Far from the heated debates of Europe, Syria has banned the niqab in classrooms, adding another layer to this complex story
Quietly, away from the fanfare that accompanied the French vote on banning the niqab in public, and calls by Philip Hollobone to impose a ban in Britain, the Syrian government has instituted its own, more limited, ban, removing teachers who wear the full face veil from teaching in public schools.
At first glance, such a move might seem puzzling: Syria, with dozens of religious sects and a nominally secular government, has managed for decades to use a light touch, at least when it comes to personal faith.
But the rise of religion among the population has shaken the leadership: with overt displays of faith on the rise and a rare terrorist attack in Damascus two years ago attributed to Islamists, the government appears to be moving against hardline religious ideas.
The niqab ban in public schools is a fairly blunt instrument but, on such a small scale, it may be intended to send a message. Egypt, too, has instigated a similarly limited ban (for university exams), a move opposed by Islamists but upheld by the courts.
Continue reading Syria's niqab ban is part of a clash within Islam itself
Source: The Guardian
Showing posts with label women. Show all posts
Showing posts with label women. Show all posts
Monday, 19 July 2010
Saturday, 16 January 2010
Feminism in the Arab world Is the region ready to embrace it?
As the debate on feminism in the region gathers momentum, opinions on the matter are strongly divided. Some believe the so called Western concept of feminism has no place in the Arab world. Yet Arab women are still fighting for an equal place in society, academics and students argue.
Dr Monica Gallant, chair of the business department at Dubai Women's College, has been evaluating what form of feminism best fits the Arab context. Her paper titled The Application of Feminism in the Arab World: Research Perspectives, which won an Outstanding Paper award after it was published in the Education, Business and Society: Contemporary Middle Eastern Issues journal, argues that it is possible for Arab women to create a "sustainable, emancipatory movement by gradually challenging patriarchal discourses while still maintaining a connection to key societal norms".
Discussions on Arab feminism must consider Islamic principles and any successful feminist movement should be gradual and must take into account cultural views so as not to alienate women from their societies, Gallant said. "Women don't want to vary too much from what society expects from them."
Having lived in the UAE for 14 years, her research reveals the importance placed on expectations of women in the Arab world. This in turn affects how women view themselves.
"Arab women wouldn't want to see themselves as feminists because it is too Western and anti-men," she said.
Instead she observed that Arab women work within societal expectations to gradually gain freedom of choice for themselves by working with what society expects of them.
"While being a mother and a wife she tries to be an entrepreneur or employee," Gallant said. "She fulfils her home duties and tries to live her dream, which is tough because she has to be a superwoman to be able to do everything."
Social expectations
Gallant said in the Arab world the expectations of women to be wives and mothers are still very strong. "Women can't voluntarily admit to not wanting to become a wife or mother," she said, because some social expectations are still difficult for women to overcome.
To illustrate her point Gallant used the example of an unmarried woman moving out of her family's home to live alone.
Dr Suad Zayed Al Oraim, professor of sociology at UAE University, however, argued that "if a single woman is comfortable in that role it's up to her".
She said individuals are responsible for creating change which then goes on to become a social phenomenon. "Someone has to pioneer it," she said.
Using the same example, Suad said there is no civil law or Sharia (Islamic) law in the UAE preventing a woman from living alone.
"These are cultural laws; if a woman is willing to bear the consequences it's up to her," she said. "[But] Islam is not responsible for those consequences because it is cultural and we need to differentiate between tradition and religion."
Feminism inappropriate
There is no place for Westernised feminism in the Arab world due to existing cultural and religious differences in societies, some academics and students said.
Arab women are fighting for an equal place in society but not under the umbrella of feminism because the term indicates a gender struggle which is primarily a Western ideal, they said.
"The ideology of feminism came from the US and Europe and you can't sell it to Arab culture," said Suad. "If women in the UAE and other Arab countries want to create something new for themselves, it's up to them to do it."
Declaring an existence
Suad attended the region's first conference on Arab feminism in Beirut, Lebanon, last year. She said the purpose was to establish if feminism exists in any of the 22 Arab nations.
"In the Arab world the expression is not clear because it doesn't exist in the culture," she said. "Some countries understand Arab feminism from an Arab point of view and others from a Western one."
Suad added: "Yet women don't want to talk about it because it's not clear in the minds of a majority of women in the Arab world."
For Iraqi pharmacy student Sura Sa'ad, studying at the Ras Al Khaimah Medical and Health Sciences University, Arab women need to decide what they want.
"It is our duty as women to first declare what rights we want and second it is our responsibility to show ... these rights don't cross our traditions or religion," she said.
Misconceptions
"Women make up half of any society and if half of society has no rights or education then how will society ever develop?" said Sa'ad.
She added that some women mistake feminism or liberation as a right to dress however they want and go wherever they want. "[Feminism] is about respecting us and treating us equally to men so we can help in the process of development."
Sa'ad said a major problem with many Arab governments is that "they talk about women's rights but in reality they don't exist".
Similarly, Hassan Al Hassany, an architecture student at the Canadian University of Dubai, said: "It is all about male domination. There is no Arab country in which a woman rules or leads as president or prime minister. This gives you a good impression that Arab feminism doesn't fit in the Arab world."
Pioneering change
Sa'ad has lived in Iraq, Jordan and now in the UAE, which she says is the most respectful of women's rights to education and work.
Yet working women in the Arab world is nothing new, Suad emphasised. "There have been women in the workplace since the 1940s in countries such as Algeria, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon."
However, regarding Sa'ad's opinion about the UAE's social justice towards women, this could be in large part due to the initiatives of Her Highness Shaikha Fatima Bint Mubarak, Wife of the late Shaikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan and Chairwoman of the UAE General Women's Union.
Shaikha Fatima pushed for Emirati women to excel in the development of their nation. Yet she does not regard herself as a feminist. She was once quoted as having said: "I see myself as being behind a great man and my role is limited to being a wife and mother to the sons of a great leader."
Islam and feminism
Continue reading: Gulf News: Feminism in the Arab world,Is the region ready to embrace it?
Dr Monica Gallant, chair of the business department at Dubai Women's College, has been evaluating what form of feminism best fits the Arab context. Her paper titled The Application of Feminism in the Arab World: Research Perspectives, which won an Outstanding Paper award after it was published in the Education, Business and Society: Contemporary Middle Eastern Issues journal, argues that it is possible for Arab women to create a "sustainable, emancipatory movement by gradually challenging patriarchal discourses while still maintaining a connection to key societal norms".
Discussions on Arab feminism must consider Islamic principles and any successful feminist movement should be gradual and must take into account cultural views so as not to alienate women from their societies, Gallant said. "Women don't want to vary too much from what society expects from them."
Having lived in the UAE for 14 years, her research reveals the importance placed on expectations of women in the Arab world. This in turn affects how women view themselves.
"Arab women wouldn't want to see themselves as feminists because it is too Western and anti-men," she said.
Instead she observed that Arab women work within societal expectations to gradually gain freedom of choice for themselves by working with what society expects of them.
"While being a mother and a wife she tries to be an entrepreneur or employee," Gallant said. "She fulfils her home duties and tries to live her dream, which is tough because she has to be a superwoman to be able to do everything."
Social expectations
Gallant said in the Arab world the expectations of women to be wives and mothers are still very strong. "Women can't voluntarily admit to not wanting to become a wife or mother," she said, because some social expectations are still difficult for women to overcome.
To illustrate her point Gallant used the example of an unmarried woman moving out of her family's home to live alone.
Dr Suad Zayed Al Oraim, professor of sociology at UAE University, however, argued that "if a single woman is comfortable in that role it's up to her".
She said individuals are responsible for creating change which then goes on to become a social phenomenon. "Someone has to pioneer it," she said.
