Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Jean Sasson

Quote by Jean Sasson

“Under Muslim law, a man's freedom to divorce his wife is justified in the Koran. This system of the threat of divorce looming over a woman's security is most unsettling to women in my land. It is intolerable that many men stretch this ruling to the utmost of its flexibility, demanding divorce for the most trivial causes, ending with the continuous social degradation of their women. Women do not have the same options, since a divorce in a woman's favour is given only after a thorough investigation into her life. More often than not, women will not be allowed to divorce, even when there is just cause. This female lack of freedom so enjoyed by males creates onesided, often cruel methods of male control and power over their women. The words of divorce slip most easily off the tongue of a man who wishes to punish his wife, 'I divorce thee', or 'I dismiss thee', sending the woman into exile from her married home, often without her children.”

Quote by Jean Sasson

Work

Princess Sultana's Daughters

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Jean Sasson
Jean Sasson

Jean Sasson, born in 1947, is an American writer known for her works that shed light on the lives of women in the Middle East. Her memoir 'Cry, the Beloved Country' has gained widespread attention for its detailed account of her life in Lebanon and her advocacy for the plight of local women. more

You May Also Like

“​The defence of the principle of true justice will entail denouncing what is today continually promoted as ‘social justice’, a justice that serves only the lowest classes of society (the so-called ‘working classes’) and works to the detriment of other classes, effectively leading to injustice. The true state will also be hierarchical, especially because it will be able to acknowledge and create respect for the hierarchy of true values, giving primacy to values of a higher order, not material or utilitarian ones, and admitting relevant, legitimate inequalities or differences of social positions, opportunities and dignity. The true state will reject as aberrant the formula of the state of labour, whether or not this state is presented as ‘national’.​”

“Aaaand then came the news that it paid, like, two hundred dollars a month for full-time work, which was a third of what I'd been told by people that it paid. I guess they cut the pay drastically because...fuck it. Having just come off a four-month, nearly full-time internship that paid absolutely nothing, having this full-time position pay next to nothing felt like a punishment in the most delightful form, but a punishment nonetheless. I know now that these industry practices are put in place with the assumption that everyone in the arts comes from a wealthy family who will bankroll them for The Opportunity, thereby shutting out people who have families but don't have money, or people who don't have anyone at all, and however you feel about that concept, it ultimately results in a loss of art from some of the people I want to hear most.”

“Rapid growth in wealth inequality results in the inevitable isolation of a very small, very rich, very privileged section of the community from the material experiences of everyone else. And when this out-of-touch minority group is enfranchised to make the decisions on behalf of people they don't know, can't see, have no wish to understand, and think of entirely in dehumanised, transactional, abstract terms, the results for the rest of us are devastating.”