Self-Determination in Arab Society :: Arabic Culture Cultural Essays

Self-Determination in Arab Society Since World War Two, much of the developing world has been in transition. One such idea that saw a re-birth was that of self-determination-- be it on the national level or on the personal level. Self-determination on a national level means the independence of a country; on a personal level, it is the determination of one own fate. This can be seen in various ways with our five women characters, Maha, Um Saad, Nadia, Yusra and Suad. In the forward of Daughters of Abraham, Karen Armstrong notes that Islam is "adamantly opposed to the subjection of one human being by another," "insist that men and women were created by God image" and "both sexes have equal rights and responsibilities before God." Strong and resourceful women have played a key role in history and yet Islam has pushed women into an inferior and marginal position, excluding them from full participation in the social, cultural and religious life of the community. Even though figures such as the prophet Muhammad had a positive view of women, relied on them, and treated them as valued equals, some of the most respected sages and theologians have preached outright misogyny. In Rethinking Women and Islam, Amira Sonbol remarks that while the "vision of equality has been one of the mainsprings and central teachings of Islam," it is not extended to women. Rather the numerous Quranic references to equality between man and woman are commonly disregarded, "as the man is given superior moral and physical role as guardian over his wife." It is this type of understanding that is rooted into Arab culture whether or not Arab women have experienced great changes in modernization and industrialization. Therefore, it is imperative that women stand up for themselves and have a sense of self-determination. Self Determination Women were among the first converts to Islam, and the Koran gave women rights of inheritance and divorce that Western women did not receive until the nineteenth century. The Koran does not describe the wearing of the veil of all women as well as seclusion. However, Karen Armstrong notes that three of four generations after the prophet death, Muslims imitated the customs of the Greeks and the Persians in their empire who had long treated their women in this way. Moreover, in her view, Muslims also picked up some of the Christian misogyny and pre-modern legal codes like the Shariah "reduced women to the rank of second-class citizens even though the ideal of the equality of all believers was crucial to the Quran message.