Using the same example, Suad said there is no civil law or Sharia (Islamic) law in the UAE preventing a woman from living alone.
"These are cultural laws; if a woman is willing to bear the consequences it's up to her," she said. "[But] Islam is not responsible for those consequences because it is cultural and we need to differentiate between tradition and religion."
Feminism inappropriate
There is no place for Westernised feminism in the Arab world due to existing cultural and religious differences in societies, some academics and students said.
Arab women are fighting for an equal place in society but not under the umbrella of feminism because the term indicates a gender struggle which is primarily a Western ideal, they said.
"The ideology of feminism came from the US and Europe and you can't sell it to Arab culture," said Suad. "If women in the UAE and other Arab countries want to create something new for themselves, it's up to them to do it."
Declaring an existence
Suad attended the region's first conference on Arab feminism in Beirut, Lebanon, last year. She said the purpose was to establish if feminism exists in any of the 22 Arab nations.
"In the Arab world the expression is not clear because it doesn't exist in the culture," she said. "Some countries understand Arab feminism from an Arab point of view and others from a Western one."
Suad added: "Yet women don't want to talk about it because it's not clear in the minds of a majority of women in the Arab world."
For Iraqi pharmacy student Sura Sa'ad, studying at the Ras Al Khaimah Medical and Health Sciences University, Arab women need to decide what they want.
"It is our duty as women to first declare what rights we want and second it is our responsibility to show ... these rights don't cross our traditions or religion," she said.
Misconceptions
"Women make up half of any society and if half of society has no rights or education then how will society ever develop?" said Sa'ad.
She added that some women mistake feminism or liberation as a right to dress however they want and go wherever they want. "[Feminism] is about respecting us and treating us equally to men so we can help in the process of development."
Sa'ad said a major problem with many Arab governments is that "they talk about women's rights but in reality they don't exist".
Similarly, Hassan Al Hassany, an architecture student at the Canadian University of Dubai, said: "It is all about male domination. There is no Arab country in which a woman rules or leads as president or prime minister. This gives you a good impression that Arab feminism doesn't fit in the Arab world."
Pioneering change
Sa'ad has lived in Iraq, Jordan and now in the UAE, which she says is the most respectful of women's rights to education and work.
Yet working women in the Arab world is nothing new, Suad emphasised. "There have been women in the workplace since the 1940s in countries such as Algeria, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon."
However, regarding Sa'ad's opinion about the UAE's social justice towards women, this could be in large part due to the initiatives of Her Highness Shaikha Fatima Bint Mubarak, Wife of the late Shaikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan and Chairwoman of the UAE General Women's Union.
Shaikha Fatima pushed for Emirati women to excel in the development of their nation. Yet she does not regard herself as a feminist. She was once quoted as having said: "I see myself as being behind a great man and my role is limited to being a wife and mother to the sons of a great leader."
Islam and feminism
Continue reading: Gulf News: Feminism in the Arab world,Is the region ready to embrace it?
Friday, 1 January 2010
The caged and the saved: finding feminism in the Islamic world
Like most ideas, this one did not have a single genesis. I’ve been thinking, and to some extent writing, about feminism for many years and in many guises.
The word itself is controversial, with some damning it as the force that destroyed the family and others defending it as the movement that freed a gender.
It is one of those terms that starts simply and rapidly gets tangled: if you look around the world and think there are inequalities between the genders, and that those inequalities are not biological and are unfair, you are probably a feminist. And that’s where the arguments begin.
But definitions are only useful for what they illuminate, and the language of feminism, like the languages of democracy or freedom, has often been used to obscure.
So much of the discourse around the West’s relationship with the Muslim world has been framed through the language of women.
It was around women that early Christian Europe framed its opposition to the pleasure palaces of the “Mohammedans”, the barely disguised yearning for the exoticism of the Orient. The role of women in Egyptian society was cited by Napoleon as a wedge through which to enter the country; was cited again as a justification for the Anglo-American invasions of both Iraq and Afghanistan, and is regularly cited as apparent evidence of a lack of commitment to equal rights in Muslim communities.
Within the Muslim world, discourse around women’s roles and rights remains highly charged. As much as some point to the treatment of women in Europe as evidence of the vanishing of the West’s moral compass, it is also the case that, across much of the Muslim world, women’s dress has become a way to impose a religious vision upon the society, even as Muslim women use the veil to reclaim their own identities.
And, still, in too many countries, internal social and cultural wars are fought on the battleground of women’s bodies.
So the question of what counts as feminism, as liberation, in the Arab and Islamic worlds is complicated and intricate. To try and answer it, I am leaving London next week for Beirut, the first stop on a journey that will take me thousands of kilometres across Arab and Islamic lands, through Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan and to the very edges of Indonesia.
Through interviews, experiences and research, I hope to come close to an answer, and I’ve been immensely privileged to be awarded a Churchill Fellowship, the living memorial to Britain’s wartime leader, to fund this exploration.
What do I hope to find? Not easy answers, for sure. Even the idea of what counts as liberation is mixed.
I have called the introductory chapter of the book I am writing about this journey “The caged and the saved”, reflecting the two ways people think of what the Muslim veil does.
In it, I tell an anecdote of encountering these contrasting attitudes in real life, when, walking around London with a friend, she asked me, of a woman wearing a Saudi abaya, “How can she think she is liberated when she dresses like that?” It occurred to me another woman might ask the same question about the women around her displaying acres of flesh.
Nor is there a clear dividing line between political and religious perspectives. Earlier this year in Morocco I interviewed Nadia Yassine, of the banned Islamist group Al Adl wal Ihsane. As much as she spoke the language of women’s rights and of female liberation, she was reluctant to be pigeonholed as a feminist in the western understanding of the term. Her perspective, she said, stemmed from her faith. The imam and the activist can sometimes reach the same conclusions.
Within the Muslim world, as within the West, the idea of what feminism is, where it comes from, how relevant it is, what form equality ought to take are real, live debates. They come to us in snatches: harassment of women on the streets of Cairo, the wearing of trousers in Sudan, unsegregated university campuses in Saudi Arabia, the burning of girls’ schools in Pakistan.
And threaded through these snatches are less-regular glimpses of clear successes: the leadership of women such as Queen Rania, Benazir Bhutto and Lubna Olayan. And there is the immense lived experience of millions of women, who assert their own independence daily through their work, relationships, devotion to their family and faith.
The Arab and Islamic worlds are going through a period of immense change and the ideology that holds nations and regions together is altering. The big –isms of the world – nationalism, capitalism, Islamism – affect women in each country differently.
The outward symbols of faith are obvious illustrations of this, but the framework of the society is equally important.
The professor in Tehran and the village-woman in Indonesia will not only dress differently, they may also have different conceptions of the relationship between men and women. I expect to meet those who espouse feminism from a purely secular perspective, and those who say that Islam has provided a clear manifesto for women’s rights.
So I am not setting out with preconceived notions. I don’t begin from the assumption that one way of living is better than another, nor do I go in with the assumption that what occurs to one person in one country is indicative of a nation or a faith. But I do think it is possible to delineate between ways of organising a society: that if you look closely enough at a society’s history and people, it is possible to make fine, sensitive judgements. Though I expect differences, I also hope for some common ground.
The Arab world is a complex place; nations of Arabic speakers who think they are one but act like they are many. It is a place that defies easy categorisation.
I have lived, travelled and reported across many Arab countries over many years, but there are still times when I come across something – an event, a conversation – that makes me think I have barely scratched the surface.
Such has been the case with my conversations about feminism: I’ve often understood the word in terms of equality of laws, education and employment. But it is astonishing how varied people’s perceptions are around the Middle East.
If that is the case with the Arab world, with all its many commonalities, imagine the complexity of the Islamic worlds that stretch across Asia and Africa. That’s the reason I have broadened the journey out to encompass the vast non-Arab Islamic world: the Shia customs of Iran, the South Asian experience in Pakistan and the newer Asian traditions in Indonesia.
