The Women of the Arabs | Page 8

Believing women followed Christ
throughout Galilee and Judea, and although enemies stood watching
with hateful gaze on every side, not one word of insinuation was ever
lisped against them. It is a most sadly impressive fact to one living in
Syria at the present day, that the liberty and respect allowed to woman
in the days of our Saviour would now be absolutely impossible. In
purely Greek or Maronite or Armenian villages, the women enjoy far
greater liberty than where there is a Moslem element in the population.
And it is worthy of remark and grateful recognition, that although
Christianity in the East has sunk almost to a level, in outward morality,
with the Islamic and semi-Pagan sects, there is a striking difference
between the lowest nominal Christian community and the highest
Mohammedan, in the respect paid to woman. Ignorant and oppressed as
the Greek and Maronite women may be, you feel on entering their
houses, that the degrading yoke of Moslem brutality is not on their

necks. Their husbands may be coarse, ignorant and brutal, beating their
wives and despising their daughters, mourning at the birth of a daughter,
and marrying her without her consent, and yet there are lower depths of
coarseness and brutality, of cruelty and bestiality, which are only found
among Mohammedans. I once suggested to a Tripoli Moslem, that he
send his daughters to our Girls' School, then taught by Miss Sada
Gregory, a native teacher trained in the family of Mrs. Whiting, and he
looked at me with an expression of mingled pity and contempt, saying,
"Educate a girl! You might as well attempt to educate a cat!"
Not two months since, I was conversing with several of the aristocratic
Mohammedans of Beirût, who were in attendance at the
commencement of the Beirût Protestant Medical College. The subject
of the education of girls was introduced, and one of them said, "we are
beginning to have our girls instructed in your Protestant schools, and
would you believe it, I heard one of them read the other day, (probably
his own daughter,) and she actually asked a question about the
construction of a noun preceded by a preposition! I never heard the like
of it. The things do distinguish and understand what they read, after
all!" The others replied, "_Mashallah! Mashallah!_" "The will of God
be done!"
Some ten years ago, an influential Moslem Sheikh in Beirût, who was a
personal friend of Mr. Araman, the husband of Lulu, brought his
daughter Wahidy (only one) to the Seminary to be instructed, on
condition that no man should ever see her face. As Mr. Araman himself
was one of the teachers, and I was accustomed to make constant visits
to the school, she was obliged to wear a light veil, which she drew
adroitly over her face whenever the door was opened. This went on for
months and years, until at length in recitation she would draw the veil
aside. Then she used to listen to public addresses in the school without
her veil, and finally, in June, 1867, she read a composition on the stage
at the Public Examination, on, "The value of education to the women
and girls of Syria," her father, Sheikh Said el Ghur, being present, with
a number of his Moslem friends.
CHAPTER III.

THE DRUZE RELIGION AND DRUZE WOMEN.
The great expounder and defender of the Druze religion is Hamzé, the
"Universal Intelligence," the only Mediator between God and man, and
the medium of the creation of all things. This Hamzé was a shrewd,
able and unprincipled man. In his writings he not only defends the
abominations of Hakem, but lays down the complete code of Druze
doctrine and duty.
It is the belief of many, and said to be the orthodox view among the
Druzes that their system as such is to last exactly 900 lunar years. The
date of the Druze era is 408 Hegira, or 1020 A.D. The present year,
1872, corresponds to the year 1289 Anno Hegira, so that in nineteen
lunar years the system will begin to come to an end according to its
own reckoning, and after 1000 years it will cease to exist. Others have
fixed this present year as the year of the great cataclysm, but the
interpreters are so secret and reserved in their statements, that it is only
by casual remarks that we can arrive at any idea of their real belief.
Lying to infidels is such a meritorious act, that you cannot depend on
one word they say of themselves or their doctrines. Their secret books,
which were found in the civil wars of 1841 and 1845, have been
translated and published by De Sacy, and we have a number of them in
the original Arabic manuscripts in the Mission Library in