December 31st, 2008
Mandy
Queen Rania of Jordan recently donated her blood to help victims of the conflict in Gaza.
The Queen, who is Palestinian, decided to help her homeland in the most personal way she could think of by donating blood on Tuesday. More than 350 people have already been killed in the besieged region.
Rania’s husband, H.M. King Abdullah II, also donated blood at the same hospital the previous day.
Queen Rania visited the Al-Hussein Medical Centre today to take part in a nationwide campaign to donate blood and support the citizens of Gaza.
- Palace Statement
Queen Rania wrote of the tragedy: “To be limited to expressing sympathies with the people of Gaza is shameful because they don’t need to be felt sorry for, they need us to act and help, and I know that we can do more.”
This video, Jordan’s Queen Rania on Arab women, is quite refreshing. Her Majesty acknowledges that there are issues in Arab culture regarding women that need to be addressed, and it will take time for change. A lot of Arab countries are, however, moving in the right direction.
I think Queen Rania is right. It will take time to change some of the aspects of Muslim culture in regards to women. We in the western world are full of feminism, ‘girl power’, and the working woman, and we think that other cultures in the world should be just like us and at the same point we are in our progression. This is not possible, and we need to remember that things do take time. Not to mention the fact that a lot of our own cultures still have sexism issues.
Take a look, it’s very interesting.
Silly me, when re-structuring the blog, I left out one very important site: Queen Alia’s memorial website.
Queen Alia, the second wife of King Hussein of Jordan, has always intrigued me. Her children, Prince Ali and Princess Haya, have always been very visible publicly but we never knew that much about Queen Alia herself. She died so young that these days, no one knows much about and there was limited information available online – until now.
Her link will be permanently located on the sidebar with the others for your perusal. It is wonderfully done and created with the approval of Princess Haya.
HM Queen Noor discusses the importance of Mothers.
Queen Noor @ CNN
A Tour Of Jordan, hosted by King Abdullah II.
There is a new site about King Hussein of Jordan’s third wife, Queen Alia. Well, it’s new to me, anyway. I did a search for her about a year ago, and came up empty handed. Now, thanks to The Royal Forums, we all have more information about this lovely woman.
King Hussein and Queen Alia (Toukan) had two children: Prince Ali and Princess Haya, along with an adopted girl named Abir.
Visit QueenAlia.org.
