Thursday, June 12, 2008

Be a Virgin, Again!

IHT: For Muslim women in Europe, a medical road back to virginity.

Ain't technology grand?

"In my culture, not to be a virgin is to be dirt," said the student, perched on a hospital bed as she awaited surgery Thursday. "Right now, virginity is more important to me than life."

I don't get her mindset. Why did she choose to not remain a virgin? And after having made that choice, why is she marrying within a culture and a family that would consider her true self to be dirt?

One 32-year-old Macedonian-born Muslim said that she had chosen the surgery to avoid being punished by her father after her relationship with her boyfriend of eight years ended.

"I was afraid that my father would take me to a doctor and see whether I was still a virgin," said the woman, who owns a small business and lives on her own in Frankfurt. "He told me, 'I will forgive everything, but not if you have thrown dirt on my honor.' I wasn't afraid he would kill me, but I was sure he would have beaten me."

Apparently, beating one's 32-year-old daughter is honorable behavior.

Link via Lisa Schiffren who writes out my thoughts perfectly here:

Call me a romantic, but just how great a marriage can be built on a lie about chastity, fear of exposure, and the resentment that must follow the neccessity to undergo that surgery?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The question of why she chose to have sexual relations prior to marriage is her business, not ours. As she is an adult, it is also none of her father's damn business. She has chosen to have her hymen "restored" out of fear that her father would drag her to a doctor to assess her virginity, something he has no right to do in the first place. A grown man who demands his 32-year-old daughter remain a virgin so his "honor" will not be compromised is a thug. In Islam he is an approved thug, but he's a thug just the same. She may well be in physical danger from him, and will be if she chooses to marry outside of Islam, or if she marries within Islam and is discovered to not be virgin.

That entire religion reeks like a week old dead fish.