Aysha Quotes

The word feminism has become synonymous with man-hating when in fact it has more to do with women than men.

If we are to fight discrimination and injustice against women we must start from the home for if a woman cannot be safe in her own house then she cannot be expected to feel safe anywhere.

Every woman, hell, every man should be a feminist, that is the only way to render this word obsolete.

Why does Wendell think that Aysha is the one who has been doing all the yelling and complaining? Because in his mind she’s supposed to be listening, not talking. If she expresses herself at all, that’s too much.

The world believes it was built by love but reading Shah Jahan’s own words on the Taj, one could say it was grief that built the Taj Mahal and it was sorrow that saw it through sixteen years till completion.

Democracy should always be viewed with a philosophical perspective rather than a political one, because after all democracy was born to a philosopher and murdered by a politician.

Violence is violence and can in no way be misconstrued as discipline under any circumstance cultural or otherwise.

Why does it seem easier for us to accept reality when it is within the confinement of the animal kingdom yet so hard for us to face it in our?

Viciousness is part of the world we live in, some of us choose to ignore it with the rationalisation of wanting only positivity to flow our way. How selfish we have become! That the pain of others has become a hindrance to the fulfilment of our positive selves.

Societies have a peculiar way of relating, or more accurately non-relating, to rape maybe because it is so vicious, they choose to live in denial about it.

There is no point of relaying statistics on rape because for every figure given there are thousands missing, unreported. It is a shameful state we have created where a victim chooses to endure the pain and suffering, silenced by fear that judgment will come before justice.

Having to explain to a child of today, who has learned to swipe before they can speak, that certain aspects of a person’s life must remain private for the preservation of one’s sanity is almost frivolous.

In a sea of human beings, it is difficult, at times even impossible, to see the human as being.

The lesson we are indebted to Egypt for, our future generations learned that in the face of oppression silence is never golden.

In politics, the pen is at its heaviest because it is weighed down by the collective responsibility it holds towards its people and their future in the eyes of the world.

Evil does not just arise from nothingness, most of the time it is nurtured by society’s failure to activate its moral standards

Say what you wish about media in the Arab world, but say it knowing that no media channel in the world is absolutely free.

In the face of mass atrocities, we stand in mass indifference rationalized by logic that sees us through the day.

Women have forever been viewed as the Other: the other sex, the other half, the other option. Always the next best thing, always another part of.

And so it is inevitable that the day has come when we write about privacy with such nostalgia, analysing it as we would some unearthed fossil of a creature our human eyes had never fallen on.

It is fear that reinforces the walls we build, people are afraid to be swayed from their convictions, afraid to question their moral instincts and expose themselves to ideas that may challenge the fabric of their entire existence, but what are we if we are not seeking to better ourselves?

It is hard to imagine that even today while many of us go about our lives freely, hundreds of women cannot fathom the concept of being free. Bound, gagged and suffocating from the cruel societal chains they fight for survival on a daily basis, some succumbing to it, others rebelling against it and paying for it with their lives.

When we think of the word home, what is conjured is an image of tranquility, of safety and support, something that is less physical in nature and more emotional.

History will remember this war on Palestinian civilians and their displacement as the moment the world woke up to the Zionist plans of occupation and expansion.

The Arab Spring whose seeds failed to bloom anything other than a chaotic mess that requires only blood to grow has contributed immensely to the rising numbers of these migrants.

George Floyd’s death may have compelled you to post a black image on your social-media accounts but what it should really have done is made you question yourself and find within you those dark places where intolerance might be hiding for who among us can stand tall and proclaim that they have never been prejudiced towards a certain ethnicity, gender, colour or faith?

We are imperfect creatures created with egotistical defects, insecurities and an incomprehensible desire for perfection and the excessive use of social media feeds the raging fires within, most of the time adding salt to wounds we never knew existed and at times creating new ones.

So, a mistake is made, a word is spoken out of turn, a cultural norm is broken, and all is fair in the pursuit of cancelling this person, erasing them off the face of the earth, banishing them to a world of shame and regret.

If Syria is to rise from the ashes it needs a united Arab world which has one thing on its agenda, not the falling of a dictator for we have seen many of those fall, but the reemergence of a prosperous Arab nation, one that is not reliant on foreign aid but is self-sustained and set on its way to become powerful once again.

Much of the atrocities that are committed towards Arab women occur partly because the victim does not know that she has a basic right for her body to be hers, for her privacy to be respected and for her education to be a necessity not a privilege she receives if it is financially possible after her brother has been educated.

