Flowers for the Women Wearing Veils - Volume I — Page 462
! ! 462 she will never be able to whole - heartedly participate in serving her faith. After all, how cruel is it that while God has placed within a woman the same heart he has placed within a man, accorded her with the same brain He has accorded man, has blessed her with the same abilities He has blessed a man, yet men have chosen to take the position to treat women as if God Almighty has neither placed within them a heart , nor accorded them a mind , nor has He bestowed her with an y feelings or emotions. When a woman is treated with such injustice , one of two possibilities will certainly follow. Either she will become as if a hollow shell, from wh om the man will be unable to derive any comfort , or else her inner self will rebel and allege that her religion does not grant her the rights she deserves and [that it] is not worthy of be ing adopted. She will think, ‘ How is it possible for God to have placed a heart in side my chest, created emotions and feelings inside of me, instilled in me the capacity for intelligence and discernment, and placed the strength of wisdom in side me, yet He has still given man the option to treat me in any way he desires , whether good or bad? I have not even been given the right to raise an objection regarding his behavior. ’ Therefore, a woman will be considered perfectly justified if she rebels after receiving such unfair treatment from men. She will assert that if the Holy Qur’ān presents this teaching , then this Holy Qur’ān is not the b ook of that God , W h o has given me this heart. If according to these teachings, I am not asked to make use of my intellect, then this cannot be the teaching of the same God , W ho has bestowed up on me the power to think. Therefore , she begins to develop feelings against her religion and its teachings. At times, s he believes that perhaps this point is wrong, and her religion never instructed it to be this way; that in fact, the man is at fault here. However, at other times it will also occur to her that it is entirely possible that her religion did indeed teach this. The result of this is that, without any [deliberate] intention or pre - conceived notion, she slowly and steadily begins to loathe her religion or at least, she loses her inclination towards her faith.