The exploration of these places will be a key theme, because no idea lives in isolation; all are shaped by the experience of their societies. I want to go beyond a purely intellectual discussion to understand the lived experiences of women in these societies.
I admit there have been times these last few weeks, as I prepare to leave London and skim through old books on the subject, that I have wondered if it is perhaps an overwhelming one. I have been incredibly lucky so far to have friends and colleagues who have helped me get started – I know I will meet many more over the next few months. What I don’t know is if I will find any answers, or even if there are any: that’s why I am going.
Follow Faisal al Yafai’s journey at faisalalyafai.com. His book will be published by IB Tauris in 2011.
Source: The National 'The caged and the saved: finding feminism in the Islamic world'
The word itself is controversial, with some damning it as the force that destroyed the family and others defending it as the movement that freed a gender.
It is one of those terms that starts simply and rapidly gets tangled: if you look around the world and think there are inequalities between the genders, and that those inequalities are not biological and are unfair, you are probably a feminist. And that’s where the arguments begin.
But definitions are only useful for what they illuminate, and the language of feminism, like the languages of democracy or freedom, has often been used to obscure.
So much of the discourse around the West’s relationship with the Muslim world has been framed through the language of women.
It was around women that early Christian Europe framed its opposition to the pleasure palaces of the “Mohammedans”, the barely disguised yearning for the exoticism of the Orient. The role of women in Egyptian society was cited by Napoleon as a wedge through which to enter the country; was cited again as a justification for the Anglo-American invasions of both Iraq and Afghanistan, and is regularly cited as apparent evidence of a lack of commitment to equal rights in Muslim communities.
Within the Muslim world, discourse around women’s roles and rights remains highly charged. As much as some point to the treatment of women in Europe as evidence of the vanishing of the West’s moral compass, it is also the case that, across much of the Muslim world, women’s dress has become a way to impose a religious vision upon the society, even as Muslim women use the veil to reclaim their own identities.
And, still, in too many countries, internal social and cultural wars are fought on the battleground of women’s bodies.
So the question of what counts as feminism, as liberation, in the Arab and Islamic worlds is complicated and intricate. To try and answer it, I am leaving London next week for Beirut, the first stop on a journey that will take me thousands of kilometres across Arab and Islamic lands, through Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan and to the very edges of Indonesia.
Through interviews, experiences and research, I hope to come close to an answer, and I’ve been immensely privileged to be awarded a Churchill Fellowship, the living memorial to Britain’s wartime leader, to fund this exploration.
What do I hope to find? Not easy answers, for sure. Even the idea of what counts as liberation is mixed.
I have called the introductory chapter of the book I am writing about this journey “The caged and the saved”, reflecting the two ways people think of what the Muslim veil does.
In it, I tell an anecdote of encountering these contrasting attitudes in real life, when, walking around London with a friend, she asked me, of a woman wearing a Saudi abaya, “How can she think she is liberated when she dresses like that?” It occurred to me another woman might ask the same question about the women around her displaying acres of flesh.
Nor is there a clear dividing line between political and religious perspectives. Earlier this year in Morocco I interviewed Nadia Yassine, of the banned Islamist group Al Adl wal Ihsane. As much as she spoke the language of women’s rights and of female liberation, she was reluctant to be pigeonholed as a feminist in the western understanding of the term. Her perspective, she said, stemmed from her faith. The imam and the activist can sometimes reach the same conclusions.
Within the Muslim world, as within the West, the idea of what feminism is, where it comes from, how relevant it is, what form equality ought to take are real, live debates. They come to us in snatches: harassment of women on the streets of Cairo, the wearing of trousers in Sudan, unsegregated university campuses in Saudi Arabia, the burning of girls’ schools in Pakistan.
And threaded through these snatches are less-regular glimpses of clear successes: the leadership of women such as Queen Rania, Benazir Bhutto and Lubna Olayan. And there is the immense lived experience of millions of women, who assert their own independence daily through their work, relationships, devotion to their family and faith.
The Arab and Islamic worlds are going through a period of immense change and the ideology that holds nations and regions together is altering. The big –isms of the world – nationalism, capitalism, Islamism – affect women in each country differently.
The outward symbols of faith are obvious illustrations of this, but the framework of the society is equally important.
The professor in Tehran and the village-woman in Indonesia will not only dress differently, they may also have different conceptions of the relationship between men and women. I expect to meet those who espouse feminism from a purely secular perspective, and those who say that Islam has provided a clear manifesto for women’s rights.
So I am not setting out with preconceived notions. I don’t begin from the assumption that one way of living is better than another, nor do I go in with the assumption that what occurs to one person in one country is indicative of a nation or a faith. But I do think it is possible to delineate between ways of organising a society: that if you look closely enough at a society’s history and people, it is possible to make fine, sensitive judgements. Though I expect differences, I also hope for some common ground.
The Arab world is a complex place; nations of Arabic speakers who think they are one but act like they are many. It is a place that defies easy categorisation.
I have lived, travelled and reported across many Arab countries over many years, but there are still times when I come across something – an event, a conversation – that makes me think I have barely scratched the surface.
Such has been the case with my conversations about feminism: I’ve often understood the word in terms of equality of laws, education and employment. But it is astonishing how varied people’s perceptions are around the Middle East.
If that is the case with the Arab world, with all its many commonalities, imagine the complexity of the Islamic worlds that stretch across Asia and Africa. That’s the reason I have broadened the journey out to encompass the vast non-Arab Islamic world: the Shia customs of Iran, the South Asian experience in Pakistan and the newer Asian traditions in Indonesia.
The exploration of these places will be a key theme, because no idea lives in isolation; all are shaped by the experience of their societies. I want to go beyond a purely intellectual discussion to understand the lived experiences of women in these societies.
I admit there have been times these last few weeks, as I prepare to leave London and skim through old books on the subject, that I have wondered if it is perhaps an overwhelming one. I have been incredibly lucky so far to have friends and colleagues who have helped me get started – I know I will meet many more over the next few months. What I don’t know is if I will find any answers, or even if there are any: that’s why I am going.
Follow Faisal al Yafai’s journey at faisalalyafai.com. His book will be published by IB Tauris in 2011.
Source: The National 'The caged and the saved: finding feminism in the Islamic world'
Friday, 16 October 2009
The Image of Women in Islam Ibn al-Jawzi's Mysoginist Writings
There have been a number of interesting articles and debates taking place recently concerning women and Islam. Below is an article on Ibn al-Jawzi. You may also be interested to read this article from the BBC: Egypt anger over virginity faking
As well check out these videos via youtube: ابليــــــــس و الحجـــــــــــــــــاب * Satan VS Hijab If you check the right side bar of this youtube video you will find a plethora of Satan related videoes.
Qantara:
The religious scholar Ibn al-Jawzi's collection of the prophet's recalled comments on women in Islam, well known in conservative Islamic circles. Does the work confirm our image of Muslim misogyny or can we derive a different understanding of women from these sources? By Stefan Weidner
| Bild: Cover 'The Attributes of God' by Ibn al-Jawzi
Bild vergrössern "For most of you are firewood of hell": Ibn al-Jawzi's writings are extremely popular in conservative Islamic circles to this day | Commented collections of hadiths – oral traditions on the prophet's words – on the subject of women have been going around since the Middle Ages. The Book of Rules for Women, written by the Baghdad religious scholar Ibn al-Jawzi, who died in 1200, is one of the most read works of this type to this day. Hannelies Koloska, a young Arabist based in Berlin, recently translated the book into German.
The most interesting question is: Does the medieval scholar confirm our image of Muslim misogyny, or can we derive a different understanding of women from these sources?
