I'm Still Frosted!!!

I'm still frosted! Well, if I'm going to come back from hiatus so 'frosted' then maybe I shouldn't take these long blogging breaks you're thinking. Well you'd be frosted too if you kept reading the sort of stuff I read. In a recent article on MSNBC.com we're introduced to 300 Afghani women peacefully protesting for their right to be heard. Their reward? A publicly sanctioned stoning. Yes you heard me! I said a stoning. Now are you frosted? Before you get your knickers in a twist, let me tell you what they were protesting about. Apparently there is a new law that's been sanctioned by the highest Afghani court of the land and it's binding on all Shiite Muslim women. The law proudly states that an Afghani man can demand sex from his wife every four days and she has no right whatsoever to deny him unless it would endanger her health. What? Now you're really frosted too huh? Well I'm not done. The law adds a codicil which simply states that no Afghani woman can leave the house alone, ever, without her husbands permission and his express approval of where she's going.

These are official laws on the books in Afghanistan (I think feminists should move to Afghanistan and set up their headquarters there so that they can really have something to fight about, but I digress...), and these 300 precious women were protesting these laws and asking for more humane consideration. The result: a crowd of thousands gathered round them and began to pelt them with small rocks!!! According to the article one of the men shouted out to a young 25 year old woman, "You are not a muslim woman, you are a dog." To which she didn't shout back but calmly responded, "This is my land and my people." Sadly, we live a world away from these realities and our world view is so insular when it comes to understanding the terrible plight of others. Many of us think the economic hardships that force us to consider downsizing our homes and driving smaller, pre-owned vehicles, is the most difficult thing to deal with, but we only think that because we don't have to worry about being stoned simply because we want to be treated fairly. It's amazing how a little dose of reality can quickly alter ones paradigm.

So, like I said earlier, I'm still frosted and so I'm motivated to pray for Afghanistan and especially for this "Gideon's Army" (band of 300 women) today. If being frosted would motivate you to pray too, then I invite you to join me and lets be frosted together. On a completely different note, I bet you can't think of any other article you've ever read that used the word frosted as many times as I did.