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Forgiveness meditation

I feel like the meditation we did today was helpful. It had us go into our thoughts and pull out people who have hurt us. It was well needed being the end of the term and  having to forgive professors for overworking us, LOL. I  felt my heart like the video said and feel I was able, for the most part, to forgive and forget everyone who I have forgotten to forgive, or just couldn’t  and i feel a lot better about myself releasing that anger/sorrow.

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Eve Enslers view on social justice

Enslers view on social justice is different from others in the fact that she views the women who had been through such atrocities as being stronger. where aaron huey depicts the native americans as purely victims, Ensler depicts her “victims” as strong girls who even though these atrocities happened to them they still live on and use it to teach others. 

“I actually think that being a girl is so powerful that we’ve had to train everyone not to be that.”

girls have power, even though they don’t necessarily know it. 

Ensler was similar to other speakers in the fact that she used the statistics of injustice to grip our attention

‘In the Congo, for those of you who don’t know, there has been a war raging for the last 12 years, a war that has killed nearly six million people. It is estimated that somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000 women have been raped there.’ 

Statistics like these work they hold the audience and in a way act as a call to action, making us want to change the problem and stand up against the injustice. I think that is why every speaker we have heard thus far has used them.

her view is the same in that she believes there needs to be a change to these attrocities.

 

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so far the research process for me is…

Is long but informative, I want to learn more. If only there wasn’t a paper to write afterwards. its a lot harder to research when your going through nicotene withdraws but im getting there. It only took 3 hours last night to finish annotating so i feel pretty good. this weekend will be hard though doing this slow research while being tempted otherwise, to play. its hard to concentrate today, because its the last day of class for the week my mind just wants to wonder.the research is long and drawn out but i have a feeling that once we finish the paper will be super easy. my posts should probably be longer but i run out of stuff to write.

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What has shaped Islamic law’s view of women’s rights and led to gender inequities and what are its possible effects? Annotated bibliography

Baki, Roula. “Gender-Segregated Education In Saudi Arabia: Its Impact On Social Norms And The Saudi Labor Market.” Education Policy Analysis Archives 12.28 (2004): ERIC. Web. 10 Oct. 2012.
“In Wahabi Saudi Arabia, women, including foreigners, may not drive; and they may risk arrest for riding in a vehicle not driven by a chauffeur or a close male relative (Yamami, 1996). Women are not allowed to board public transportation in order to travel between different parts of the country or abroad without written permission from their closest male relative. Men can travel anywhere. Women are restricted in the use of public transportation when in the presence of men: they must enter the buses by a separate entrance in the back and occupy designated seating (Jerichow, 1998). The reason for such mobility restrictions on women is due to Saudi society’s strong belief in family honor. The pride and honor of a woman’s family is directly related to her chastity, known as ird. Arab “sensitivity to ird is so great that an entire way of life has been built around it. Saudi society is structured to keep a woman within strictly defined limits that make it difficult if not impossible for her to lose her sexual virtue.” Examples of laws against women in Saudi Arabia, a country ruled by shari’a
University in Riyadh, offer limited on-campus residential accommodations for female students who do not live nearby (Rawaf and Simmons, 1991). However, very few Saudi women can utilize such accommodations given the fact that many families reject even the thought of their daughters living outside their home (Sabbagh, 1996), harkening back to the idea of family honor. The problem of mobility can completely restrict some women’s access to education.
A third way that social and cultural conservatism is applied by the education system is through the use of videoconferencing. The use of this modern innovation to “uphold ancient social practices,” began due to a shortage of female professors (Mackey, 2002). This phenomenon came into existence in the Saudi higher education system solely because it accommodates the reception by female students of televised lectures conducted by male instructors…[through the] live transmission of video and audio signals from specially equipped classes attended by male students to female classes. (Nakshabandi, 1993)
This videoconferencing method allows instruction without the teacher and the students ever meeting face-to-face (Mackey, 2002). Whenever direct contact with male professors is deemed absolutely necessary, such as in areas of medicine and business, it is reluctantly and warily permitted. Otherwise, the use of videoconferencing is strongly recommended (Nakshabandi, 1993). Gender inequality in the classroom. This is all due to the need to enforce religious law because Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of Islam. Sharia is used by conservatives to keep men and women separate in the name of religion.
Muravchik, JoshuaSzrom, Charles. “In Search Of Moderate Muslims.” Commentary 125.2 (2008): 26. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 10 Oct. 2012.
This article defines moderate islam which is the “Solution to extremist islam”. Since 9/11 many muslim governments have tended to favor this form of the muslim religion
Muslims may still hope and pray for the eventual recognition by all mankind of the truth of Muhammad’s message. (Christians and Jews do something similar.) Butthey may not take up the sword to hasten the advent of that goal
There are 4 types of moderate muslims described in the text
The first are ordinary citizens of Muslim countries for whom faith but not politics is central to
their lives. They pray daily, fast during Ramadan, make the Haj if they can afford to, but evince little interest in public affairs. Constituting a kind of silent majority, tbey do not participate in violent actions, and mostly do not support them. The second group of moderates is made up of regimes, like those in Egypt or Jordan, whose “moderation” consists in alignment with the West. A third group comprises secular liberals who are largely in sympathy with the political and cultural values of the West; well-known examples include the late Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfbuz and the Iraqi writer Kanan Makiya. Finally, there are various self-described Islamists who dissent from the violent ways or extreme doctrines of other Islamists. These “moderate Islamists,” so it is claimed, are searching for an analog to European Christian Democracy: to wit, a political stance that is in some sense inspired or informed by religious ideals but is neither dogmatic nor exclusionary.
I will use this to show how the government has changed to allow more tolerance

