Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
You don’t have to venture far into the good book – Genesis 3:16 in my old King James – to get the Judeo-Christian word on the role of the little woman.
We hath not come a long way baby.
This week, we learned that one of the leading contenders for the Oval Office, the former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, signed a full-page ad in USA Today way back in, oh, 1998 AD, endorsing the notion that “A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ.”
Then there’s ChristianDomestic Discipline.com for your Bible-thumping wife-beaters.
And let’s not forget Purity Balls, those queasy-making cotillions that have dad and daughter dating and dancing while mom stays home. There, fathers pledge, hand over heart, to “choose before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity. I will ... lead, guide and pray over my daughter and as the high priest in my home.”
Which brings us to the shocking death of Aqsa "Axa’’ Parvez, whose father Muhammad stands charged with murder. According to her friends, the Mississauga teen would not submit to his idea of Muslim purity.
You get where I am going with this?
Now obviously, anybody who kills their child has issues, to say the very least. But violent disagreements between parents and kids happen irrespective of race, religion or culture.
Growing up, I knew many girls who would sneak around with their non-ethnically approved boyfriends or hike up their skirts as soon as they left the overly watchful eye of their “this is the way it was in my backwoods village in 1953” macho dads. I have no doubt their fathers raised their hands to them.
Was that a cultural, generational or gender clash?
Does it matter? Aqsa Parvez is dead, period, full stop. But, if some people have their hate-filled way, there will be hateful calls to limit immigration from Muslim countries and to boycott Muslim business.
Oh, wait, that’s already happening. I’d print the web address but it doesn’t deserve the exposure.
It’s a patriarchal world. Parvez was victimized in and by it.
Patriarchy crosses virtually all religions, at least those invented since men figured out their role in making babies. That’s when we went from the Mother Goddess to Our Father, who art Da Boss.
Even now, too many controlling men beat or kill their women because they think it’s their God-given right.
But, when they’re not Muslim, we blame ’roid rage – as so many did last summer when wrestling star Chris Benoit murdered his wife Nancy and their 7-year-old son – poverty, alcohol, drugs, depression, dinner was cold, she ditched him or she didn’t know when to leave.
Make no mistake: Aqsa’s murder isn’t about Islam, except tangentially. In Toronto so far this year, at least 10 women were controlled to death by their current or former partners.
No wonder. The system, despite the outcries of the "men’s rights’’ movement, an oxymoron if ever there was one, is stacked against women.
And so, like so many other female victims, Aqsa Parvez was failed by the same society that politely ignores black eyes and broken jaws and expressions of fear. Too many women cower under their husband’s or father’s thumbs, afraid to make friends or go anywhere without their permission.
Some of those women could be in the cubicle next to yours.
There were adults around Parvez who knew she had problems at home. They should have been obligated to intercede, the way they would be under Quebec’s Youth Protection Act. It forces people to report incidents of abuse.
So many things might help stop the slaughter.
Women (and their children) need easier access to legal support. They need counselling services. They need to be better informed, maybe through their schools or English as a second language courses or even multi-language notices in supermarkets.
Immigrant women in particular live in isolation, because they lack the language skills and have few social contacts outside their homes or ethnic communities.
It’s not like their places of worship are of much help, since most are about upholding the old patriarchal ways.
So how about Immigration Canada putting newly arrived women through a compulsory seminar, showing them how things are here – and how they should not be – and telling them where they can get help?
How about something? Anything?
The irony in all this is, in the end, Muhammad Parvez lost control of how his daughter presented herself to the world.
That’s because our everlasting image of Aqsa won’t be of her in traditional Pakistani dress, her glossy black hair hidden in a hijab.
Instead, what we will remember is all those front-page Facebook photos of a sassy-looking young woman, the one who liked to dance and hide makeup in her school locker, and dress like any other girl at the mall.