Summary Of The Short Story 'Yasmin' By Bayoumi

What does equality truly mean? Is equality practiced commonly among the western civilization? How are people affected by the way they are treated? Bayoumi wrote in “How Does it Feel to be a Problem?” the short story of “Yasmin.” It shows how a young girl is treated unequally amongst her classmates. It addresses the religious issues of a young girl versus her school. The difficulties she goes through as her school administration will not change a rule for her due to her religion. She holds the secretary position of a leadership club and the rule is that they must attend all school events. Her father will not let her attend the school dances because he believes this is against their religious beliefs. The girl must choose to resign from her new position or sit in the basement of the school while the dance goes on …show more content…
Her work highlights the issues of equality and the rights of feminism inside of the Muslim culture. She talks about the confusion and power of equality. She states, “The Qur’an had settled the question once and for all: women and men have equal moral agency in their quest of the good and righteous life in this world for which they reap identical rewards in the afterlife. Gender had no role to play in the other-worldly, salvific efficacy offered by the Qur’an through its prescription for the well-orders moral existence on earth.” (Afsaruddin 87). She talks about how looking inside the Muslim culture might seem abstract to most and the difficulties inside the culture. She states, “Not surprisingly, the well-known elevate from the late twelfth century Fakhr al-Din al-Rizi (d. 1210) embellishes his narrative with the story of woman’s creation from the rib of Adam to drive home the point that the female is secondary to the male as a human being, a biblical literary motif that by his time had taken deep root in Muslim exegeses.” (Afsaruddin