The invisible power of society!

In uncivilized societies there are many oppressive and censorship authorities - whether political, religious or cultural - but for a society to build an invisible censorship authority over itself, an authority of tongue and reputation that fears its attacks as if it were a spy camera that no individual in society is safe from seeing.

The scientific truth says that the deep structure of any society cannot be understood based on touching the phenomena floating on its surface, or the usual features in it to reveal its problems, understand its nature, and decode its behavior, but focusing on examining those small details in its behavior and following their impact anthropologically and dismantling them as an invisible authority as if it were an ideology that erodes the spirit of this society and wastes its fabric under arbitrary and arbitrary justifications of negative thinking entrenched in its consciousness.

In Yemen, the individual's life does not seem to be a personal situation, self-freedom, and an independent entity, in which the individual possesses all his privacy and manages his life affairs in his own way and his single-minded view and according to what his personal reality imposes; but the reality is completely different from this perception, as the individual is a slave mortgaged to a social culture and an oppressive social authority that forces him to implement its customs and the logic of its traditions, and fears its perspectives that are recognized in the community, and fears any deviation or rebellion that appears in the behavior of this or that individual that exceeds the system of social patterns in food, clothing, marriage, divorce, work, and solving problems that are often solved not according to their requirements, motives, and reasons; but according to what people will say and how they receive them and evaluate the meanings of manhood and social discipline for the individual according to what society will say about him negatively or positively.

This example may seem simple compared to the egregious images caused by the culture of society. For example, a spinster, divorced woman, or widow suffers from bullying, humiliation, and societal contempt as an outlier and a black spot full of flaws and tarnishing the reputation of her family. She becomes a meaningless marginal and is treated harshly and ostracized even by her family because society has approved of her crime and agreed on her ugliness.

Many injustices are committed and great rights are usurped under the pretext of this societal oppression of women. Men also have a share of this if they fall into the context of separation and the failure of their first marriage. They are met with aversion and loathing whenever they propose to another alternative wife; the reputation of the failed, defective husband with a criminal record continues to haunt them. Our Yemeni reality is full of horrific stories and narratives of victims of a false culture and shallow customs that tear apart the fabric of society despite their clear violations of the values of Sharia, the law, and human rights.

This phenomenon has several forms that weigh heavily on our lives and we bear its burdens reluctantly. In many Yemeni villages and rural areas, the subject of mourning still represents a material calamity for the family of the deceased, more than their grief over the loss of one of their members, as mourning turns into a carnival party that lasts for more than a week, requiring the family to provide the requirements of mourning, such as setting up lunch tables with sacrifices, receiving mourners and filling their mouths with qat branches and its accessories of water, candles and tea, so that the house of the deceased remains crowded with mourners from noon until midnight for several days. It is obligatory for the children of the deceased to fulfill this ritual, no matter how unable they are to bear its costs, even if they remain in debt for years because of it, for no reason other than so that it can be said that they honored their deceased with a mourning that he would be proud of in his resting place. If they evade doing so, the stigma of shame will continue to haunt them and society in all its spectrums will rebuke them for eternity.

As for weddings in the Yemeni society’s culture, this is a story that saddens more than it pleases, hinders more than it advances, and brings more misfortune than it brings happiness. The wedding is followed by misery, poverty, and bankruptcy after the wedding party has exhausted sums beyond the capacity of the groom and a group of his family, who have given their all to hold the event with its manifestations that society glorifies and praises, such as halls, tours, and processions, etc., so that it becomes talked about on everyone’s tongue and everyone approves of it. Otherwise, negligence in such an occasion is met with ridicule and bullying, and no one is lenient in it given the circumstances of the groom and his family and the appreciation of their situation. Isn’t this an infringement on the rights of others and an intrusion into their lives, pushing them to drown themselves in expenses beyond their capacity in an attempt to please society and magnify their image in its eyes?

The problem does not stop here, as we often hear about the failure of a marriage whose ceremony was exciting, because the focus was on form more than substance, on appearance and reputation more than substance and compatibility, so society returns to mock the person who strutted at the wedding and ended up with an early divorce. Therefore, the reluctance of young people to marry is not an inability to pay the dowry, but an inability to bear the costs of wedding expenses that exceed the dowry many times over.

Strange is the case of this society that has received bitter shocks and has not abandoned its customs that have burdened it and have become an entrenched culture that is passed down from generation to generation without realizing its dangers to itself and others, and which cloud the course of its life and complicate its ability to find happiness easily if it were to relieve itself of the burden of this pattern of behavior and thinking.

So we are faced with a different form of society in its behavior, and we find ourselves strangers to it, and it is necessary to put an end to it, because every day we hear and see many crimes and cases of violence that were the result of the inability of their perpetrators to gain recognition and appreciation, and the marginalization that they suffered from a society that bites with its tongue the privacy of every individual, and gnaws at his cover, pushing him to deviance and foolishness so that he is not accused of failure as long as society does not accept his existence.