Humanity can be justified

“Being human is given. But keeping our humanity is a choice” is a quote I found online.  There comes a point when staying neutral is not making a choice but rather its making a choice to do nothing. Witnessing the atrocities happening around the world and failing to make a stand or taking any action is making the choice to ignore the slow death of humanity.

It’s not just the unjustifiable inhumane treatment of women that shakes the morality of humanity, but it’s the lack of acknowledgement on the behalf of the world’s citizens and their failure to stand for humanity that destabilizes the core of morality.

According to the Nov. 3 edition of “The Independent,” an online news site, a woman was arrested in the Middle East for driving her diabetic father to the hospital because women are still not allowed to drive a car in Saudi Arabia. The treatment of every human being is significant, how can we exclude one group of people out of our human community and still claim to hold on to humanity?

Unfortunately, the world has done just that to Muslim women and we have justified it in the names of religious, cultural tolerance.  If humanity could accept tradition as a justifiable excuse for human suppression than how did we manage to consider old practices like slavery, human trafficking and illegal child labor. These practices all have a traditional and even religious background, which people have used to carry out these acts.

The voices of Muslim women have been shunned in the name of religious tolerance, and no action is taken. The world has failed to stand firmly for the rights of Muslim women.

Women in Saudi Arabia are not allowed to leave their house without a male relative accompanying them; they’re only now allowed to open a bank account without the permission of their male relative. Saudi Arabian women live under conditions in which they have no say and no way to escape.

It is time we all realize that the ideology, the attitudes, patriarchal society and suppression haven’t changed. If anything, their methods have become more advanced. The technology has made it even easier than ever to commit crimes against women.

Modern technology allows for new advances in female infanticide (the killing of newborn female children or the termination of a female fetus through selective abortion), and it takes this practice to a whole new level.  The women’s population is in decline since these new advances have been practiced in countries like China and India.

According to a recent United Nations Fund for Population (UNFPA) State of the World Population report, practices such as female infanticide, combined with neglect have resulted in at least 60 million “missing” girls in Asia. This is contributing to gender imbalances and other crucial problems that experts foresee will have far reaching consequences for years to come.

The killing of baby girls has taken a back seat to sex-selective abortion or female feticide, due to the advent of amniocentesis and ultrasound technology as well as other prenatal sex selection techniques.

Plans sometimes backfire. According to UNFPA, twenty-five million men in China currently can’t find brides because there is a shortage of women, and men have to emigrate overseas to find wives.

Around 140 million girls and women worldwide are currently living with the consequences of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), according to World Health Organization (WHO). FGM is the partial anesthesia using a knife or razor. A majority of these acts occur from the time of infancy up to the age of puberty.

In some countries, people use religion and others use the tradition or culture, but one fact remains constant, and that is the purpose of this horrific act. There is always one purpose to take away any form of natural sexual pleasure away from the woman, so the woman does not enjoy sexual contact.

Whatever the cruel act, whatever the justification we as the cosmopolitans cannot claim to be moral human beings without upholding the moral code for all humanity.