Even a brief survey of the headings to the 110 short chapters is enough to raise scepticism. Chapter 60, for instance, bears the astonishing title: "On placing women in fear of sin and instructing them that they make up most inmates of hell". In it we find: "It is delivered from Jabir: 'God's envoy spoke to the women: "Give alms, as most of you are the firewood of hell." A woman with dark-dyed hands from among the women stood up and asked him: "Why, envoy of God?" He answered: "Because you multiply evil or are always cursing and ungrateful to your husbands."'"
Hopeless case?
No one would think badly of a reader if he – or especially she – slammed the book shut at this point and declared the image of women in Islam a hopeless case. They would merely be doing exactly what feminist Muslim researchers do with al-Jawzi – condemning him as an archetype of a patriarchal and misogynist thinker.
Continue reading-Qantara: The Image of Women in Islam Ibn al-Jawzi's Mysoginist Writings
As well check out these videos via youtube: ابليــــــــس و الحجـــــــــــــــــاب * Satan VS Hijab If you check the right side bar of this youtube video you will find a plethora of Satan related videoes.
Qantara:
The religious scholar Ibn al-Jawzi's collection of the prophet's recalled comments on women in Islam, well known in conservative Islamic circles. Does the work confirm our image of Muslim misogyny or can we derive a different understanding of women from these sources? By Stefan Weidner
| Bild: Cover 'The Attributes of God' by Ibn al-Jawzi
Bild vergrössern "For most of you are firewood of hell": Ibn al-Jawzi's writings are extremely popular in conservative Islamic circles to this day | Commented collections of hadiths – oral traditions on the prophet's words – on the subject of women have been going around since the Middle Ages. The Book of Rules for Women, written by the Baghdad religious scholar Ibn al-Jawzi, who died in 1200, is one of the most read works of this type to this day. Hannelies Koloska, a young Arabist based in Berlin, recently translated the book into German.
The most interesting question is: Does the medieval scholar confirm our image of Muslim misogyny, or can we derive a different understanding of women from these sources?
Even a brief survey of the headings to the 110 short chapters is enough to raise scepticism. Chapter 60, for instance, bears the astonishing title: "On placing women in fear of sin and instructing them that they make up most inmates of hell". In it we find: "It is delivered from Jabir: 'God's envoy spoke to the women: "Give alms, as most of you are the firewood of hell." A woman with dark-dyed hands from among the women stood up and asked him: "Why, envoy of God?" He answered: "Because you multiply evil or are always cursing and ungrateful to your husbands."'"
Hopeless case?
No one would think badly of a reader if he – or especially she – slammed the book shut at this point and declared the image of women in Islam a hopeless case. They would merely be doing exactly what feminist Muslim researchers do with al-Jawzi – condemning him as an archetype of a patriarchal and misogynist thinker.
Continue reading-Qantara: The Image of Women in Islam Ibn al-Jawzi's Mysoginist Writings
Thursday, 1 October 2009
Women and Media in Saudi Arabia: Changes and Contradictions
Naomi Sakr
My aim here – Naomi Sakr writes – is to assess how far women's personal and political status in Saudi Arabia has been renegotiated through the media. For that purpose there are two contradictory sets of evidence. The first indicates a big increase in women’s visibility in the Saudi media in 2004-06. The second shows that, despite the increase in visibility, there was very limited change in the status of women working as journalists.
This paper was presented by the author at the Conference “The East and the West: Women in the eyes of the media”, organised by Resetdoc and held in Doha on April 19th 2009. It is based on the author’s much longer research article, ‘Women and Media in Saudi Arabia: Rhetoric, Reductionism and Realities’, published in the December 2008 issue of the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol 35, No 3, pp 385-404.
The government of Saudi Arabia has introduced numerous internal economic and political reforms in recent years. Any account of these reforms should acknowledge that they started in the 1990s and therefore predated both the terrorist attacks of September 2001 and the international pressure that the attacks triggered for Saudi Arabia to initiate social reforms. Although the changes discussed in this article took place in 2004-06, it is important to understand them in the context of a much longer history of change – one that goes back several decades. Since the focus here is on media, there may be no call to look back much further than the start of television in the kingdom in the 1960s. But, since the focus is also on women, it is relevant to note that Saudi Arabia signed the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 2000. The government placed multiple reservations on its adherence to the convention. The crucial factor, however, is that it signed the convention for reasons that seemed to be related to a bid for increased foreign investment and membership of the World Trade Organization and had nothing to do with external pressures experienced in the wake of 9/11.
It is also necessary to recognize that Saudi Arabian public discourse on the issue of women's status is full of contradictions. On one hand official rhetoric talks of 'women's nature' as if this 'nature' imposes self-explanatory restrictions on what women may do and where they may go. On the other, there have been some big changes in government policies on women's education, employment and legal standing. Professions and university courses that were once barred to women have been opened up. Women have been authorized to apply for identity cards without a male guardian's consent. In 2005, they were promised the vote in municipal elections that were due to take place in 2009 but were postponed. Contradictions are interesting because they indicate that there is intrinsic pressure for renegotiation. Several scholars have picked up on this point, showing how the contradictions between official discourse about women and practical realities have direct ramifications for Saudi women in their everyday lives. An extreme example was the fire at a girls’ school in Makkah in 2002. Fifteen girls died in that fire. Families of the victims blamed the religious police for obstructing evacuation because of rules about contact with uncovered females. After the deaths, responsibility for girls' education was transferred from religious clerics to the Ministry of Education.
My aim here is to assess how far women's personal and political status in Saudi Arabia has been renegotiated through the media. For that purpose there are two contradictory sets of evidence. The first indicates a big increase in women’s visibility in the Saudi media in 2004-06. The second shows that, despite the increase in visibility, there was very limited change in the status of women working as journalists. This contradiction can help to account for pressures to renegotiate the status of female journalists. At the same time, the contradiction itself merits an explanation, which my presentation will attempt to give. However, before setting out the evidence, three background observations are in order. The first is that women’s visibility in the media does not necessarily tell us much about their status in other areas of public life. For example, Egypt - despite having a large number of female presenters in radio and television - has very few women in parliament.
The second is that public discourse in Saudi Arabia is based almost exclusively on references to Islam and such references are inevitably historically specific. That is to say: people in power interpret Islam differently in different times and places. For instance, Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran reversed his position on women’s political rights. In 1962 he said it was against Islam for women to vote. In 1979 he said Muslim women had a duty to intervene in politics. Saudi Arabia has also seen revisions. In 1979 protestors laid siege to the Grand Mosque in Makkah, alleging moral degeneracy among the kingdom’s political leaders. The government responded with what Saudi women media veterans describe as a wave of ‘anti-women’ activity, which included removing women from many types of television programme and enforcing strict segregation in public places. This reaction conformed to what often occurs when certain interest groups need to put on a show of unity. They do so by pressurising the less powerful to abide by norms legitimized by reference to ‘tradition’. In this case 'tradition' is equated with Islam. Yet, as the scholar Hannah Papanek has noted, so-called traditions may be concocted by the already powerful from their own particular visions of the past and hopes for future power.
The third background observation relates to ways of evaluating change in media portrayals of women. The question of how to approach such an evaluation may appear very challenging when portrayals are highly contradictory. The 2005 edition of the Arab Human Development Report, subtitled The Rise of Women in the Arab World, concluded that: 'Contradiction is the outstanding characteristic of images of Arab women in the media as in society itself'. Widely differing images of women appear across all types of programmes on Saudi-owned television channels, including MBC, Rotana, Al-Risalah and Al-Majd. Because meanings are not fixed, no-one really knows how individual viewers interpret the diverse portrayals they see in the media. On the other hand, the more diverse the portrayals, the more scope there is for diverse interpretations. This implies that, instead of trying to evaluate portrayals in terms of whether they are ‘pro’ or ‘anti’ women, they can be evaluated in terms of the extent of diversity. When the diversity of characters and narratives increases, in both factual and fictional media content, the range of reference points also increases for discussion of issues relating to women’s status.
