Strong family ties"? Strong but hardly strongly loving, or nurturant, it's fair to conclude
Not really. There is a lot of love in ME families, which tend to be not just parents & children, but grandparents, uncles, their wives & kids, usually living all together in the rural areas. There is a lot of love in ME families and its "manifestations" are quite often and physical, hugs, kisses, etc that North American visitors are known to feel uneasy when present. (And they think it weird that American men don't even hug and kiss :-)
Here's the disgusting story of 9 year old Sanariya -- only one of thousands like it, of course.
Are you trying to say there is no rape in North America? That is very weird. Have you looked at the statistics? I bet you will find that it is a much rarer bird in the Middle East than in the US.
In fact, I thought I would check up on this hunch:
US Rape:
137,000 rapes, attempted rapes, and sexual assaults were reported to the police (3.7 per 1000 women and 0.2 per 1000 men in the U.S.)
wildelife.com
According to the National Victim Center, 683,000 women are raped each year. (1992)
Only 2% of rapists are convicted and imprisoned. (US Senate Judiciary Committee 1993)
And here's the Middle East:
....Country.....Description
1...Turkey......0.02 per 1000 people
2...Qatar.......0.02 per 1000 people
3...Yemen.......0 per 1000 people
4...Saudi Arabia.0 per 1000 people
Total 1,439
Weighted Avg 0.01 per 1000 people
nationmaster.com
We realize, of course, that "0" does not mean "zero" but some small number. And that not all rapes may have been reported because of shame, fear, etc, EXACTLY like in the US - compare the statistics above: 137,000 rapes reported while an estimated 683,000 women are raped each year in the US. Wow.
I have to stress two things here:
(1) Rape happens in the US as well. And it seems like it is much more prevalent than in the Middle East.
(2) Just 2% rapists convicted in the US!!! That is HORRIBLE!!! Methinks you should care for your American sisters just as much as you care for poor Sanariya. They don't seem to be adequately protected by law.
That was the statistics. What I am really trying to say is:
There are better ways to form an opinion about a whole region than focusing on a horror story. There are ample such stories that pass in any country, yours included, and it would be equally erroneous in any.
Specifically in the case of the Middle East, rape is a social aberration, a crime worse than any other, due to the out-of-bounds nature of girls/women. A man's wife, girl, sister, mother, etc is his life/honor/everything. If you touch them, you know he is going to hunt you down and kill you. Especially in the rural areas, this is the rule of thumb. Hence rape is not a frequent occurrence at all.
And if a rapist is put to jail, he doesn't last long. Other inmates kill him pretty quickly. I remember rapists asking for solitary confinement before going to jail. |
