Culture test -- Insight Program (SBS -- 18 September 2007)
I didn't watch this program,- usually I do watch Insight,- but quite frankly, I didn't miss anything, from reading the transcript. It's everything I and my New-Australian friends all went through when we arrived to this country and started growing up here, then going out and going to Uni. etc.The older, "new-aAustralian" generation is trying to hang on to their kids and to their culture. It's a worry,- big worry!
I often found my mother pacing up and down the street outside our home at 1 or 2 am, in her dressing gown, talking to herself - "please God, let my child be OK"!!! I must have been already driving and at Uni., going out with my future husband even! She worried in case I'll ‘marry out’ (of my faith), in case I have an accident,- when our kids came along, she worried about them,- driving us all mad with her "Jewish mama's" worries!!! So what's new,- if the Moslems feel the same?
My generation was far more relaxed and the next is even more so!
Those first generation Muslim kids will be OK if they break loose from their parents a little,- the ones to worry about are the ones who think that their parents have strayed too far away from their religion, e.g.Islam,- unhappy perhaps with their own lives, these kids often revert back, sometimes to a much stricter form of their religion and who knows what else they might do! It happens among us Jews,- but at least our Jews are not dangerous. Fundamentalist Islam, may be very dangerous indeed!
RE "Australian values",- is an idea which I have been promoting for ages,- but should be more designed and targeted to the prospective immigrants to this country. That is,- they need to know more about what to expect when they get here. They think that they can just come to Australia, make money and live the same way forever as they did in Bangladesh, say. By the time they get here and find out that their children adopt a different lifestyle, -it's a bit late to complain.
But coping with growing kids is a problem for everyone,- we have all had to go through this phase with them. I also had to advise my Greek cleaning lady about her teenage son who was rebelling (now a well-to-do professional father of two) and some African Moslem women who came to our community, wanting to know how we keep our children from assimilating instead of integrating! We told them that like everyone else, we have failures and successes! We have to try to do our best for them, help them to remain in the fold.
But being an Australian or any other nationality as well as a Jew does not pose any problems or conflicts. Intermarriage with other faiths, does. One or the other may have to lose his or her previous faith-identity. There are no particular problems for us as women, except in the areas of religious divorce, should this occur. The strictly religious Jews, like all strictly religious people of other faiths, do have more rigid moral codes to which girls and women have to conform if they want to remain within their family and community circles. Of course, they may also encounter intergenerational conflicts as a result. For that reason, a minority of ultra-orthodox communities even forbid interactions for their kids with the outside world,- no TV, internet, socializing, etc.
But when immigrants from countries such as Afghanistan and similar come to a free and democratic society such as ours,- how can they adjust? From totally covered-up wives whom no other male is allowed to see,- to our freedom-loving flesh-showing females in Australia or USA,- then they have to try to keep their youngsters in check? Or will they try to convert all of us to their level?
(See below).
WOMEN IN AFGHANISTAN: 4CORNERS PROGRAM, ABC TV.(Monday, 24/9)
I gave up watching the shocking documentary on 4Corners in disgust! The lives of the women and girls count for naught still today after supposedly being "liberated" from the Taliban. Their PARTICULAR culture and fundamentalist Islamic religion are the absolute 'pits' where women and children are concerned!
Anyone trying to tell us that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance;-as though it's a universal truth can fool themselves, not most of us women! If any of their men come to Australia thinking that they'll control their daughters or wives in the same manner, they should stay where they are! Let the women come here on their own and live in freedom and let those "testosterone hyped males" (as the brave interviewer said,- "it must be something in the water here!"),- leave them to rot over there. They don't deserve to live here,- their poor women are emolating themselves at an incredible rate. We should be trying to save them and leave their bastard menfolk behind to become Taliban on their own!
You should read all the comments on the 4Corners Guestbook.
For further information on how to offer support to the women and children of Afghanistan, go to the following websites:
Support Association for the Women of Afghanistan Aus
Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan
The interesting issue however is that all the Australian peak Women's groups refuse to help whenever we asked them to assist overseas Islamic women from being stoned to death, for example.. They are intimidated by the local Islamic women's organizations who claim that it is all a Zionist plot to denigrate Islam!
It is time for true feminist Islamic NGOs to work hand in hand with all other women’s groups and stop being in-denial about Islamic teachings and life-styles all over the world and the non-status of their women!
(MM)
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