The Koran was revealed at a time of great change in the Arab world, the seventh-century shift from a matriarchal nomadic culture to an urban patriarchal system.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The Koran must be historicized before applying it to modern issues.
When the Islamic revolution began in 1979 under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini, it aroused considerable admiration in the Arab street. It presented a model of organised popular action that deposed one of the region's most tyrannical regimes. The people of the region discerned in this revolution new hope for freedom and change.
The revival of Islam dates from the early years of the 20th century. It was brought about by their humiliation, by their sense of how low they'd fallen compared with the West.
The patriarchy is alive and well in Egypt and the wider Arab world.
A first difficulty of the Arab movement was to say who the Arabs were. Being a manufactured people, their name had been changing in sense slowly year by year. Once it meant an Arabian. There was a country called Arabia; but this was nothing to the point.
I'm Egyptian and Muslim, but I grew up in the West, far from my Arab roots. I began 'Sex and the Citadel' to help outsiders - like myself - to better comprehend this pivotal part of the world, up-close and personal.
The waves of religion based on terrorism in the 1990s are based on the tormented response of a mutilated Muslim society whose progressive forces have been savagely emasculated. Why on earth is the Arab world so hostile to women? Why can it not see women as a force for development?
You can't just read the Koran to understand Muslim life. You have to look at history, at personalities, at economics, and so on.
The Koran did not invent or introduce patriarchy.
What I see in the Arab world, in Egypt, everywhere is increasing radicalization.
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