The walls we build around us to keep the noise out only reverberate the same ideas, notions and beliefs we enforce, leaving no room for debate. When we opt out of an argument we are choosing to ignore opposing views thereby failing to understand the other.

The cost of war is like an immeasurable tremor that knows no borders, its shockwaves reverberating across the world resulting in universal suffering.

George Floyd’s pleas awakened this world that has been rendered comatose by fear of contagion and all of a sudden nothing mattered but justice.

Just as one goes on a fast or a body cleanse you owe it to yourselves to detox your mind, it will not be easy but easy never yielded lasting results.

Contagion is hate’s greatest attribute and its most treacherous, anyone is susceptible.

Those who use prejudice and hate as a foundation to make their cases have no merit. It is only when these feelings are set aside that we can think clearly and productively.

Today, while the cyber world rages with ideologies and passionate moral perspectives, the streets remain comatose, echoing nothing but silence.

Muslim women have the freedom of choice, taking away this freedom is non-Islamic, it is dictatorship in Islamic clothing.

The road to redemption is a treacherous one that the accused must walk through in darkness but if we don’t shine the light then there is no hope for anyone finding their way to the other side.

What social-media really becomes after years of use is a constant stream of information both verbal and visual that at first drenches the mind, quenching its thirst for knowledge, and subduing its curiosity slowly but surly transforms into a torrent that renders the brain heavy and the mind restless.

Psychological research has shown that prejudice adversely affects both the targets and perpetrators. Does it make sense then to enter a losing battle, one which you come out of in the end a battered and bruised loser?

We have reached the age of denial, we have become happiness seekers, afraid to feel. We are told to think positive, to seek only joy. Stores overflow with books selling you ways to rid yourself of ‘negative’ feelings.

As humanity progressed it built machines that can do away with its hands and now, it is building programs that eventually aim to do away with its brains, the one thing that no other species on this planet can challenge.

Freedom of the press can never be the licence to say anything one desires. Freedom of the press is not the freedom to slander and attack and must never be used to fight other people’s wars. It does not mean manipulating a story into speaking your views. One might think it common sense but in the world of journalism a lot of what makes sense is lost to the lure of favouritism, greed and fame. Sadly, in this truth-telling business truth is hard to find.

How difficult it has become to decipher the truth from the fictitious, to trust one’s own eyes over the art of image distortion. Information is power and if readings have taught us anything, it is that power inevitably corrupts.

There needs to be a fundamental shift in the way societies view women in government, one that does not see them as mere seat-fillers or stats on a chart, they must be viewed as a vital contributing factor to the betterment of the world.

In the near future the images in history will differ and the faces who changed the world would no longer be reserved for the masculine. We always knew history to be a story told by him but the future will have one that is written by her as well.

We have broken through and taken our rightful role in society. But when I write the word ‘we’ I hesitate, because ‘we’ is all- encompassing. And that would not be fair to the thousands of women around the world who are still forced to dwell in the darkest of ages that we lucky ones have left behind.

As politicians weigh courses of action against their political agendas the death toll weighs heavy on the conscience of the world. The once vibrant Syrian streets are now haunted by the souls of the innocent and the historic monuments that told of an unrivalled Arab civilisation no longer stand tall.

When the contradictions weigh on you, know that this has never been a war of rights and wrongs, of what is just and what is fair. Never has it been a war of political logic or historic sense. All it ever was and will ever be is a war of semantics that altered, redefined and constructed today’s reality and tomorrow’s path.

The so-called ‘morality police’ is a work of fiction that extremist governments have created to control their people, it has no background in the Islamic faith and never existed historically in any form since the dawn of this religion. It is and has always been a weapon for the collective mentality to control and silence individual expression.

In this world where I sit at my desk writing these words, people die, they pass on, people are mortal. In the cyber world we inhabit they do not.

Complacency has taken the place of outrage and demands for justice have been substituted for trending hashtags and unified profile pictures.

This virus is shrewd in its camouflage and unabashed in its cruelty.

Women’s rights remain a continuous battle around the globe; where education as a basic right is nothing but a dream and where possession of their own bodies is a debatable matter.

An ambiguous law is a dangerous one because it allows for the concept to be misused, neglected or worse, weaponised.

One’s love for his country is a very sacred emotion that is intertwined with their sense of moral obligation and is an essential part of one’s identity.