The History of Mental Illness

People with depression and people who are sad are something totally different. Last y, people with schizophrenia are viewed as crazy and dangerous. For these reasons, history has viewed these individuals differently and have been misunderstood. Because of the fact that people never quite understood mental illness, undivided LULAS were often mistreated. If you had a mental illness, you were perceived as a danger to socio TTY and were immediately transferred to jail with no further questions asked. Things like HTH s are difficult to believe, but they did in fact happen in our world.People with mental illnesses ere not allowed out and were basically isolated from society only because people did not undo restart what was happening in their minds. Imagine having to face a life inside a jail cell or a public basement for most of your life. To me, having a mental illness is all too familiar so when I hear about things like this t hat actually happen in history, it hits me hard because if we re to have been born in this c entry, I know I would have been one of many to experience the categorization and the enough ionic confinement Of these mentally ill individuals.In the 1 Boob's for example, people were not vie deed as â€Å"crazy', they were viewed as being Satan. However, there were two specific individual s who began to do something about these dangerous conditions. In the sass, activist Throated Dixie fought for better living conditions for the mentally ill after witnessing the dangerous and unhealthy conditions in which many patients lived. Her initiatives created a number of a asylums, but the horrible conditions still went on. In these asylums, the rooms were so small and yet so incarcerated that a Patti .NET could not move very far.Also, doctors were not very clever in coming up with ways to treat the SE people, so they just began to make treatments up as they went on. One of the treatments that t a doctor would use is lobotomy, which essentially means that the y would drill holes into the patient's skull to examine their brain. Another treatment they would use was electroshock there app. This meant that the patient would have a helmet on their head that would transfer electricity t 0 their brain to treat their illness. A man by the name of Clifford Watching Beers lived to tell his tale.Clifford was one of many battling a mental illness. In his biography, he describe sees it as a â€Å"history f a mental civil war† which he had to fight single handed on a battlefield that â€Å"lay within the compass of his skull. † After attempting to end his life, Beers ended up getting I n trouble with the authorities and had to attend court. As his punishment, he was sentenced to attend a mental institution in New Haven. After being admitted, the attendants shaved his leg s and put muffs on his wrists for restraint.Since these attendants were incapable of understands Eng the operation of his mind and what they could not understand, they w ould seldom tolerate an y means of disobedience. Lastly, he described the bathrooms of the wards as â€Å"a room in which vehicles [were] washed in a modern stable. † After Beers came out of his punishment, he decided to begin to change the m minds of those who did not know what to do with individuals with mental illnesses. As a result, he founded Mental Health America in 1909. Mental Health America is a nonprofit organization the at helps those with mental illness.To this day, it still exists and it even provides counseling a ND treatments at no cost. Ever since then, America's viewpoint on the mentally ill have changed for the better, A way in which it has changed is that now America provides effective treatment TTS that help the individual. One of the disorders that has been very effective in treatment is De oppression. Depression is a mood disorder caused and carried on by an interaction of gene ethic, biological, psychological, and environmental factors that affect the m ind and the body. S meeting that is misunderstood by society is that depression is only feeling out of the weather .However, it is far more than that. Depression is the intensity of the feeling of sadness and a pro longed period of negative feelings. It causes a lot of argumentative behavior, aggression, and f linings of wanting to be alone. Doctors have discovered that this disorder runs in families and ca n be traced through several generations of a family. They have also found out that it is caused by a n abnormality in the way the brain produces and maintains its levels of certain chemicals that are involved in transmitting messages from nerve cell to nerve cell.To treat depression, it is v ere common for the patient to be treated with therapy sessions, but if the depression is too SST rang they will get both therapy and antidepressants. Another disorder that has been effective in treatment is anxiety. Anxiety is quiz tee normal in many people, but the way it makes it a disorder is also the intensity of it. A person w tit anxiety will most likely get many panic attacks. A panic attack is an initial frightening expel irenic of brief but intense fear that occurs out of the blue.A panic attack is most likely to happen n if the patient continues to worry about things that others would not normally care about. D actors have discovered that people with anxiety have imbalances in levels of enumerators titers. To help them, cognitive therapy works very well in patients because it challenges your thoughts and helps the patient to control themselves better. Also, some antidepressants he Ip to lower anxiety. Lastly, schizophrenia is one mental disorder that was even new for me.When found out my sister had been diagnosed with it, was very confused because I did not have any experience with this typical disorder. Schizophrenics typically hear voices that other do n to and believe that others are reading their minds, controlling their thoughts, or plotting to harm them. Doctors have no true cause, but believe that exposure to viruses and malnutrition before bi Roth can affect greatly whether or not someone can develop this disorder. Also, it has been found the t schizophrenics have less gray matter and different brain chemistry and structure.

