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5f4bce0 One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. history rationalization corruption society government capitalism power oppression Carl Sagan
e0a42c0 Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one's own actions or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since it is then no longer guilt but the beginning of knowledge. Yet all too often, guilt is just another name for impotence, for defensiveness destructive of communication; it becomes a device to protect ignorance and the continuation of things the way they are, the ultimate protection for changelessness. feminism black-feminism anger guilt oppression Audre Lorde
128e94a Black and Third World people are expected to educate white people as to our humanity. Women are expected to educate men. Lesbians and gay men are expected to educate the heterosexual world. The oppressors maintain their position and evade their responsibility for their own actions. There is a constant drain of energy which might be better used in redefining ourselves and devising realistic scenarios for altering the present and constructing the future. responsibility minority sexual-orientation race-relations oppression Audre Lorde
ddf5be0 When we're afraid, we lose all sense of analysis and reflection. Our fear paralyzes us. Besides, fear has always been the driving force behind all dictators' repression. fear repression oppression Marjane Satrapi
fbe1a5e The truth is that every intelligent man, as you know, dreams of being a gangster and of ruling over society by force alone. As it is not so easy as the detective novels might lead one to believe, one generally relies on politics and joins the cruelest party.What does it matter, after all, if by humiliating one's mind one succeeds in dominating every one? I discovered in myself sweet dreams of oppression. oppression Albert Camus
0ea9a0b What sphinx of cement and aluminium bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination? - oppression Allen Ginsberg
b69fe7f The educated ones leave, the ones with the potential to right the wrongs. They leave the weak behind. The tyrants continue to reign because the weak cannot resist. Do you not see that it is a cycle? Who will break that cycle? revolution fight voice oppression Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
065cfa0 Civil disobedience, as I put it to the audience, was not the problem, despite the warnings of some that it threatened social stability, that it led to anarchy. The greatest danger, I argued, was civil obedience, the submission of individual conscience to governmental authority. Such obedience led to the horrors we saw in totalitarian states, and in liberal states it led to the public's acceptance of war whenever the so-called democratic government decided on it... In such a world, the rule of law maintains things as they are. Therefore, to begin the process of change, to stop a war, to establish justice, it may be necessary to break the law, to commit acts of civil disobedience, as Southern black did, as antiwar protesters did. dangers-of-obedience rule-of-law civil-disobedience justice oppression Howard Zinn
c68bce6 But they can rule by fraud, and by fraud eventually acquire access to the tools they need to finish the job of killing off the Constitution.' 'What sort of tools?' 'More stringent security measures. Universal electronic surveillance. No-knock laws. Stop and frisk laws. Government inspection of first-class mail. Automatic fingerprinting, photographing, blood tests, and urinalysis of any person arrested before he is charged with a crime. A law making it unlawful to resist even unlawful arrest. Laws establishing detention camps for potential subversives. Gun control laws. Restrictions on travel. The assassinations, you see, establish the need for such laws in the public mind. Instead of realizing that there is a conspiracy, conducted by a handful of men, the people reason--or are manipulated into reasoning--that the entire population must have its freedom restricted in order to protect the leaders. The people agree that they themselves can't be trusted. freedom george-dorn hagbard-celine rights oppression Robert Anton Wilson
709a510 We're a government that believes in everybody having the illusion of free will. government state oppression Anthony Burgess
9faeca3 How reprehensible it is when those blessed with commodities insist on ignoring the poor. Better to torment them, force them into indentured servitude, inflict compulsion and blows--this at least produces a connection, fury and a pounding heart, and these too constitute a form of relationship. But to cower in elegant homes behind golden garden gates, fearful lest the breath of warm humankind touch you, unable to indulge in extravagances for fear they might be glimpsed by the embittered oppressed, to oppress and yet lack the courage to show yourself as an oppressor, even to fear the ones you are oppressing, feeling ill at ease in your own wealth and begrudging others their ease, to resort to disagreeable weapons that require neither true audacity nor manly courage, to have money, but only money, without splendor: That's what things look like in our cities at present money poverty wealth courage class-warfare neighborhoods urban urbanization poor cowardice inequality oppression Robert Walser