It is harder to unite than to divide that is what makes it so precious and at the same time so fragile.

Solutions are not found by pointing fingers they are reached by extending hands.

Opinions must not be reactionary, they are built with research and intricately crafted by keen observation.

It is not the fastest opinion that matters, it is the wisest, the most thorough.

I have come to realise that the most critical of the social media accounts are the least verbal in real life and I can assure you that most social media trolls have no physical troll land to dwell.

And that is the ultimate goal, to elect politicians who strive to implement laws that are blind to gender differences and whose ultimate goal is to create fair and just societies, that is how it works.

At times it seems as if the whole world has become a refugee and the few of us, who are privileged enough to wake up to the sound of an alarm clock instead of a siren, those of us who are enveloped by a veil of safety many of us fail to appreciate, have become desensitised to the migrating numbers, to the images of the dead, shrugging them away as a collective misery that this ailing part of the world must endure.

It is human nature to write of that which interests us, of facts that are deemed essential at the time of inscription and that is why history as is documented, is as much an interpretation, as it is a collection of facts.

Each time we bear witness to such senseless acts the world divides into a side which views this type of attack as terrorism and another which dismisses it as a random act by a person whose actions need some sort of justification.

The long-term effect of Hillary’s loss could be more beneficial to the future of America than one might think. For if Obama’s reign placed hope in the hearts of the young and instilled in them a belief that differences must be embraced then Hillary’s crushing defeat has awakened them to the harsh realities of a hopeful indifference and raised their voices in opposition of all those ideals that would not only darken their future but the future of the entire world.

For every Aruna story we hear there are hundreds of thousands that will never be heard, swept under the great rug of shame societies have so eloquently woven. It is up to us to speak up, to lift this heavy rug and reveal the ugliness it conceals.

Throughout the world and specifically throughout the Middle-Eastern one, much to do with women is concealed. Women are mostly kept out of history books, and if they are marvellous enough to have made it into them their images most likely did not.

The ambiguity shrouding this whole crisis makes it all the more difficult for the mind to adjust to, runners can only pace themselves if they know how far the finish line is and yet in this race our finish line is just a prediction, an educated guess.

What is worse than indifference is when people’s nationalism allows for the conscious rationalisation of brutality as part of a political balance sheet. It is but a grave oversight when people shift their responsibility towards moral values for the duty to obey.

The Women’s March did what it set out to do and that is to show the sheer magnitude of passion that the female voice can project and most importantly, for our future generations, it has shattered the falsity of the patriarch myth that women do not support other women.

We are acknowledging the interconnectedness of our lives with other animals. Their well-being is not separate from ours. On the contrary, we share the same fate. Moving forward, how we choose to be with animals will depend on how willing we are to be with them. Not as predator and prey, not as master and servant. But as kin, as partners, and as friends, strolling shoulder to shoulder along the dips and rises that stretch before us. We lose nothing when we do so. What we gain is our health, our happiness, our humanity. And friendships that are irreplaceable.

It is the horrific crime that seems to be accepted among many Arab societies, conveniently coined ‘honour killing.’ This must be the most contradictory term I have ever come across for what is honourable about cold-blooded murder? Just like the heinous crime the term itself is gravely flawed.

Young activists like Greta Thunberg are fighting for the Earth’s survival but what use is this planet if it continues to be nurtured by the blood of the innocent and prosper through others’ misfortunes? Save the trees, the oceans and the skies, save the planet but do not forget to save its soul.

Social psychologists have likened the effects of COVID-19 to that of the great World Wars for the characteristics are all there down to the sirens and curfews; it is after all a life-altering event that has blanketed the world with uncertainty and an unfathomable restriction on personal freedoms.

Many of us no longer expose or surround ourselves with people who disagree with us politically or ideologically, we have the ability through a click of a button to silence those whose beliefs we find culturally offensive or merely different, and while this might be both convenient and comfortable it is also dangerous.

This traumatic episode in history is proving to be one twisted psychological experiment on a massive scale, a testing whose effects on the mind will be studied for years to come for we know that after trauma comes the post-traumatic episodes and the world needs to be ready to help those of us who will need to be mentally supported once the worst is behind us.

When an entire segment of the world is burned and reduced to a lawless battleground for thugs and mercenaries, a land where government does not exist, where the slate of history is being wiped out and hope has drowned in gallons of innocent blood, the only respite comes in the form of the open seas and what lies beyond the horizon. So ships are boarded and pain is tolerated just a little while longer.

