YEMENI WOMEN: “PRESIDENT IS DEGRADING US”

WOMEN IRATE AT REMARKS
BY PRESIDENT OF YEMEN SALEH

SANA, Yemen (Reuters) - Thousands of Yemeni women protested in Sana and other cities on Saturday, enraged by President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s remarks that it was against Islam for women to join men in the demonstrations aimed at toppling him.  The women, many in black Islamic dress with full face veils, said their role in protests was religiously sound and called, again, on the president to step down.  “It seems that President Saleh failed in all his efforts to employ tribes and security to strike at those seeking his exit, and so he resorted to using religion, especially after he saw that thousands of women were taking part in protests,” said Samia al-Aghbari, a leader in the protest movement.

Mr. Saleh, who has warned of civil war and the breakup of Yemen if he is forced out before organizing an orderly transition, urged the opposition on Friday to reconsider its refusal to join talks to resolve the political crisis.  But he also struck a defiant tone, calling members of the opposition liars and appealing to religious sensitivities in this conservative Muslim country by criticizing the mixing of men and women in protests in Sana.  “If Saleh read the Koran, he wouldn’t have made this accusation,” said one protester, who gave her name only as Majda. “We ask he be tried according to Islamic law.”  Around 5,000 women demonstrated against Saleh in Sana on Saturday, with similar numbers in the industrial city of Taiz, south of the capital.

Thousands of Yemeni women marched in the capital Saturday protesting for what they called President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s attacks on their morality due their participated in demonstrations against him.   International political analysts fear that this chaos would benefit an active Al Qaeda wing operating in this poor Arabian Peninsula country.  The material world is only a reflection of the spiritual world.  The conditioned jiva must destroy his material identity as “man” or “woman”, and establish his spiritual identity - free from matter - by performing spiritual activities.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US?  

Each individual soul residing in the material world has an original spiritual form that manifests one of the five rasas (relationships with Lord Krishna).  Four of these rasas, namely, dasya (servitorship), sakhya (friendship), vatsalya (parental love) and madhurya (conjugal love) are present among the people of Vraja.  In Vraja, males participate in the rasas of dasya (servitorship), sakhya (friendship) and the fatherhood portion of vatsalya (parental love).  In these three rasas males engage in direct service to Lord Krishna.  However, it is only females who serve the Lord in madhurya (conjugal love) and in the motherhood portion of vatsalya.  Among both liberated souls and beginners engaged in sadhana bhakti, many souls with external male material bodies have original spiritual forms that are female.

Śrīla Saccidananda Bhaktivinoda Thākura :
“Jaiva-dharma” (The Universal Religion)
Chapter 21 : Eternal Religion - Sambandha, Abhidheya and Prayojana
Bhaktivedanta Memorial Library  -  http://bvml.org/SBTP/JD/index2.html#21