bb57dc7 Long before it was known to me as a place where my ancestry was even remotely involved, the idea of a state for Jews (or a Jewish state; not quite the same thing, as I failed at first to see) had been 'sold' to me as an essentially secular and democratic one. The idea was a haven for the persecuted and the survivors, a democracy in a region where the idea was poorly understood, and a place where--as Philip Roth had put it in a one-handed novel that I read when I was about nineteen--even the traffic cops and soldiers were Jews. This, like the other emphases of that novel, I could grasp. Indeed, my first visit was sponsored by a group in London called the Friends of Israel. They offered to pay my expenses, that is, if on my return I would come and speak to one of their meetings. I still haven't submitted that expenses claim. The misgivings I had were of two types, both of them ineradicable. The first and the simplest was the encounter with everyday injustice: by all means the traffic cops were Jews but so, it turned out, were the colonists and ethnic cleansers and even the torturers. It was Jewish leftist friends who insisted that I go and see towns and villages under occupation, and sit down with Palestinian Arabs who were living under house arrest--if they were lucky--or who were squatting in the ruins of their demolished homes if they were less fortunate. In Ramallah I spent the day with the beguiling Raimonda Tawil, confined to her home for committing no known crime save that of expressing her opinions. (For some reason, what I most remember is a sudden exclamation from her very restrained and respectable husband, a manager of the local bank: 'I would prefer living under a Bedouin to another day of Israeli rule!' He had obviously spent some time thinking about the most revolting possible Arab alternative.) In Jerusalem I visited the Tutungi family, who could produce title deeds going back generations but who were being evicted from their apartment in the old city to make way for an expansion of the Jewish quarter. Jerusalem: that place of blood since remote antiquity. Jerusalem, over which the British and French and Russians had fought a foul war in the Crimea, , on the matter of which Christian Church could command the keys to some 'holy sepulcher.' Jerusalem, where the anti-Semite Balfour had tried to bribe the Jews with the territory of another people in order to seduce them from Bolshevism and continue the diplomacy of the Great War. Jerusalem: that pest-house in whose environs all zealots hope that an even greater and final war can be provoked. It certainly made a warped appeal to my sense of history. war history christianity ancestry antisemitism arabs armageddon arthur-balfour bedouin bolshevism britain colonialism crimea crimean-war democracy diplomacy ethnic-cleansing fanaticism france free-speech house-arrest israel jerusalem jews leftism london palestine palestinians persecution raimonda-tawil ramallah religious-extremism russia territory world-war-i zealotry philip-roth secularism oppression torture Christopher Hitchens
48445cd It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and an even greater miracle of perception and charity not to teach your child to hate. hatred oppression James Baldwin
4ef8f05 Everyone who is not happy must be shot. violence shooting oppression John le Carré
3eed7b2 Millions of couples out there practiced the art of sadomasochism every day, without even realizing it. They went to work, came back, complained about everything, insulted their wife or were insulted by her, felt wretched, but were, nonetheless, tightly bound to their own unhappiness, not realizing that all it would take was a single gesture, a final goodbye, to free them from that oppression. unhappiness sex limits sadomasochism sexuality oppression Paulo Coelho
8ac8a40 ..the struggle to end sexist oppression that focuses on destroying the cultural basis for such domination strengthens other liberation struggles. Individuals who fight for the eradication of sexism without struggles to end racism or classism undermine their own efforts. Individuals who fight for the eradication of racism or classism while supporting sexist oppression are helping to maintain the cultural basis of all forms of group oppression. oppression bell hooks
2e29eea Women of today are still being called upon to stretch across the gap of male ignorance and to educate men as to our existence and our needs. This is an old and primary tool of all oppressors to keep the oppressed occupied with the master's concerns. Now we hear that is is the task of women of Color to educated white women - in the face of tremendous resistance - as to our existence, our differences, our relative roles in our joint survival. This is a diversion of energies and a tragic repetition of racist patriarchal thought. white-feminism ignorance oppression sexism Audre Lorde
50860f4 What woman here is so enamored of her own oppression that she cannot see her heelprint upon another woman's face? What woman's terms of oppression have become precious and necessary to her as a ticket into the fold of the righteous, away from the cold winds of self-scrutiny? feminism empathy compassion intersectionality self-reflection oppression Audre Lorde
