From the "Yes Our Culture Actually Is Superior to Yours" File

Comes this understated header from the Associated Press.

"Gender Issues Worsen Iraq's Medical Woes"

We learn in this article that the average Iraqi fellow in a particularly 'conservative' area of town a man "would rather have his pregnant wife die in labor than be touched by a male nurse or doctor".

"The area's most recent records, from five years ago when the anti-U.S. insurgency was just beginning, show that one in five women dies in childbirth, and many women never even see a doctor. The strictures on women as nurses stems from the province's strong tribal society and its puritan reading of Islam. But al-Hadithy, a 49-year-old mother-and-child care specialist, doesn't accept it. "This is ignorance, not Islam," he said. "Nowhere does Islam say: 'Let your wife die.'"

The Koran might not say 'let your wife die', but it certainly has some other nuanced approaches to women. How many of their own women and babies will these cultures condemn to preventable death, because of their paranoid, tribal and primitive belief that death, is in fact, better than 'dishonour'? The honour/shame culture is a blight on humanity.