There are moments chronicled in political history as pivotal in carving a new political path forward and this genocidal ‘defending of one’s state’ has become one of them. History will remember this war on Palestinian civilians and their displacement as the moment the world woke up to the Zionist plans of occupation and expansion. As a result, never again will the same rhetoric be sufficient in explaining the atrocities they are willing to perpetrate towards its attainment.

Our Arab mothers and sisters are suffering from injustices like domestic violence, sexual harassment, child marriages and honour killings, some are still fighting for their right to drive or travel without male custody therefore our powerful Arab media was not only expected to broadcast this particular one of a kind Women’s march it should have held panels to dissect the issues being brought forth in order for the Arab world to better understand that gender equality is not an idea that one believes in, it is a planned movement that requires an enormous effort on the part of both men and women to reach.

And 14% of southern newlyweds marry someone of another race—a larger share than in the north-east or Midwest, according to the Pew Research Centre, a think-tank. Black and white southerners vote differently (93% of blacks voted Democratic in 2012; 72% of whites, Republican). They also worship separately, for the most part. But the workplace is much more integrated. “It’s not that racism doesn’t exist, it’s just now we can discuss it,” says Aysha Cooper, who runs a day-care centre for the elderly in Snellville, Georgia. Ms Cooper finds that oldies brought up under Jim Crow now mix happily over games and meals. “There are no racial barriers in my centre,” she declares.

History is not always pessimistic for if World War II Europe has taught us anything it is that the rebuilding of cities is possible and the mending of a nation’s spirit can be achieved.

In our earthly world we debate the idea of prison reform and rehabilitation, yet the cyber world’s ‘cancel-culture’ leaves no room for such hopes.

Humanity is fallible and every single one of us is capable of sin but if it were not for the hopes of one day being redeemed none of us will seek to understand our flaws and make the effort to rectify the damage our actions have made.

There is nothing more complex than the idea of prejudice for it defies educational merit, economic background and it does not adhere to a specific age-group or even ethnicity, it is a multi-layered issue that is passed down through generations most of which has been normalised through stories and anecdotes told and retold.

The journey into a colour-blind heart is a long one but it is one we must endure so as not to allow injustice to continue through our children and into the future.

Racial discrimination might not be systemic within the Arab governments’ fabric but that does not mean they are devoid of discriminatory laws and the same can be said about their cultural one, for the Arab world can in no way be absolved of the sin that at its core resides many a prejudice.

Empathy is man’s greatest moral virtue, the force behind humanity’s paramount achievements and the creator of unbreakable connections; it is also under threat of extinction.

We are here, in an era of the strong, one that rewards a means to an end mentality, where qualities like empathy and compassion have been downgraded to attributes of weakness and gullibility.

Morality is man’s only trustworthy guiding tool and empathy is that natural instinct in which without it the world would be a much darker place to inhabit.

The world should be outraged by the man-made tragedies and this outrage must be translated to a global fight that involves activists, diplomats and civil society leaders. It must be articulated in words that set the unjust on fire, that light the way for those innocents being persecuted and maybe, just maybe, put an end to their suffering.

Humanity has always raced towards an unknown future with a blatant certainty over its outcome.

Aloneness seems to be the greatest byproduct of this invisible enemy for whether or not a person has been infected the condition is one of separation, a self-imposed isolation. Be it out of fear or guilt you are expected to stop your life in its tracks and confine yourself willingly and against all natural instincts to the walls that house you.

One dares to say that only a pandemic of this scale could have slowed down the rat race yet this too will prove beneficial to some of us and a sheer torture to others for the mirror that COVID-19 has forced us to look into is one that has no cracks, it reflects reality in its harshest form and unless we truly look, and come out the other side changed human beings, all this agony would have been for nothing.

If you are blessed with your health in these times, then embrace the feelings that you are faced with, try to deal with them for there is a blessing in every tragedy and we must find it in order to endure.

Pigmentation is not an indication for incarceration and because black or fifty shades of brown complexions can never be a justification for hate or injustice.

Too much of a good thing is toxic

The Arab poet Silm Al Khaser wrote “He who watches people dies of worry” and his words have never been more potent than in today’s world where all people do is watch others and cater to them in return.

The first few days felt quite surreal for gone was that filtered world of perfect angles made up of peoples’ best moments and selves. Gone was the wormhole that one jumped into at the sign of any awkward silence or pause in conversation.