Zakaria, Rafia. “Sharia, Justice, And The Politics Of Intimacy.” Asianetwork Exchange 19.1 (2011): 7-16. Academic Search Complete. Web. 10 Oct. 2012.
This article is about how the effects of Islam on women’s rights in Pakistan and around the world. What did this mean for the everyday life of a child in Pakistan? Children like me watched British sitcoms so drastically censored that they often lasted only ten minutes. Women appearing on television suddenly were required to cover their hair. Women were never shown having any physical contact with men on screen. Aside from what was happening on television, men and women could be asked at any time to produce their marriage documents by any police officer. In other words, the introduction of ‘Islamic’ norms, which were quite new to the population, suddenly transformed the daily lives of Pakistanis. Men were legally allowed to take multiple wives if one was destitute. I’ll use this to show how shari’a molds muslim society causing women to have “equal but different rights”.

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Library session

From this session i learned about the concept map, this will help me relate other topics to my own, also I had not noticed the citation link before today this is going to speed up my paper by at least a couple hours. being a fairly slow typer this helps by removing some of my error and I don’t have to search the page for necessary information. there are tons of databases filled with raw information waiting for me to take in…I cant wait

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Aaron Huey: America’s native prisoners of war

Hueys speech did not define justice but the injustices forced upon the Lakota Indian tribe. The American government has forced them to POW camps and pretty much abandoned them.

“The last chapter in any successful genocide is the one in which the oppressor can remove their hands and say, ‘My God, what are these people doing to themselves? They’re killing each other. They’re killing themselves while we watch them die.’” -Huey

This quote sums the speech up, the Lakota were not given justice, they were stolen from, lied to, massacred. and now America acts like its their own damn fault? NO they didnt chose to live in shanty towns, Americans put them there, They didn’t chose the house infested with black mold, Americans put them there.

To see such a proud people as the Lakota Sioux broken, depresses me.

Justice would be offering healthcare to the reservation to lower the rate of TB, Infant mortality, and cervical cancer.

Justice would be ,giving the reservation a better school system

Justice would be helping in anyway possible.

Justice, like huey said would be to give back the black hills, Like we promised.

But sadly, unless you have the money to buy it, justice does not exist, or else we would not have achieved manifest destiny.

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How does stevenson define social justice/ injustice

“We have a system of justice in this country that treats you better if you are rich and guilty than poor and innocent” best sums up Stevenson’s views on this flawed system we call justice. the fact that 50-60 percent of all men of color in large urban areas is incarcerated is a shocking statistic.

 he says in this country we don’t like to talk about our problems and hes right. 

In the time between reconstruction and WWII the social injustice was the racial inequality and terrorism

He thinks people arent paying enough attention to the problems like suffering poverty and injustice

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Meditation

When I think of meditation I think of quiet time to look on the days past, Prayer, and positive thinking.

Meditation Is used to clear your mind of anything but What you are meditating on. To meditate its best to have perfect silence, although some claim to use music to meditate, I find listening to music causes me to focus on that instead of my meditation, like say Im meditating on the birth of a child, and a song about love comes on, I personally tend to close my mind to think only of the love aspect of that birth. Whereas If you meditate in silence your mind is open to any influence, Love, sacrifice, Pain, heart break, happiness, anything really.

When I think of meditation I think of visualizing the world with spirits, as the native americans and Buddhist monks did.

 

 

Meditation is the clearing of your head to open your mind to new thought, meditation also is the focusing of your mind on to one subject. It covers a full spectrum of thought and I recommend that anyone use it no matter your thoughts, religion, or background to meditate is to free your mind. Many of the great thinkers we read of today meditated at least once a day. It is a great part of my day and I always feel better afterwards.

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Tim O’Brein’s The Things They Carried

So as part of our English comp class we have to read a book I am reading Tim O’Brein’s The Things They Carried The book starts out talking about a physical set of “Love letters” that the lieutenant carries then it goes on to talk about the mental  things the squad carries, like lavendars fear of dying, kiowas distrust of the white man, or the lieutenants over-encumbering love for Martha. though thoughts have no physical weight these thoughts weighed heavier on the men than the objects they carried. The men go through a lot together, and its almost as they know no one wants this war anymore. To say this is a good read is an understatement. I am truly enjoying this book. The detail, the hidden psychology of war, the sense of eminent doom you get from O’brien’s words. It’s all chilling, thus far a must read.