Not all women, not all men!

Not every man in the Arab world is Si-Al-Sayyed. I'm sorry, but if one lady looks at her oppressive father as a template to ALL the Arab men in the world, then she knows nothing! She might have the only bad father around. Whereas the vast majority of men are caring, loving, gentle and very understanding. But don't only take my words for it!

In Jordan, where honor killings are a cause for concern, we have something in the range of 20 ladies who get murdered in the name of honor. Mostly to abusive controlling families. Sometimes for nothing wrong they have done. But that percentage is still way less than the crime rate in New York city for example. Or Chicago, or LA. In fact, it's less than the number of rape crimes in any of these cities. The whole yearly toll is less than what happens in one month in a major US city.

This doesn't mean the everything is fine and dandy! But we have come a long way, and it's time to really voice issues that really matter instead of getting hung on the details of someone's bad experience!

Not all men are violent animals out to suck the blood of women for no reason. Not all men oppress the women in their households. And I assure you, not every household is narrow minded, too strict, too closed or applies double standards for males and females! That's the MAJORITY that no one hears from because, simply, when nothing wrong is happening, it's boring. Who wants to hear about an ordinary family that lives well, treats it's sons and daughters equally and lives well? Boring!

People instead want to hear about the brutal brother or father who murdered his daughter in cold blood. Slashed off her head and walked around with a Hannibal Lecter cold look in his eyes, as he screamed tribal chants of how he purified his honor.

Then the media take it, and people gossip about it, making it over hyped and over exaggerated. It keeps echoing around the society to the point that you don't even know if it's the same story or a different one every time you hear it and the isolated incident becomes a prevalent phenomena!

I think it's about time we draw a line between fact, and fiction. Between personal experience and quantitative statistical results. Between science and myth. It's about time we realized that our society has come a long way. It's about time to realize that not all women are oppressed, and not all men are murderers.