There is a poison beneath innocence, a deep poison… This phrase, although difficult to understand at first glance, begins to make sense when you spend even just a few days in a village. In the villages of the Middle East, observing the lives of women is an experience that deeply hurts the soul. Understanding this cannot happen in just a few days. Everything seems normal in this world, but the painful truth is that every part of a woman’s life is overshadowed by a mask of goodness.

Here, a woman has no value. Almost everything done to her is justified under the guise of religion and goodness.

A woman cannot go out,
A woman cannot speak to foreign men,
A woman’s hair must never be uncovered,
In the home, the final word is always the man’s,
A woman serves, a man is served.

Let’s go back 50 years. In many villages of the Middle East, women were not educated, women could not go outside on their own, women had no say in their homes, their only task was to raise children. Women were subjected to violence.

This violence was crucial because it was accepted as normal. Hearing it from the older generations feels unsettling. The lives of women here are still shaped by external factors—her husband, father, brother, the patriarchal culture.

But women’s biggest enemies were not only men.
One of the biggest enemies of women is other women. The things mothers-in-law do to their daughters-in-law, what mothers do to their daughters…
I’m not even counting the fathers because the biggest problem usually lies with them, and most of the time, they are not even functional figures. I see people changing, but not because they want to, but because they have to, adapting to the changing world.

The biggest problem that causes all of this is religion.
They use religion to justify all of these wrongs. The pressure on women, the reasons why they fall behind in education, the lack of basic services in the places they live, the falsehoods and hypocrisy within family ties, and the violence against women—all of it is sustained through the misuse of religion.

I fear that in 50 years, those who look back at today will not see these absurdities. I fear that all of this will be forgotten.

This system must change. It may come with pain, but it will change. It must.


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