Moving now to evidence of women’s visibility in Saudi media over the period 2004-06, the choice of this three-year period is corroborated by an article published in the Saudi liberal online publication Elaph in June 2006. The author of that article declared that there had been a huge transformation of the Saudi media in the past two years. He wrote: ‘women are now appearing daily on the front pages of all eight official newspapers which had previously been monopolized by men’ and ‘official television channels, which had once minimized the presence of women in newscasts and other programmes have been turned into advocates for an invasion (iqtiham) of the media by Saudi women'. For many Saudis, the logical response to this alleged “transformation” was to point out that it was only a transformation in relation to the preceding quarter of a century. A comparison with the situation before 1979 might not have been so startling. For example, in the 1970s people used to watch open-air cinema in Saudi Arabia in mixed company. After the end of the 1970s they could not.
Source: ResetDoc, Women and Media in Saudi Arabia: Changes and Contradictions
My aim here – Naomi Sakr writes – is to assess how far women's personal and political status in Saudi Arabia has been renegotiated through the media. For that purpose there are two contradictory sets of evidence. The first indicates a big increase in women’s visibility in the Saudi media in 2004-06. The second shows that, despite the increase in visibility, there was very limited change in the status of women working as journalists.
This paper was presented by the author at the Conference “The East and the West: Women in the eyes of the media”, organised by Resetdoc and held in Doha on April 19th 2009. It is based on the author’s much longer research article, ‘Women and Media in Saudi Arabia: Rhetoric, Reductionism and Realities’, published in the December 2008 issue of the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol 35, No 3, pp 385-404.
The government of Saudi Arabia has introduced numerous internal economic and political reforms in recent years. Any account of these reforms should acknowledge that they started in the 1990s and therefore predated both the terrorist attacks of September 2001 and the international pressure that the attacks triggered for Saudi Arabia to initiate social reforms. Although the changes discussed in this article took place in 2004-06, it is important to understand them in the context of a much longer history of change – one that goes back several decades. Since the focus here is on media, there may be no call to look back much further than the start of television in the kingdom in the 1960s. But, since the focus is also on women, it is relevant to note that Saudi Arabia signed the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 2000. The government placed multiple reservations on its adherence to the convention. The crucial factor, however, is that it signed the convention for reasons that seemed to be related to a bid for increased foreign investment and membership of the World Trade Organization and had nothing to do with external pressures experienced in the wake of 9/11.
It is also necessary to recognize that Saudi Arabian public discourse on the issue of women's status is full of contradictions. On one hand official rhetoric talks of 'women's nature' as if this 'nature' imposes self-explanatory restrictions on what women may do and where they may go. On the other, there have been some big changes in government policies on women's education, employment and legal standing. Professions and university courses that were once barred to women have been opened up. Women have been authorized to apply for identity cards without a male guardian's consent. In 2005, they were promised the vote in municipal elections that were due to take place in 2009 but were postponed. Contradictions are interesting because they indicate that there is intrinsic pressure for renegotiation. Several scholars have picked up on this point, showing how the contradictions between official discourse about women and practical realities have direct ramifications for Saudi women in their everyday lives. An extreme example was the fire at a girls’ school in Makkah in 2002. Fifteen girls died in that fire. Families of the victims blamed the religious police for obstructing evacuation because of rules about contact with uncovered females. After the deaths, responsibility for girls' education was transferred from religious clerics to the Ministry of Education.
My aim here is to assess how far women's personal and political status in Saudi Arabia has been renegotiated through the media. For that purpose there are two contradictory sets of evidence. The first indicates a big increase in women’s visibility in the Saudi media in 2004-06. The second shows that, despite the increase in visibility, there was very limited change in the status of women working as journalists. This contradiction can help to account for pressures to renegotiate the status of female journalists. At the same time, the contradiction itself merits an explanation, which my presentation will attempt to give. However, before setting out the evidence, three background observations are in order. The first is that women’s visibility in the media does not necessarily tell us much about their status in other areas of public life. For example, Egypt - despite having a large number of female presenters in radio and television - has very few women in parliament.
The second is that public discourse in Saudi Arabia is based almost exclusively on references to Islam and such references are inevitably historically specific. That is to say: people in power interpret Islam differently in different times and places. For instance, Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran reversed his position on women’s political rights. In 1962 he said it was against Islam for women to vote. In 1979 he said Muslim women had a duty to intervene in politics. Saudi Arabia has also seen revisions. In 1979 protestors laid siege to the Grand Mosque in Makkah, alleging moral degeneracy among the kingdom’s political leaders. The government responded with what Saudi women media veterans describe as a wave of ‘anti-women’ activity, which included removing women from many types of television programme and enforcing strict segregation in public places. This reaction conformed to what often occurs when certain interest groups need to put on a show of unity. They do so by pressurising the less powerful to abide by norms legitimized by reference to ‘tradition’. In this case 'tradition' is equated with Islam. Yet, as the scholar Hannah Papanek has noted, so-called traditions may be concocted by the already powerful from their own particular visions of the past and hopes for future power.
The third background observation relates to ways of evaluating change in media portrayals of women. The question of how to approach such an evaluation may appear very challenging when portrayals are highly contradictory. The 2005 edition of the Arab Human Development Report, subtitled The Rise of Women in the Arab World, concluded that: 'Contradiction is the outstanding characteristic of images of Arab women in the media as in society itself'. Widely differing images of women appear across all types of programmes on Saudi-owned television channels, including MBC, Rotana, Al-Risalah and Al-Majd. Because meanings are not fixed, no-one really knows how individual viewers interpret the diverse portrayals they see in the media. On the other hand, the more diverse the portrayals, the more scope there is for diverse interpretations. This implies that, instead of trying to evaluate portrayals in terms of whether they are ‘pro’ or ‘anti’ women, they can be evaluated in terms of the extent of diversity. When the diversity of characters and narratives increases, in both factual and fictional media content, the range of reference points also increases for discussion of issues relating to women’s status.
Moving now to evidence of women’s visibility in Saudi media over the period 2004-06, the choice of this three-year period is corroborated by an article published in the Saudi liberal online publication Elaph in June 2006. The author of that article declared that there had been a huge transformation of the Saudi media in the past two years. He wrote: ‘women are now appearing daily on the front pages of all eight official newspapers which had previously been monopolized by men’ and ‘official television channels, which had once minimized the presence of women in newscasts and other programmes have been turned into advocates for an invasion (iqtiham) of the media by Saudi women'. For many Saudis, the logical response to this alleged “transformation” was to point out that it was only a transformation in relation to the preceding quarter of a century. A comparison with the situation before 1979 might not have been so startling. For example, in the 1970s people used to watch open-air cinema in Saudi Arabia in mixed company. After the end of the 1970s they could not.
Source: ResetDoc, Women and Media in Saudi Arabia: Changes and Contradictions
Monday, 21 September 2009
'Imported values' fail Afghan women
Fatima Gailani was 27 years old when she was thrust into the limelight as a spokesperson for the Afghan mujahideen during their 'jihad' against the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation.
Beautiful and articulate, the Afghan aristocrat played a vital role in drawing the world's attention to the events taking place in her country.
This was, of course, long before the Taliban usurped the rights of women and relegated them to life in obscurity.
Gailani's father, Pir Sayed Ahmed Gailani, was the founder of the Mahaz-i-Milli Islami (National Islamic Front) party, and one of the leaders of the 'holy war' against the Soviets.
She says that it was her father who urged her to get involved: "He told me that the door for women would soon close and it would need a strong foot to keep it ajar."
