Muammar Al-Gathafi - The Green Book

If a test were carried out to discover whether the natural propensity of the child is towards its mother or the nursery. the child would opt for the mother and not the nursery. Since the natural tendency of a child is towards its mother, she is the natural and proper person to give the child the protection of nursing. Sending a child to a nursery in place of its mother is coercive and oppressive and against its free and natural tendencies.

Natural growth for all living things is free and healthy growth. To substitute a nursery for a mother is coercive action against free and sound growth. Children who are shipped off to a nursery are consigned compulsorily or by exploitation and simple-mindedness. They are driven to nurseries purely by materialistic, and not by social, considerations. If coercion and childish simple-mindedness were removed, they would certainly reject the nursery and cling to their mothers. The only justification for such an unnatural and inhuman process is the fact that the woman is in a position unsuitable to her nature, i.e., she is compelled to perform duties which are unsocial and anti-motherhood.

A woman, whose created nature has assigned to her a natural role different from that of man, must be in an appropriate position to perform her natural role.

Motherhood is the female’s function, not the male’s. Consequently, it is unnatural to separate children from their mothers. Any attempt to take children away from their mothers is coercion, oppression and dictatorship. The mother who abandons her maternity contradicts her natural role in life. She must be provided with her rights, and with conditions which are non-coercive, unoppressive and appropriate to her natural role. She can then fulfill her natural role under natural conditions. If the woman is forced to abandon her natural role regarding conception and maternity, she falls victim to coercion and tyranny. A woman who needs work that renders her unable to perform her natural function is not free and is compelled to work by need, and “ in need, freedom is latent”.

Among suitable and even essential conditions which enable women to perform their natural role, which differs from that of men, are those very conditions which are proper for a human being who is incapacitated and burdened with pregnancy. Bearing another human being in her womb lessens her physical ability. It is unjust to place such a woman, in this stage of maternity, into circumstances of physical work incompatible with her condition. For pregnant women to perform such physical work is tantamount to punishment for their betrayal of their maternal role; it is the tax they pay for entering the realm of men, which is naturally alien to their own.

The belief, even if it is held by a woman, that she carries out physical labour of her own accord, is not, in fact, true. She performs the physical work only because a harsh materialistic society has placed her (without her being directly aware of it) into coercive circumstances. She has no alternative but to submit to the conditions of that society, even though she may think that she works of her own accord. In fact, the alleged basis that “there is no difference in any way between men and women”, deprives woman of her freedom.

The phrase “in any way” is a monstrous deception. This idea will destroy the appropriate and necessary conditions which constitute the privilege which women ought to enjoy apart from men in accordance with their distinctive nature, and upon which their natural role in life is based.

To demand equality between man and woman in carrying heavy weights while the woman is pregnant is unjust and cruel. To demand equality between them in fasting and hardship while she is breast-feeding is unjust and cruel. To demand equality between them in any dirty work which stains her beauty and detracts from her femininity is unjust and cruel. Education that leads to work unsuitable for her nature is unjust and cruel as well.

There is no difference between men and women in all that concerns humanity. None of them should marry the other against his or her will, or divorce without a just trial or mutual agreement. Neither should a woman remarry without such agreement or divorce; nor a man without divorce or consent. The woman is the owner of the house because it is one of the suitable and necessary conditions for a woman who menstruates, conceives, and cares for her children. The female is the owner of the maternity shelter, which is the house. Even in the animal world, which differs in many ways from that of the humans, and where maternity is also a duty according to nature, it is coercive to deprive the female of her shelter and the offspring of their mother.

Woman is female. Being female means she has a biological nature that is different from that of the male. The female’s biological nature, differing as it does from that of the males, has imparted to women characteristics different from those of men in form and in essence. A woman’s anatomy is different from that of a man’s just as the female differs in plants and animals. This is a natural and incontrovertible fact. In the animal and plant kingdoms, the male is naturally created strong and aggressive, while the female is created beautiful and gentle. These are natural and eternal characteristics innate to living creatures, whether they are called human beings, animals or plants.

In view of his different nature and in line with the laws of nature, the male has played the role of the strong and striving not by design, but simply because he is created that way. The female has played the role of the beautiful and the gentle involuntarily because she was created so. This natural rule is just, partly because it is natural, and partly because it is the basic rule for freedom. All living creatures are created free and any interference with that freedom is coercion. Not to adhere to these natural roles and to lack concern for their limits amounts to a wanton act of corruption against the values of life itself. Nature has been designed to be in harmony with the inevitability of life, from what is being to what will become. The living creature is a being who inevitably lives until it is dead. Existence between the beginning and the end of life is based on a natural law, without choice or compulsion. It is natural. It is natural freedom.

In the animal, plant and human realms, there must be a male and a female for life to occur from its beginning to its end. Not only do they exist but they have to exercise, with absolute efficiency, the natural role for which they have been created. If their role is not being efficiently performed, there must be some defect in the organization of life caused by historical circumstances. This is the case of societies almost everywhere in the world today as they confuse the roles of men and women and endeavour to transform women into men. In harmony with nature and its subsequent purpose, men and women must be creative within their respective roles. To resist is retrogressive; it is directed against nature and destroys the basis of freedom, for it is hostile to both life and survival. Men and women must perform, not abandon, the roles for which they are created.

Abandoning their role, or even a part of it, only occurs as a result of coercive conditions and under abnormal circumstances. The woman who rejects pregnancy, marriage, beautification and femininity for reasons of health abandons her natural role in life under these coercive conditions of ill health. The woman who rejects marriage, pregnancy or motherhood because of work abandons her natural role under similar coercive conditions. The woman who rejects marriage, pregnancy or maternity without any concrete cause abandons her natural role as a result of a coercive and morally deviant circumstances. Thus, abandoning the natural roles of female and male in life can only occur under unnatural conditions which are contrary to freedom and are a threat to survival. Consequently, there must be a world revolution which puts an end to all materialistic conditions hindering women from performing their natural role in life, and so drives them to carry out men’s duties in order to attain equal rights. Such revolution will inevitably take place, particularly in industrial societies, as a response to the instinct of survival, even without any instigator of revolution such as THE GREEN BOOK.