Women entitled to be treated by female doctors?

The social security system in my country, The Netherlands, is excellent. Need treatment? You're entitled to have it and you will receive it.

No, the social security system is not my point of discussion today. I'll get to that a bit later on.

You see, I'm not clumsy, not at all. I'm just accident prone. This basically means I see a GP at least some times a year.

Very nice guy, in his fourties and seems to me he knows what he's talking about. Never had a different GP in my life as my parents have been with him since before I was born. Hence, not really my choice, but then again, it doesn't really matter.


Does it?

So far there are no reliable and exact statistics available, but there's been a clear change over the last few years. Over the last few years the Islam has slowly but surely integrated in the Western culture. Some find it a positive influence and a meaningful addition, some might beg to differ and argue this statement by claiming the islam is becoming too dominant.

Nevertheless, things do change. For instance, the most popular name for a new born baby boy in Holland is now Mohammed and more than 6% of the Dutch people is now Islamic, Muslim, where this used to be 0% 20 years ago.

Another matter that has changed over the past few years is the number of female doctors treating Muslim women. A fair amount of investigations carried out have proved this to be right. Muslim women want to be treated by a woman, rather than by a man. This demand usually comes from the male relatives of the female patient.
These days, male doctors are often being stopped from doing their daily duties by muslim men, because of religious difficulties.

The question is, does the desire to receive treatment from a woman really come from the patient or is this a perfect example showing the still existing difference in rank between men and women within the Islam? Is the desire a true reflection of the Muslima's wishes?

However, this is not even the main question I'd like to focus the attention on. Should one be able to choose his or her doctor, based on gender? Or is it, according to others, the best treatment possible that should be the key element rather than the sex of the doctor? Especially in urgent matters. When a Muslim woman is being taken to hospital in a state in which she is considered unable to judge her situation objectively and express herself, should she by all means be given the best medical care possible or do her, often male, relatives have the right to speak for her?

A pragmatic guideline has been chosen by the KPMG, the Dutch National Medical Society, to function as a solution. Honour the wishes that remain within the sphere of reality. If they head toward the impossible, act in the patient's best interest, which means the best medical care possible. Given by either man or woman.

An interesting discussion as it involves a certain level of understanding of the religious aspects of the Islam which, in this case collides with some of our constitution's mayor foundations. Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Speech. Then again, one doesn't have the right to discriminate either.

Muller around the World - Who and where?

My first blog here on blogspot, so I can't afford myself having a bad start!

The website is called Muller around the World. If I were to accidentally come across this website, not familiar with anything that has to do with it, 2 questions would arise.

Ok, maybe a few more, but 2 key questions. "Who is Muller" would be top of the short list. Reading a blog and not knowing anything about the guy responsible for things said in it would be a shame.
Secondly, I'd want to know how in God's name mr. Muller (I am a guy) is able to find the time ánd the money to travel around the world in these days of time shortage and economical importance.

Let me start by introducing myself. I already gave my gender away. I'm Roel Muller and I'm a 20 year old student, currently living in Hilversum, a middle sized city not far from the country's capital, Amsterdam.
Yes indeed, I live in the country of the Sex, drugs and wooden shoes. I've been told they're called Clogs. Klompen in Dutch.

It's a shame Holland's mostly known for it's "Awesome dude, Weed's legal!" side. In my belief, ING, Philips, KLM, Heineken, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Rembrand, Van Gogh and Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, NATO's Secretary General, deserve a little more credit. Not to mention the 16,570,613 inhabitants.

I graduated secondary school in 2006 and took a gap year before attending university, which is what I'll be doing from september on. I spent 5 months in the beautiful city of Sevilla, Spain to increase my knowledge of the Spanish culture, the language, the people and their way of life.
For as long as I can remember, I've found languages and other cultures and their history fascinating. Especially those we claim to know a lot, if not everything, about while in the end we find ourselves completely lost in translation.
In september I'll start studying International Relations in Amsterdam.

As for my other interests, I enjoy thinking deeply about certain things, especially journalism, politics, culture and religion. I like to stay fit and healthy and therefore play a lot of tennis. Asking questions would fall under this category too. Knowing about one another increases the possibility of understanding, something that has yet to be achieved in a lot of cases and remains to be a problem. (Example: War in Iraq, what dó we know about the Arabic culture and way of life?)

So far question number 1. Now Muller's introduced himself, I'd still be incredibly curious about what he specifically means with the 'Around the World part'.
As I wrote earlier, due to popular terms as Time shortage ( time is money) and times of economical importance it would seem close to impossible to, in these days, travel around the world and find out about other cultures and other people. These excuses would be given by people who envision the world too narrow-mindedly.
In the short term, it would indeed be hard to find the time and the financial resources to leave everything behind to go off on discovery of everything this world has to offer.
However, looking at the long term, the world could be closer to solving global problems than it's ever been. Understanding is the key to solving problems and to prevent them from happening in the future.

Therefore, in this blog I will discuss matters and things we see on the television, we read in the newspapers and we hear on the radio. Please feel free to submit topics of discussion as I'll be more than happy to write and learn about them.

Let's not pretend we know everything about everything,
let's admit we know a little about a little,
let's find out a lot about a lot.

Roel Muller