As the only Afghan woman at the time to assume a very visible political role, Gailani was vilified by some conservative elements in society, but nothing would dissuade her from supporting Afghan liberation and serving as an example to fellow Afghan women.
Clock 'turned backward'
Following the defeat of the Soviets, civil war broke out among the mujahideen, paving the way for a takeover by the Taliban movement.
During 20 years of exile in London, Gailani watched from afar as decades of homespun social progress unraveled in her home country.
"During the reign of Zahir Shah [the former king], it didn't occur to me that I should be aware of my gender at all," recalls Gailani, sitting in the garden of her home in a well-guarded residential area of Kabul.
"I knew that in the villages and other provinces it wasn't the same, but in Kabul, whether you were a man or a woman, if you achieved well in your education, there was a place for you in government. It was during the war that I became aware of gender disparities."
Helena Malikyar, an Afghan historian and an expert on Afghan state-building, points out that the downturn in the fate of Afghan women did not begin with the advent of the Taliban and claims that it was certain extremist groups among the mujahideen who "systematically turned the clock backward on the women of Afghanistan".
"In Bonn [where the post US-led invasion government was formed in 2001] and through subsequent political formulations sponsored by the UN and the US, the same groups and leaders became part of the power structure. So, how could one hope for the pro-women rhetoric to become visible in practice?" she asks.
While post-Taliban Afghanistan did bring some improvements to the lot of women, these changes may not have taken root in Afghan society.
Gailani concedes that there are "lots of women in parliament and the ministries", but wonders whether this is a genuine mark of progress or simply a condition of the government that was formed in Bonn.
'Imported' values
"As much as it was the will of the women within Afghanistan, these changes also came from our donors. It was a condition," explains Gailani, who holds a masters degree in Islamic Jurisprudence from London's Muslim College.
"That's why we must now reconcile these two eras and help the women bring these changes in an Afghan way rather than an imported way."
Hossan Banu Ghazanfar, Afghanistan's fourth minister for women's affairs since the fall of the Taliban, agrees that change must begin "at the cultural level".
According to the ministry's own statistics, the average Afghan woman has a lifespan of 44 years, which is 20 years short of the global average.
Their low life expectancy is attributed to the high rate of underage marriages and frequent births, which contribute to an extremely high incidence of maternal mortality.
There is also widespread violence against women, notably so-called 'honor killings', an issue that is not properly addressed mainly because it is viewed by some as an aspect of Afghan 'tradition'.
Ghazanfar, who holds a PhD in linguistics and served as dean of the literature faculty at Kabul University, cites two main reasons for violence against women in Afghanistan.
"First, the [poor] economic condition of the family. Second, some cultural and traditional [customs] that are neither legal nor religious but people practice it," she says.
Source: Al Jazeera, 'Imported values' fail Afghan women
By Tanya Goudsouzian and Fatima Rabbani in Kabul
Beautiful and articulate, the Afghan aristocrat played a vital role in drawing the world's attention to the events taking place in her country.
This was, of course, long before the Taliban usurped the rights of women and relegated them to life in obscurity.
Gailani's father, Pir Sayed Ahmed Gailani, was the founder of the Mahaz-i-Milli Islami (National Islamic Front) party, and one of the leaders of the 'holy war' against the Soviets.
She says that it was her father who urged her to get involved: "He told me that the door for women would soon close and it would need a strong foot to keep it ajar."
As the only Afghan woman at the time to assume a very visible political role, Gailani was vilified by some conservative elements in society, but nothing would dissuade her from supporting Afghan liberation and serving as an example to fellow Afghan women.
Clock 'turned backward'
Following the defeat of the Soviets, civil war broke out among the mujahideen, paving the way for a takeover by the Taliban movement.
During 20 years of exile in London, Gailani watched from afar as decades of homespun social progress unraveled in her home country.
"During the reign of Zahir Shah [the former king], it didn't occur to me that I should be aware of my gender at all," recalls Gailani, sitting in the garden of her home in a well-guarded residential area of Kabul.
"I knew that in the villages and other provinces it wasn't the same, but in Kabul, whether you were a man or a woman, if you achieved well in your education, there was a place for you in government. It was during the war that I became aware of gender disparities."
Helena Malikyar, an Afghan historian and an expert on Afghan state-building, points out that the downturn in the fate of Afghan women did not begin with the advent of the Taliban and claims that it was certain extremist groups among the mujahideen who "systematically turned the clock backward on the women of Afghanistan".
"In Bonn [where the post US-led invasion government was formed in 2001] and through subsequent political formulations sponsored by the UN and the US, the same groups and leaders became part of the power structure. So, how could one hope for the pro-women rhetoric to become visible in practice?" she asks.
While post-Taliban Afghanistan did bring some improvements to the lot of women, these changes may not have taken root in Afghan society.
Gailani concedes that there are "lots of women in parliament and the ministries", but wonders whether this is a genuine mark of progress or simply a condition of the government that was formed in Bonn.
'Imported' values
"As much as it was the will of the women within Afghanistan, these changes also came from our donors. It was a condition," explains Gailani, who holds a masters degree in Islamic Jurisprudence from London's Muslim College.
"That's why we must now reconcile these two eras and help the women bring these changes in an Afghan way rather than an imported way."
Hossan Banu Ghazanfar, Afghanistan's fourth minister for women's affairs since the fall of the Taliban, agrees that change must begin "at the cultural level".
According to the ministry's own statistics, the average Afghan woman has a lifespan of 44 years, which is 20 years short of the global average.
Their low life expectancy is attributed to the high rate of underage marriages and frequent births, which contribute to an extremely high incidence of maternal mortality.
There is also widespread violence against women, notably so-called 'honor killings', an issue that is not properly addressed mainly because it is viewed by some as an aspect of Afghan 'tradition'.
Ghazanfar, who holds a PhD in linguistics and served as dean of the literature faculty at Kabul University, cites two main reasons for violence against women in Afghanistan.
"First, the [poor] economic condition of the family. Second, some cultural and traditional [customs] that are neither legal nor religious but people practice it," she says.
Source: Al Jazeera, 'Imported values' fail Afghan women
By Tanya Goudsouzian and Fatima Rabbani in Kabul
Monday, 14 September 2009
Two intriguing and interesting articles on Muslim women covering
The politics of the veil
Robert Fulford, National Post
In the 21st century, the Islamic burka, the full-face-and-body veil, adopted by more women every day, has become the most potent human symbol on earth. But what exactly does it symbolize? Many say it stands for piety. No, that's wrong, says Marnia Lazreg, an Algerian-born professor of sociology at the City University of New York. Piety has little to do with it; the Koran doesn't even mention the veil. In truth, the veil stands for political ideology and male power.
It also establishes the wearer's extreme distance from the rest of us. We recognize people by seeing their faces and we acknowledge their humanity by reading what their faces tell us. Without that information humans cannot come alive to each other. A woman wearing a mask is a woman declining to be human. Unable to look anyone in the eyes, lacking peripheral vision, her hearing muffled, she becomes an abstraction. Encouraging a woman to wear the burka is like offering her a portable isolation cell.
In Europe the burka stirs public anger. President Nicolas Sarkozy says it's unwelcome in France: "We cannot have in our country women who are prisoners behind netting, cut off from all social life, deprived of identity." Sarkozy understands that he speaks for much of the electorate. Could France actually ban the burka from its streets? That would infringe on individual rights but now begins to seem possible.
Lazreg's fascinating book, Questioning the Veil: Open Letters to Muslim Women (Princeton University Press), tells us that the veil comes and goes, according to the rise and fall of ideologies and the change in male perceptions of women and women's beliefs about themselves. Algeria illustrates the point. After women helped achieve independence from France in 1962, many ceased to wear the veil. It lost its political force as a form of rebellion and became an archaic custom of an older generation. Lazreg remembers her mother discarding it.
