Kirbaybay

HAIFA.

After a quick stop off in London, I will have the pleasure of being in the presence of Beauty and Perfection for 9 straight days. The picture captures some of the terraces on Mt. Carmel that lead down to the Shrine of The Bab, one of the Twin Manifestions in the Baha’i Faith.

Picture courtesy of Ms. Anu Mohajerjasbi that she took when she had the opportunity to go on her pilgrimage. This picture is stunning, but can’t even begin to illustrate what it will be like in person.

I can’t even begin to conceive how I will react.

This is my last blog until I return. Whether or not I blog about my experience, I’m not too sure. Sometimes moments like these can not be explained in words. But who knows.

Cheers.

Thanks to Saman for sharing this excerpt.

“Over the Centuries, the subordination of women has given rise to ideological and social structures, the function of which is to maintain women in a position of inferiority. It is not an exaggeration, then, to state that the situation faced by women is one of oppression. The most fundamental way we know to define oppresion is the use of power to deny access of some group of human beings to knowledge. In the case of women, not only have they been deprived of knowledge about the external world, but also of self-knowledge which is the basis for everyone’s reaffirmation as a human being.

Having taken away from women the right to know themselves and the great potentials with which they have been endowed, society has perpetuated attitudes that have turned into norms and customs. For centuries women have been, and today they continue to be, objects of masculine conceptions; their real nature and being has been lost among desires, the experiences and fantasies of men. To be continually exposed to images of oneself that do not correspond to reality causes one to become a stranger to oneself.

Women have lived to please men and to turn their speculations into reality. It is sufficient to look at history to see that very few women have been recognized for their own deeds, their own acheivements, their own being. Rather they have been remembered as the mothers, the wives, the daughters or the lovers of famous men.

Understanding oppression in terms of depriving human beings of the right to have unimpeded access to knowledge helps us to explain how, in spite of notable advances in establishing women’s rights, oppression continues. This is not a simplistic statement that divides the world between women as the oppressed and men as the oppressors. We are concerned with a condition that permeates society. Overcoming this condition of oppression implies changes in structure- mental, social, economic and political. The principle of the equality of men and women as an element of our conceptual framework, then, demands among other things the abandonment, the reform, and the creation of institutions. And, of instutitions we have already said that their validity is determined by the principles of justice.”

This has been cause for much contemplation.