It is better for a woman to compete impersonally in society, as men do, than to compete for dominance in her own home with her husband, compete with her neighbors for empty status, and so smother her son that he cannot compete at all.
If all goes well, the Iraqis are going to have a country that's going to have a representative government and will be at peace with its neighbors and in the region.
Religion can make it worse. Are you supposing that if people were encouraged to believe in a transcendent reality, and to be encouraged by grand rituals and music and preaching, to love their neighbors, then they would put jealousy and frustration aside?
These rooms are decorated in two days. It's all kept secret. The neighbors spend the night in each other's home. They don't see their finished room until the end of the second day. They have no say what happens in their own home.
It has to do - I think - with growing up in an apartment, with my aunt and my cousins right next door to me, with the door open, with neighbors walking in and out, with people yelling at each other all the time.
We would very much like to see Iran take a position as a responsible leader that doesn't intimidate or threaten or scare its neighbors and others. But the choice is really up to Iran and we're going to keep working to try to come out with the right decision.
None of my neighbors believe in what I say. They refuse to wear the rings. They will never accept my invention until the day they die. That's what I call the real antichrists.