The revival of the veil among Algerians in recent years coincides with economic failure, a regional cultural identity movement and the war between Islamists and the Algerian government. Today's Islamists often coerce women to wear the veil. (Surprisingly, Lazreg doesn't mention the physical harm involved: Women who hide every inch of their skin from the sun often suffer from a Vitamin D deficiency and develop early osteoporosis, a syndrome noted by doctors in several countries.)
Source: The National Post, The Politics of the Veil
The chador and feminism don't always fit
Sudanese woman sent to jail for wearing pants is freed Sudanese woman sent to jail for wearing pants is freed
Some romanticize Islamic women's dress as liberating; the case of Lubna Hussein is a reminder of the dark side of the veil.
By Meghan Daum
September 10, 2009
On Monday in Sudan, Lubna Hussein, a 34-year-old journalist, was convicted and jailed for wearing pants (long, loose ones) on the streets of Khartoum. Though she was released the next day and, moreover, avoided the 40 lashes with a plastic whip that is considered a standard sentence under Sudanese law for wearing "indecent clothing," her case made international headlines and attracted protesters outside the courthouse, many of whom were women who wore trousers in solidarity (and some of whom were arrested).
Hussein, who was entitled to immunity because she worked for the United Nations, quit her job and used the arrest as an opportunity to spotlight the punishment for dress code violations in Sudan. Having refused to pay the $200 fine, Hussein said she was glad to go to jail and seemed disappointed when she was released after a journalists union paid her fine. "I am not happy," she told Reuters. "I told all my friends and family not to pay the fine. ... [T]here are more than 700 women still in the prison who have got no one to pay for them."
Hussein isn't the only rabble-rousing feminist journalist who has made waves in sartorial politics. In a column that was published a year ago but has grabbed widespread interest on the Internet in recent days, America's own Naomi Wolf had a revelation. Islamic dress protocol, she says, can be empowering and is infused with feminist dimensions that Westerners, in their Islamaphobia, are too quick to deny. Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald in August 2008, Wolf talked about visiting Muslim countries and meeting with women in their homes and realizing that "Muslim attitudes toward women's appearance and sexuality are not rooted in repression, but in a strong sense of public versus private, of what is due to God and what is due to one's husband."
Noting (with apparent surprise) that in the privacy of their homes Muslim women avail themselves of body lotions, attractive clothing and Victoria's Secret lingerie, Wolf wonders if Western sexual liberation, at least when it comes to how women are expected to look and dress, offers its own kind of tyranny. In fact, when she donned full-body covering and a chador and visited a Moroccan bazaar, she had something of an epiphany. "As I moved about the market -- the curve of my breasts covered, the shape of my legs obscured, my long hair not flying about me -- I felt a novel sense of calm and serenity," Wolf wrote. "I felt, yes, in certain ways, free."
Clearly, Wolf, who is nothing if not a master of taking obvious, not- exactly-original ideas and disguising them as radical inquiry (her name-making and "groundbreaking" book, "The Beauty Myth," offered up the ostensibly novel idea that obsession with physical appearance was damaging to women's progress in other areas) must never have dressed up as a ghost (or a nun or a cereal box for that matter) for Halloween. If she had, she could have saved herself the plane fare to Morocco and figured out what I thought most women -- actually, most human beings -- already know: Invisibility (or at least plainness) has its good points. Sure, it can be fun to get attention -- sometimes for showing skin, if that's your thing -- but it also can be tremendously liberating to bow out of the whole "am I hot?" enterprise altogether.
Source: LA Times, The Chador and Feminism don't always fit.
Robert Fulford, National Post
In the 21st century, the Islamic burka, the full-face-and-body veil, adopted by more women every day, has become the most potent human symbol on earth. But what exactly does it symbolize? Many say it stands for piety. No, that's wrong, says Marnia Lazreg, an Algerian-born professor of sociology at the City University of New York. Piety has little to do with it; the Koran doesn't even mention the veil. In truth, the veil stands for political ideology and male power.
It also establishes the wearer's extreme distance from the rest of us. We recognize people by seeing their faces and we acknowledge their humanity by reading what their faces tell us. Without that information humans cannot come alive to each other. A woman wearing a mask is a woman declining to be human. Unable to look anyone in the eyes, lacking peripheral vision, her hearing muffled, she becomes an abstraction. Encouraging a woman to wear the burka is like offering her a portable isolation cell.
In Europe the burka stirs public anger. President Nicolas Sarkozy says it's unwelcome in France: "We cannot have in our country women who are prisoners behind netting, cut off from all social life, deprived of identity." Sarkozy understands that he speaks for much of the electorate. Could France actually ban the burka from its streets? That would infringe on individual rights but now begins to seem possible.
Lazreg's fascinating book, Questioning the Veil: Open Letters to Muslim Women (Princeton University Press), tells us that the veil comes and goes, according to the rise and fall of ideologies and the change in male perceptions of women and women's beliefs about themselves. Algeria illustrates the point. After women helped achieve independence from France in 1962, many ceased to wear the veil. It lost its political force as a form of rebellion and became an archaic custom of an older generation. Lazreg remembers her mother discarding it.
The revival of the veil among Algerians in recent years coincides with economic failure, a regional cultural identity movement and the war between Islamists and the Algerian government. Today's Islamists often coerce women to wear the veil. (Surprisingly, Lazreg doesn't mention the physical harm involved: Women who hide every inch of their skin from the sun often suffer from a Vitamin D deficiency and develop early osteoporosis, a syndrome noted by doctors in several countries.)
Source: The National Post, The Politics of the Veil
The chador and feminism don't always fit
Sudanese woman sent to jail for wearing pants is freed Sudanese woman sent to jail for wearing pants is freed
Some romanticize Islamic women's dress as liberating; the case of Lubna Hussein is a reminder of the dark side of the veil.
By Meghan Daum
September 10, 2009
On Monday in Sudan, Lubna Hussein, a 34-year-old journalist, was convicted and jailed for wearing pants (long, loose ones) on the streets of Khartoum. Though she was released the next day and, moreover, avoided the 40 lashes with a plastic whip that is considered a standard sentence under Sudanese law for wearing "indecent clothing," her case made international headlines and attracted protesters outside the courthouse, many of whom were women who wore trousers in solidarity (and some of whom were arrested).
Hussein, who was entitled to immunity because she worked for the United Nations, quit her job and used the arrest as an opportunity to spotlight the punishment for dress code violations in Sudan. Having refused to pay the $200 fine, Hussein said she was glad to go to jail and seemed disappointed when she was released after a journalists union paid her fine. "I am not happy," she told Reuters. "I told all my friends and family not to pay the fine. ... [T]here are more than 700 women still in the prison who have got no one to pay for them."
Hussein isn't the only rabble-rousing feminist journalist who has made waves in sartorial politics. In a column that was published a year ago but has grabbed widespread interest on the Internet in recent days, America's own Naomi Wolf had a revelation. Islamic dress protocol, she says, can be empowering and is infused with feminist dimensions that Westerners, in their Islamaphobia, are too quick to deny. Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald in August 2008, Wolf talked about visiting Muslim countries and meeting with women in their homes and realizing that "Muslim attitudes toward women's appearance and sexuality are not rooted in repression, but in a strong sense of public versus private, of what is due to God and what is due to one's husband."
Noting (with apparent surprise) that in the privacy of their homes Muslim women avail themselves of body lotions, attractive clothing and Victoria's Secret lingerie, Wolf wonders if Western sexual liberation, at least when it comes to how women are expected to look and dress, offers its own kind of tyranny. In fact, when she donned full-body covering and a chador and visited a Moroccan bazaar, she had something of an epiphany. "As I moved about the market -- the curve of my breasts covered, the shape of my legs obscured, my long hair not flying about me -- I felt a novel sense of calm and serenity," Wolf wrote. "I felt, yes, in certain ways, free."
