A recent article about arranged marriages of children in Islam, "Girls Tied in Chains," once again pulled my attention to reconfirm my opinion about the cruel system regarding the "Woman's Status in Islam." It is a misfortune to be born a woman: no rights in life, no rights to breathe freely, no rights to feel that you exist, only because nature made the "mistake" to create a woman.
The male-dominating status in these countries never changes, concerning women of the same nation and religion, whose preamble considers their status fair, because of the direct impact of the religion. Likewise, when an outsider woman is called to assume the wife's duties under this outlandish religion and race, the hardships are insuperable and unfamiliar as she has to be totally subjugated to her dominating husband, removed from a thoughtful, intelligent person to be degraded and living the mental slavery subduing her consciousness to "him." An immediate result would be the reaction leading to total impasses and unexpected situations for her safety. Laws and social assistance do not exist to support the foreign woman in such cases, and only the alien woman feels the despair to which she will be lead after cupid's arrow of love strikes, taping not only feelings of love but also the human person himself. That was what I felt when attracted to and completely unaware of the tough world of the in-existent women of Islam.
Hard-hitting fights between two persons where the incorporeal supreme feelings of an invincible love that took us close together, though the world of religions and origins split us apart. We could not make it, as he was trying, wearing his blinders and conducted by the social religious fanaticism, to "tame" me and subjugate me into their own system, while I was suffering by the blatant unfairness. I was struggling not to be lost in a world deeply sunk to an abyss of a religious anger. I was and always remained the outlandish miasmatic, due to my non-Arabic origin and religion. This is their belief as followers of the last revelation of God.
Despite my efforts on my behalf to be understood by the family environment, I was open prey to be accused and mistreated. I was left in my destiny and in the love of God. They have their God as they pretended, making the difference even on that issue. As a receiver of all the negative feelings and hatred, I had to prove that a lie is not a truth and white is not black... That was their plan to make me succumb by twisting the good and nice. Incredible situations for the inhabitants of the planet Earth. There was no space for love only voracious hatred. However, these situations lead to nowhere. Humans, although beings of the same God, kill one another for the stronger's domination as if they were assigned to live eternally on Earth.
The confrontations between my ex-husband, a Muslim, and me, a Christian, was the cause of many fights, struggles and personal sacrifices on my behalf. I had to fight in order to prove once again, the self-evident and self-explanatory: that I was also a being of the same God without dividing and blinders but a creature of a God who preached 'love each other' and not 'slaughter the Christians.'
May my personal experience heed advice, which is indisputably a protest against an excruciating system concerning the women and may enlighten and ponder any woman before any decision of life.
Alexandra Symeonidou is a best-selling author in Greece and has published 10 novels, translated three French theater plays from old French to Greek and two children's books. "Nightmares in the Saudi Arabian Desert" is her autobiography and her first translation from Greek to English. It is available on Amazon.com.