aaa544e I cannot hide my anger to spare you guilt, nor hurt feelings, nor answering anger; for to do so insults and trivializes all our efforts. Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one's own actions or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since it is then no longer guilt but the beginning of knowledge. hurt guilt oppression Audre Lorde
9018931 The true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations which we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us, and which knows only the oppressors' tactics, the oppressors' relationships. social-justice revolution oppression Audre Lorde
4546eec Feminism is the struggle to end sexist oppression. Therefore, it is necessarily a struggle to eradicate the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels, as well as a commitment to reorganizing society so that the self-development of people can take precedence over imperialism, economic expansion, and material desires. feminism politics radical-feminism imperialism domination society ideology oppression Bell Hooks
8b2de77 "Let me tell you about gods," said Wiggin. "No matter how smart or strong you are, there's always somebody smarter or stronger, and when you run into somebody who's stronger and smarter than anybody, you think, This is a god. This is perfection. But I can promise you that there's somebody else somewhere else who'll make your god look like a maggot by comparison. And somebody smarter or stronger or better in some way. So let me tell you what I think about gods. I think a real god is not going to be so scared or angry that he tries to keep other people down. For Congress to genetically alter people to make them smarter and more creative, that could have been a godlike, generous gift. But they were scared, so they hobbled the people of Path. They wanted to stay in control. A real god doesn't care about control. A real god already has control of everything that needs controlling. Real gods would want to teach you how to be just like them." god oppression Orson Scott Card
f00a2f4 I think that when in doubt about the truth of an issue, it's safer and in better taste to select the least numerous of the adversaries. doubt truth minority-opinion subversion oppression Ayn Rand
4fb4ce7 In this martial world dominated by men, women had little place. The Church's teachings might underpin feudal morality, yet when it came to the practicalities of life, a ruthless pragmatism often came into play. Kings and noblemen married for political advantage, and women rarely had any say in how they or their wealth were to be disposed in marriage. Kings would sell off heiresses and rich widows to the highest bidder, for political or territorial advantage, and those who resisted were heavily fined. Young girls of good birth were strictly reared, often in convents, and married off at fourteen or even earlier to suit their parents' or overlord's purposes. The betrothal of infants was not uncommon, despite the church's disapproval. It was a father's duty to bestow his daughters in marriage; if he was dead, his overlord or the King himself would act for him. Personal choice was rarely and issue. Upon marriage, a girl's property and rights became invested in her husband, to whom she owed absolute obedience. Every husband had the right to enforce this duty in whichever way he thought fit--as Eleanor was to find out to her cost. Wife-beating was common, although the Church did at this time attempt to restrict the length of the rod that a husband might use. marriage feminism slavery history politics life serfdom eleanor-of-aquitaine medieval medieval-history royalty oppression Alison Weir
a0318f6 The 'Manifesto' being our joint production, I consider myself bound to state that the fundamental proposition which forms its nucleus belongs to . That proposition is: that in every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organization necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of that epoch; that consequently the whole history of mankind (since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, holding land in common ownership) has been a history of class struggles, contests between exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed classes; that the history of these class struggles forms a series of evolution in which, nowadays, a stage has been reached where the exploited and the oppressed class--the proletariat--cannot attain its emancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling class--the bourgeoisie--without, at the same time, and once for all, emancipating society at large from all exploitation, oppression, class distinctions and class struggles. This proposition, which, in my opinion, is destined to do for history what 's theory has done for biology, we, both of us, had been gradually approaching for some years before 1845. history marx karl-marx charles-darwin class-struggle darwin exploitation communism oppression Friedrich Engels
af05817 "I learned a lot about systems of oppression and how they can be blind to one another by talking to black men. I was once talking about gender and a man said to me, "Why does it have to be you as a woman? Why not you as a human being?" This type of question is a way of silencing a person's specific experiences. Of course I am a human being, but there are particular things that happen to me in the world because I am a woman. This same man, by the way, would often talk about his experience as a black man. (To which I should probably have responded, "Why not your experiences as a man or as a human being? Why a black man?")" -- experiences woman human-being world blind silencing talking gender question systems oppression Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
