Jealousy is a right like ambition, Teacher Lamis! [Archives:2007/1113/Community]

With reference to Lamis Abdulkarim Shuga’a’s article, entitled “Jealousy not a right at all, Dear Maged,” published in issue No. 1109, December 6th, 2007, I want to comment on some points by Lamis commenting on my article entitled, “Jealousy: is it a men’s or women’s right?”.

Firstly, what Lamis said about jealousy as an “inner sense existing inside every normal person just like love, hate, hunger, fear, hope, etc.,” can be considered as her opinion. But that is ‘not true’ in all respects. Actually, this contradicts the fact that jealousy is a feeling related to love, not another feeling like love or hatred as Lamis said.

In my article, I said jealousy is a basic feeling, but it cannot exist without the feeling of love, and at the same time it is not related to other feelings like hatred or hunger. For this, I want to ask Lamis: can anybody have jealousy without love? And: can anybody feel jealous for a person that he or she hates? To answer these two questions, I hope Lamis realizes the scope and domains of jealousy as a feeling.

Lamis attacked me for talking about jealousy as a right. I do not know if she could really understand the purpose of my article or not. She said at the beginning of her article that she likes my interesting topics which “have been various social, moral, and religious”. Actually, I wrote about that matter not as a mere feeling, because nobody denies this. I talked about it as a social issue that may have a negative impact in our society. The purpose is to get different opinions and views of different people so that the topic can be taken through the mind’s eye as a social phenomenon, not only as a mere feeling.

With respect to this point, jealousy may cause many problems among families. Though some may not care about that, some others, such as wives and husbands, may take it seriously, connecting it with other social or religious terms. Accordingly, many cases can be taken as instances of the good or the bad cases of jealousy.

Lamis does really raise an important point, which is if “a woman asks her husband [for a] divorce, telling him that she will marry another one “. Here, Lamis reveals her opinion that a husband will not accept if the wife asks for a divorce to marry another one. The example is really good, but Lamis generalizes her opinion for all such similar cases.

Actually that is the right of the wife “only to ask for divorce”, but the husband is not forced to divorce her. In this case, if he loves her, he will not divorce here, that is all. He will not die of jealousy, as Lamis said. It is true that the wife may go to court(s) to complain against the husband and ask for divorce. It happens, but there are only rare cases of this example. I think we should not generalize such cases according to rare cases.

In case that husband does not love her, and it is she who asks for divorce, I think he will be the winner. He will not feel jealous but happy, because he is not going to pay her any rights, especially if the matter reaches police court for settlement. This also happens only from time to time, and is not common, so that we make generalizations accordingly.

What I want to affirm is that what would be the reactions and sequences of the common cases when a husband loves or marries another wife or wives. Similarly, what are the reactions and results if the women has “moral relations” with other men? Would the husband accept it?

I think that Lamis, as a woman, can take real examples to tackle the different domains of the topic. The topic would be more interesting to look at all the sides and actual cases of this phenomenon in our society.

To conclude, I do not say that jealousy is a right of men or women, but I ask all readers to answer this question, taking real cases and viewpoints that exist in society. The purpose of this is to reach an impartial conclusion through which every one of us can know how, when and where to use jealousy. Accordingly, I hope Lamis and other readers share opinions through writing articles for this interesting page in Yemen Times.

Majed Thabet Al-kholidy is a writer from Taiz, currently doing his M.A. at English Dep, Taiz Uni. He is an ex-editor of English Journal of the University.