She deserved the status
Dr. Michel E. Abs
Secretary General of the Middle East Council of Churches
She is the woman, the mother, the sister, the wife, the daughter, the friend and the companion, and all the names of safety are given to her.
She is the security of man and humanity who were criminals to her for hundreds of years, so they robbed her of what she has and denied her what she is, just because they are stronger than her and because the jungle bequeathed society the predominance of the strongest and its domination of what it deserves and what it does not deserve.
She is patience, steadfastness, and endurance of the intolerable in order to preserve the one she loves.
She is the silent, prudent, long-suffering who embraced the makers of human history.
In her deep they were carried and, on her hands, they grew up, and on her melodious voice they fell asleep - or on her stories, those who drew the lines of civilization.
She is the foundations that hold the structure of human life, the hidden foundations that man rarely remembers.
She is the one who has been rewarded by the human race with various attributes, the hardship of living, and discrimination in all fields, she was called by the most despicable attributes, her rights were wasted, she was transformed into an object, and was harassed to the utmost.
What women have been exposed to may have been suffered by many men too, but bad practices at all levels have haunted women much more than men have been exposed to.
The objectivation of women may be the most horrible thing practiced against them and the most insulting to the human soul. She has been objectivized in various ways but there is no room here to enter into its degrading details, not only to her, but to human beings.
As for today, we are on the other side of the phenomenon.
A woman is still the same, the mother, the sister, the wife, the daughter, the friend and the companion, but she carries new personal and social components.
She is the educated, professional woman who entered society through its wide door.
Every field we find her been well positioned and well performing.
Since the beginning of my professional life, I have dealt with women working in various fields. From education and scientific research to management to banking to medicine and nursing to engineering to law and other fields, we find women capable of achievement and creativity.
The key to this transformation lies in education, a blessing that women have been deprived of for centuries under various pretexts.
Education is the boost of peoples, the downtrodden and marginalized groups. In it lies the secret of social progress, and God made it a right and a duty for all people.
Between the "woman killed by ignorance" (an old article written by a Lebanese writer in the early 20th century) and the woman who was honored by science and honored herself with it, the centuries-old journey of the humanity that tyrannized her.
Between burying girls alive and honoring the daughters of the house and treating them like princesses, our societies have taken giant strides forward.
For decades, in Lebanon and the Arab world, we have been witnessing radical changes in the status of women at all levels, and these transformations are the result of different dynamics that the lecturers will address from their point of view.
Today, she is a partner with full rights in various fields of life. From the family to politics, passing through work, there is no longer a debate about her role today.
My generation have witnessed these transformations and I have seen and heard how families were trying to convince girls to stop education after finishing the complementary phase of education and then stay at home waiting for a groom to “shelter” her. Today, however, neither the parents nor she accepts to stop education before reaching the highest degree in her field of specialization.
Our society has realized that, if the jewelry that a woman owns is a protection for her in the event of her marriage failing, then science and profession are her stronghold.
This is one of the basic indicators of advancement, and if we want to define a standard for the advancement of peoples, the attitude towards women and the way they are treated is the criterion.
Two thousand years ago, a revolutionary called Jesus Christ rejected the status of women in his time, denounced the inferiority with which she was treated and the injustice she was subjected to, and restored respect to the most blameworthy women at the time, curbing the hatred of the stupid masses and preventing them from stoning her. He has charted the course for restoring dignity to women since that time.
The weak creature, who had only the option of subordination, has today become the strong social actor and has deserved this status.
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This is the fourth symposium of the Human Dignity Project, organized by the work team in the form of a round table, and it was keen to include the best researchers and specialists in the field.
In addition, we wanted this symposium to be a face to face one only for the lecturers and students who participate in this work, provided that future symposia will be in attendance and in different places in the Middle East if conditions permit.
We thank the colleagues, members of the work team and commend their efforts. We also thank the lecturers and tell them that this is only the beginning and we will try as much as possible to communicate with them in order to update the file of the topic they participated in and keep it alive within the context of the work on studying and rehabilitating human dignity in our area.
You are most welcome.