9e58e75 I swore never to be silent whenever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lies are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Whenever men and women are prosecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must--at that moment--become the center of the universe. oppression Elie Wiesel
6ef6822 "Like most people who decide to get sober, I was brought to Alcoholics Anonymous. While AA certainly works for others, its core propositions felt irreconcilable with my own experiences. I couldn't, for example, rectify the assertion that "alcoholism is a disease" with the facts of my own life. The idea that by simply attending an AA meeting, without any consultation, one is expected to take on a blanket diagnosis of "diseased addict" was to me, at best, patronizing. At worst, irresponsible. Irresponsible because it doesn't encourage people to turn toward and heal the actual underlying causes of their abuse of substances. I drank for thirteen years for REALLY good reasons. Among them were unprocessed grief, parental abandonment, isolation, violent trauma, anxiety and panic, social oppression, a general lack of safety, deep existential discord, and a tremendous diet and lifestyle imbalance. None of which constitute a disease, and all of which manifest as profound internal, mental, emotional and physical discomfort, which I sought to escape by taking external substances. It is only through one's own efforts to turn toward life on its own terms and to develop a wiser relationship to what's there through mindfulness and compassion that make freedom from addictive patterns possible. My sobriety has been sustained by facing life, processing grief, healing family relationships, accepting radically the fact of social oppression, working with my abandonment conditioning, coming into community, renegotiating trauma, making drastic diet and lifestyle changes, forgiving, and practicing mindfulness, to name just a few. Through these things, I began to relieve the very real pressure that compulsive behaviors are an attempt to resolve." sobriety narcotics-anonymous xa na buddhism alcoholics-anonymous addiction addiction-and-recovery substance-abuse alcoholism recovery secularism oppression trauma Noah Levine
0d596ee Everything that highly educated men can do to obscure a simple truth, to make a woman doubt her feelings, to make her own thoughts a muddle, they do to her. They use their learning as a hurdle to herd her one way and then the other and then finally trap her in contradictions of which she can make no sense. history women oppression Philippa Gregory
8f47261 ... the major enemy of black survival in America has been and is neither oppression nor exploitation but rather the nihilistic threat--that is, loss of hope and absence of meaning. For as long as hope remains and meaning is preserved, the possibility of overcoming oppression stays alive. The self-fulfilling prophecy of the nihilistic threat is that without hope there can be no future, that without meaning there can be no struggle. nihilism oppression Cornel West
f827043 But no one could say he hadn't gotten even. He could not count the field women whom he had sexually degraded and demoralized and in whom he had left his seed so their bastard children would be a daily visual reminder of what a plantation white man could do to a plantation black woman whenever he wanted, nor could he count the black men whom he had made fear his blackjack as they would fear Satan himself, making each of them a lifetime enemy of all white people. hatred rape racism fear degrade plantations southern satan crime oppression James Lee Burke
f41ae43 The greatest power one human being can exert over others is to control their perceptions of reality, and infringe on the integrity and individuality of their world. This is done in politics, in psychotherapy. frame-of-reference influence phenomenology power oppression Philip K. Dick
a899cc7 Bigotry may be roughly defined as the anger of men who have no opinions. It is the resistance offered to definite ideas by that vague bulk of people whose ideas are indefinite to excess. Bigotry may be called the appalling frenzy of the indifferent. This frenzy of the indifferent is in truth a terrible thing; it has made all monstrous and widely pervading persecutions. In this degree it was not the people who cared who ever persecuted; the people who cared were not sufficiently numerous. It was the people who did not care who filled the world with fire and oppression. It was the hands of the indifferent that lit the faggots; it was the hands of the indifferent that turned the rack. There have come some persecutions out of the pain of a passionate certainty; but these produced, not bigotry, but fanaticism--a very different and a somewhat admirable thing. Bigotry in the main has always been the pervading omnipotence of those who do not care crushing out those who care in darkness and blood. moral-crusade ideas fanaticism oppression G.K. Chesterton
