed Muhammad in the Eighth Circle of Hell with the schismatics (even pagans such as Plato and Aristotle got relatively better treatment, with placement in the more scenic Limbo). Much more recently, the novelist Fay Weldon ("Affliction") wrote this about Islam: "The Koran is food for no-thought. It is not a poem on which a society can be safely or sensibly based...
Women's rights are compromised further by a section in the Koran, sura 4:34, that has been interpreted to say that men have "pre-eminence" over women or that they are "overseers" of women. The verse goes on to say that the husband of an insubordinate wife should first admonish her, then leave her to sleep alone and finally beat her. Wife beating is so prevalent in the Muslim world that social workers who assist battered women in Egypt, for example, spend much of their time trying to convince victims that their husbands' violent acts are unacceptable...
Sexual anxiety lies at the heart of many Islamic strictures on women. They are required to cover their bodies--in varying degrees in different places--for fear they might arouse the lust of men other than their husbands. The Koran instructs women to "guard their modesty," not to "display their beauty and ornaments" and to "draw their veils." Saudi women typically don a billowy black cloak called an abaya, along with a black scarf and veil over the face; morality police enforce the dress code by striking errant women with sticks. The women of Iran and Sudan can expose...
...three daughters are enrolled in elementary school. Saida says her eldest daughter Nahid, 12, is getting ready for her betrothal to a 26-year-old farmer and does not have much time to spare for morning instruction. Besides, says Saida, Nahid tells her she learns at school that the Koran teaches her how to be a good wife and mother, instruction that exasperates Saida. "How can the Koran teach you how to live your life, how to take care of your children and your husband?" she asks. So Saida teaches her girls the really important things--how to cook...
...husband says the Koran tells him he can control his wife however he wants," says Banaz, 32, a mother of seven. ("Five boys," she says, jubilantly. "Only two daughters.") "But I have read the Koran, and nowhere does it say this. He is lying to me." Still, Banaz can do nothing. If she disobeys her husband, he will beat her, as he has done many times before. Once, she claims, he hit her chest so hard that she could not breast-feed her daughter for a week...