Animal Testing Should Not Be Banned - 891 Words

Humans are Animals Every year millions of animals are burned, tortured and crippled in research that does not even result in safer products for humans. In fact, more than 90% of experimental drugs that are shown to be safe and effective in animals do not work for humans and are considered unsafe. Animal testing is barbaric; the small benefit that may be gained through testing in no way rights the torture these animals are put through. Not only is the testing harmful to the animals, it is extremely expensive. Millions of dollars a year are made by companies that provide the animals, but billions are spent on research that cannot even be used. In an effort to create data, we use animal testing results and try to apply it to the genetic makeup of humans, it doesn’t work. The physiology of humans is just too different to apply the information used in animal research. Research that involves the use of animals is inhumane and cruel, it incurs costs that are wasteful because the research is unsu bstantiated and does not give useful information that can be applied to human benefit. There are better alternatives to this completely ineffective testing and waste of money, we should all voice our concerns and plead with law makers to ban testing on animals. The voices of animal rights activists began to make a difference in the use of animals in laboratory testing during the 1980’s, but in less than a decade ago this trend reversed. Peter Tatchell’s editorial entitled; theShow MoreRelatedShould Animal Testing Be Banned?844 Words   |  3 PagesShould animal testing be banned? Nowadays, a lot of animals has been tested on a range of experiments over the world. You could be supporting animal teasing cruelty without knowing it. Have you ever check if there’s animal testing on the cosmetics before you buy it? Today, a lot of cosmetics has been testing on helpless animals and there are about 1.4 million animals die each year from animal testing ( CatalanoJ, 1994). Most of the experiments that are completed in the laboratories are very cruelRead MoreAnimal Testing Should Be Banned880 Words   |  4 Pagesdepending on animals testing. Therefore, if people talk about laboratories, they should remember animal experiments. Those animals have the right to live, according to people who dislike the idea of doing testing on animals; the other opinion, supports the idea of animal testing as the important part of the source of what has reached medicine of the results and solutions for diseases prevalent in every time and place. Each year huge numbers of animals a re sacrificed for the science all these animals, whetherRead MoreAnimal Testing Should Be Banned776 Words   |  4 PagesAnimal Testing Should be Banned  ¨Over 100 million animals are burned, crippled, poisioned and abused in US labs every year ¨ ( ¨11 Facts About Animal Testing ¨). Imagine if that was someones animal getting tortured in labs just to test things such as beauty products and perfume. Animal testing was first suggested when,  ¨Charles Darwin evolutionary theory in the mid 1850s also served to suggest that animals could serve as effective models to facilitate biological understanding in humans ¨ (Murnaghan)Read MoreAnimal Testing Should Not Be Banned940 Words   |  4 Pages1). Over 100 million animals are burned, crippled, poisoned, and abused in US labs every year. 2). 92% of experimental drugs that are safe and effective in animals fail in human clinical trials. (DoSomething â€Å"11 Facts About Animal Testing†). There are currently no laws combating the testing of cosmetics on animals, but the practice is harmful and must be ended. As evidenced by the statistics above, millions of animals are tortured and murdered in the United States every year for virtually no reasonRead MoreShould Animal Testing Be Banned?1665 Words   |  7 PagesTesting Cosmetics on Animals Companies around the world use animals to test cosmetics. Animals, such as rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, rats, and mice, are used to test the effects of chemicals on the eyes and skin. While animal testing is not mandatory, many companies use it. About Cosmetics Animal Testing by the Humane Society International talks about the different options companies have that do not require the cruel use and eventual death of animals. The article also talks about the overallRead MoreAnimal Testing Should Not Be Banned1572 Words   |  7 PagesAnimal Testing Every year, over two hundred million innocent animals are injured or killed in scientific experiments across the world. Of those animals, between seventeen and twenty million are used in the United States alone. It is said that an animal dies in a laboratory every three seconds (Animal Testing 101). Those in favor of animal experimentation say they are taking animals’ lives to save humans. It is not necessary to subject animals to torturous conditions or painful experiments in theRead MoreAnimal Testing Should Not Be Banned1581 Words   |  7 PagesAnimal testing is being used by different organizations all over the world to prevent specific diseases, especially cancer. Americans see animal testing having a harmful effect but it is one of the main reasons why society has most cures for some illnesses. This topic is important because people need to know what goes on during animal testing and why it is very beneficial. Animal testing needs to be used to find all cures. Some ani mals such as chimps/ monkeys have 90% of the same DNA humans haveRead MoreAnimal Testing Should Not Be Banned1721 Words   |  7 Pages † Today, more animals are being used in experiments than ever before: around 100 million in the United States alone† (3). Animal testing is now an international issue, and it is becoming a major story. Currently, animals are often used in medical testing, make-up testing, and other consumer product testing. Animals used in such product testing are often abused and suffer from serious side-effects. Animal testing can be painful for the animals, testing results are usually not even useable forRead MoreAnimal Testing Should Be Banned1364 Words   |  6 Pagesbenefit. Using animals for these experimentations usually does not come to mind. Animals are often abused, suffer, and even die during laboratory testing for the benefits of people to make sure medications, household products, newest procedures, and cosmetics are safe and effective for human use. Humans have benefited from animal testing for years while these animals suffer consequences with no positive outcomes for themselves. Even if a product or procedure is deemed successful, these animals are frequentlyRead MoreAnimal Testing Should Be Banned Essay1632 Words   |  7 Pages Animal Testing Should Be Banned Throughout the decades, animals have been used in medical research to test the safety of cosmetics including makeup, hair products, soaps, perfume, and countless of other products. Animals have also been used to test antibiotics and other medicines to eliminate any potential risks that they could cause to humans. The number of animals worldwide that are used in laboratory experiments yearly exceeds 115 million animals. Unfortunately, only a small percentage of