0f5e255 We stand hand-clasped, our faces quite blank, as if this were not a nightmare that tells me, as clearly as if it were written in letters of fire, what ending a girl may expect if she defies the rules of men and thinks she can make her own destiny. I am here not only to witness what happens to a heretic. I am here to witness what happens to a woman who thinks she knows more than men. women-s-rights history fear religion witchhunt oppression Philippa Gregory
96e36c3 As history has also shown, especially in the twentieth century, one of the first things an ideologue will do after achieving absolute power is kill. violence history politics ideologue progressives revolt rule political-philosophy government revolution power oppression Thomas Sowell
bf1aaec A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man's mind. Who knows who might be the target of a well-read man? reading dangerous oppression Ray Bradbury
7f997ba Some people flee some other people. In some country under a sun and some clouds. They abandon something close to all they've got, sown fields, some chickens, dogs, mirrors in which fire now preens. Their shoulders bear pitchers and bundles. The emptier they get, the heavier they grow. What happens quietly: someone's dropping from exhaustion. What happens loudly: someone's bread is ripped away, someone tries to shake a limp child back to life. Always another wrong road ahead of them, always another wrong bridge across an oddly reddish river. Around them, some gunshots, now nearer, now farther away, above them a plane seems to circle. Some invisibility would come in handy, some grayish stoniness, or, better yet, some nonexistence for a shorter or a longer while. Something else will happen, only where and what. Someone will come at them, only when and who, in how many shapes, with what intentions. If he has a choice, maybe he won't be the enemy and will leave them to some sort of life. poetry oppression Wisława Szymborska
ccc387a This kind of action is a prevalent error among oppressed peoples. It is based upon the false notion that there is only a limited and particular amount of freedom that must be divided up between us, with the largest and juiciest pieces of liberty going as spoils to the victor or the stronger. So instead of joining together to fight for more, we quarrel between ourselves for a larger slice of the one pie. Black women fight between ourselves over men, instead of pursuing and using who we are and our strengths for lasting change; Black women and men fight between ourselves over who has more of a right to freedom, instead of seeing each other's struggles as part of our own and vital to our common goals; Black and white women fight between ourselves over who is the more oppressed, instead of seeing those areas in which our causes are the same. (Of course, this last separation is worsened by the intransigent racism that white women too often fail to, or cannot, address in themselves.) zero-sum-game oppression Audre Lorde
ba3efbb We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone MADE equal. Each man man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. sameness oppression Ray Bradbury
1610474 In our native terms, the ironic style is often compounded with the sardonic and the hard-boiled; even the effortlessly superior. But irony originates in the glance and the shrug of the loser, the outsider, the despised minority. It is a nuance that comes most effortlessly to the oppressed. irony losers minorities outsiders oppression Christopher Hitchens
b4e1a2c In Warsaw, you also remember that you are in a Communist-controlled country, though by all accounts the control is now humane and lenient, judged by what it was and what it is in other satellite countries. Still you do hear the incompetent echo in the tapped hotel telephone, you do notice that people look over their shoulders when talking in restaurants - the secret police are dormant but not forgotten; you feel in your bones, as you would a threatening change in the weather, every change in Russian mood or action. This is not and air we have ever breathed; I doubt if we would be strong enough to resist such a climate and stay as healthy in spirit as the Poles. poland oppression Martha Gellhorn
ca8d666 <> said Topsy. <> racism oppression Harriet Beecher Stowe
4600a59 We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces on the edges of print. women oppression Margaret Atwood
5083105 The blues is relevant today because when we look down through the corridors of time, the black American interpretation of tragicomic hope in the face of dehumanizing hate and oppression will be seen as the only kind of hope that has any kind of maturity in a world of overwhelming barbarity and bestiality. That barbarity is found not just in the form of terrorism but in the form of the emptiness of our lives - in terms of the wasted human potential that we see around the world. In this sense, the blues is a great democratic contribution of black people to world history. blues world-history oppression Cornel West
8535c33 In a system of intimidation and control, people do not show how much they know, how deeply they feel, until their practical sense informs them they can do so without being destroyed. oppression Howard Zinn
e8aa1e8 A stab had clearly once been made at de-uglifying these public spaces by painting a corridor a jaunty yellow. This was because, it turned out, babies come here to have their brains tested and someone thought the yellow might calm them. But I couldn't see how. Such was the oppressive ugliness of this building it would have been like sticking a red nose on a cadaver and calling it Ronald McDonald. humor cadaver ronald-mcdonald buildings oppressive ugliness oppression Jon Ronson
