#1 "They were trying to humiliate us, break our pride. We are men. It's OK if they beat me. Beatings don't hurt us, it's just a blow. But no one would want their manhood to be shattered," he said. "They wanted us to feel as though we were women, the way women feel and this is the worst insult, to feel like a woman."
The braver women in that world would probably agree that the shaming and mistreatment they suffer simply because they are women does exceed physical torture.
This may be controversial to say, but the shaming men experienced at Abu Ghraib could usher in badly needed change in the Islamic world, in the long run. This man hasn't confronted his prejudice yet; maybe after a few years' haunting memories of the humiliation, he can take what he has experienced and recognize the parallel between his (momentary) humiliation and Muslim women's (lifelong) humiliation and use that knowledge to improve the estimation of women in Islam. |