e1c97db It was the 'Are the boys doing it?' basis on which I finally decided I was against women wearing burkas. Yes, the idea is that it protects your modesty, and ensures that people regard you as a human being, rather than just a sexual object (...) But who are you being protected from? Men. And who - so long as you play by the rules, and wear the correct clothes - is protecting you from the men? Men. And who is it that is regarding you as a sexual object, instead of another human being, in the first place? Men. Well. This all seems like quite a man-based problem, really. (...) I don't know why we're suddenly having to put things on our heads to make it better. feminism modesty-mindsets objectification-of-women oppressive-body-coverings misogyny patriarchy oppression Caitlin Moran
b074158 As a black woman interested in feminist movement, I am often asked whether being black is more important than being a woman; whether feminist struggle to end sexist oppression is more important than the struggle to racism or vice versa. All such questions are rooted in competitive either/or thinking, the belief that the self is formed in opposition to an other...Most people are socialized to think in terms of opposition rather than compatibility. Rather than seeing anti-racist work as totally compatible with working to end sexist oppression, they often see them as two movements competing for first place. racism woman feminism opposition compatibility movement oppression sexism Bell Hooks
55180d2 If we have learned anything from the liberation movements, we should have learned how difficult it is to be aware of the ways in which we discriminate until they are forcefully pointed out to us. A liberation movement demands an expansion of our moral horizons, so that practices that were previously regarded as natural and inevitable are now seen as intolerable. equality liberation veganism vegan oppression Peter Singer
5f42f6c The universe was playing with loaded dice, which insured an excess of cowards in our ranks. injustice fear oppression Ta-Nehisi Coates
0b36e2b Incredible how the top dog always announces with such an air of discovery that the underdog is childish, stupid, emotional, irresponsible, uninterested in serious matters, incapable of learning--but for god's sake don't teach them anything!--and both cowardly and ferocious. [...] The oppressed is also treacherous, incapable of fighting fair, full of dark magics, prone to do nasty things like fighting back when attacked, and contented with their place in life unless stirred up by outside agitators. [...] Once I learned the tune I stopped believing the words--about anybody. oppression Julie Phillips
9b3bca8 We cannot shake off three hundred years of fear in three hours. racism history oppression Richard Wright
a071f63 Emphasizing a lifestyle based on consumption is the ultimate violence against poor countries. developing-nations politics oppression Shirow Masamune
f6b17aa Jewish guy did not know this, but 'oppression olympics' is what smart liberal Americans say, to make you feel stupid and to make you shut up. racism politics liberalism racism-in-america ideology oppression Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
28d9593 Their walking relationship was unnatural, but they were too fearful to seat themselves at a restuarant to share a meal, for they knew that restaurants in our country are the principal target of the active and increasingly familiar morals committees that harass people of every nationality who live in Saudi Arabia. Such committees are composed of menancing men who unexpectedly surround and enter eating establishments, demanding identification of the restaurant patrons. If proof is not forthcoming that the men and women sharing a table are not husband and wife, brother or sister, or father and daughter, these frightened people will be arrested and escorted to a city gaol, with punishment freely given. The legal penalties vary according to the nationality of the 'criminal'. Muslim offenders can be flogged for their social misconduct, while non-Muslims are gaoled or deported. feminism relationships women royal-family society muslim oppression Jean Sasson
f70856e The Islamic Revolution, as it turned out, did more damage to Islam by using it as an instrument of oppression than any alien ever could have done. oppression Azar Nafisi
f7ee41b Choking back sobs, I tried to remember a verse from Kahlil Gibran on the question of death. I first whispered it, and as a my memory of it returned, I slowly raised my voice, until all could hear me. 'Only when you drink from the river of silence, shall you indeed sing. And, when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And, when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.' My sisters and I joined hands, remembering that we were like a chain - as strong as the strongest link, weak as the weakest link. As never before, we belonged to a sisterhood more powerful than that of our own blood. Never again would we sit back and wonder at the cruelty of men and the obscene arbitrariness of innocent female death, brought about by men's evil. sisterhood women saudi-arabia royal-family patriarchy oppression Jean Sasson