Clearly, Wolf, who is nothing if not a master of taking obvious, not- exactly-original ideas and disguising them as radical inquiry (her name-making and "groundbreaking" book, "The Beauty Myth," offered up the ostensibly novel idea that obsession with physical appearance was damaging to women's progress in other areas) must never have dressed up as a ghost (or a nun or a cereal box for that matter) for Halloween. If she had, she could have saved herself the plane fare to Morocco and figured out what I thought most women -- actually, most human beings -- already know: Invisibility (or at least plainness) has its good points. Sure, it can be fun to get attention -- sometimes for showing skin, if that's your thing -- but it also can be tremendously liberating to bow out of the whole "am I hot?" enterprise altogether.
Source: LA Times, The Chador and Feminism don't always fit.
Sunday, 30 August 2009
Twice Branded: Western Women in Muslim Lands
Judy Bachrach
Every time I despair of the way women are treated in Muslim countries—and the few syllables Western leaders and op-ed columnists expend on their humiliations, mutilations, harassments, and, yes, murders—I turn to the Web site of Mona Eltahawy. Eltahawy spent her formative years in Egypt and Saudi Arabia:
A couple of years after I stopped visiting, a horrific fire broke out in a school in Mecca, home to the Muslim world’s holiest site. Fifteen girls burned to death because morality police standing outside the school wouldn’t let them out of the burning building. Why? Because they weren’t wearing headscarves and abayas, the black cloaks that girls and women must wear in public in Saudi Arabia.
And here is Eltahawy on a girl’s lot in Egypt:
When I was only four years old and still living in Cairo, a man exposed himself to me as I stood on a balcony at my family’s, and gestured for me to come down. At 15, I was groped as I was performing the rites of the hajj pilgrimage at Mecca, the holiest site for Muslims. Every part of my body was covered except for my face and hands. I’d never been groped before and burst into tears, but I was too ashamed to explain to my family what had happened.
To anyone who, like me, has lived in a Muslim nation, none of this behavior is either singular or surprising. It is the way men in most Islamic nations prefer things to be. We can talk forever about the nature of culture versus faith: how ancient rites and practices like the circumcision of girls (85 percent of all Egyptian girls have endured this procedure), or the tradition of keeping women ignorant and housebound, can corrupt a religion that never intended for these things to happen.
But it is no coincidence that women who must submit to Sharia law find themselves in a very bad place, wherever those women and those places happen to be. This includes France, where only last year a court in Lille upheld the right of a Muslim man to hold fast to his faith and annul his marriage when he discovered his bride was not a virgin. And it includes Germany, where in Berlin in 2005 there were eight murders of young women of Turkish origin, executed by members of their own families. And Australia, where, after a group of unveiled Muslim women were raped, the succinct Mufti Taj al-Din al-Hilali explained away the crime as an attack on “uncovered meat.” And it includes the United Kingdom, where Scotland Yard has probed 109 suspicious deaths of women, also likely slaughtered by relatives. Islam is an easy rider: it travels everywhere and often brings with it a lot of baggage.
Bet let’s start with Islam as it affects women in their home countries. Last year, in a poll of 2,000 Egyptian men, 62 percent admitted harassing women: an activity most of those interviewed insisted was not really their fault as their advances, however intemperate and offensive to their victims, had after all been provoked by the women themselves.
Nor is this sort of harassment confined to Islamic women in Islamic nations. Western women who find themselves in the Middle East come in for their own fair share of daily insults, owing to their double deficit as women and foreigners. Every step outside the home or hotel is an invitation to a carefully directed barrage of verbal assaults, their components familiar and unvarying: vulgar and offensive remarks, leers and snickers, the occasional shove, all accompanied by grins of triumph. When I lived in Egypt, everyone in Cairo avidly watched the television series Dallas, and as a result became expert on the sexual habits of American women. And not simply expert, but unrepentantly predatory. After all, these were women whose husbands and brothers would not reflexively massacre those who insulted them.
Thus it was that my Egyptian experience marked the only time in my life when the acquisition of the rudiments of a foreign language, far from making life more comfortable, actually ignited rage. The more Arabic we learned, the more xenophobic and sexually explicit trash talk we understood. There was a lot of it around (except, significantly, when we were escorted by our husbands).
Source: World Affairs Journal, 'Twice Branded: Western Women in Muslim Lands'
Every time I despair of the way women are treated in Muslim countries—and the few syllables Western leaders and op-ed columnists expend on their humiliations, mutilations, harassments, and, yes, murders—I turn to the Web site of Mona Eltahawy. Eltahawy spent her formative years in Egypt and Saudi Arabia:
A couple of years after I stopped visiting, a horrific fire broke out in a school in Mecca, home to the Muslim world’s holiest site. Fifteen girls burned to death because morality police standing outside the school wouldn’t let them out of the burning building. Why? Because they weren’t wearing headscarves and abayas, the black cloaks that girls and women must wear in public in Saudi Arabia.
And here is Eltahawy on a girl’s lot in Egypt:
When I was only four years old and still living in Cairo, a man exposed himself to me as I stood on a balcony at my family’s, and gestured for me to come down. At 15, I was groped as I was performing the rites of the hajj pilgrimage at Mecca, the holiest site for Muslims. Every part of my body was covered except for my face and hands. I’d never been groped before and burst into tears, but I was too ashamed to explain to my family what had happened.
To anyone who, like me, has lived in a Muslim nation, none of this behavior is either singular or surprising. It is the way men in most Islamic nations prefer things to be. We can talk forever about the nature of culture versus faith: how ancient rites and practices like the circumcision of girls (85 percent of all Egyptian girls have endured this procedure), or the tradition of keeping women ignorant and housebound, can corrupt a religion that never intended for these things to happen.
But it is no coincidence that women who must submit to Sharia law find themselves in a very bad place, wherever those women and those places happen to be. This includes France, where only last year a court in Lille upheld the right of a Muslim man to hold fast to his faith and annul his marriage when he discovered his bride was not a virgin. And it includes Germany, where in Berlin in 2005 there were eight murders of young women of Turkish origin, executed by members of their own families. And Australia, where, after a group of unveiled Muslim women were raped, the succinct Mufti Taj al-Din al-Hilali explained away the crime as an attack on “uncovered meat.” And it includes the United Kingdom, where Scotland Yard has probed 109 suspicious deaths of women, also likely slaughtered by relatives. Islam is an easy rider: it travels everywhere and often brings with it a lot of baggage.
Bet let’s start with Islam as it affects women in their home countries. Last year, in a poll of 2,000 Egyptian men, 62 percent admitted harassing women: an activity most of those interviewed insisted was not really their fault as their advances, however intemperate and offensive to their victims, had after all been provoked by the women themselves.
Nor is this sort of harassment confined to Islamic women in Islamic nations. Western women who find themselves in the Middle East come in for their own fair share of daily insults, owing to their double deficit as women and foreigners. Every step outside the home or hotel is an invitation to a carefully directed barrage of verbal assaults, their components familiar and unvarying: vulgar and offensive remarks, leers and snickers, the occasional shove, all accompanied by grins of triumph. When I lived in Egypt, everyone in Cairo avidly watched the television series Dallas, and as a result became expert on the sexual habits of American women. And not simply expert, but unrepentantly predatory. After all, these were women whose husbands and brothers would not reflexively massacre those who insulted them.
Thus it was that my Egyptian experience marked the only time in my life when the acquisition of the rudiments of a foreign language, far from making life more comfortable, actually ignited rage. The more Arabic we learned, the more xenophobic and sexually explicit trash talk we understood. There was a lot of it around (except, significantly, when we were escorted by our husbands).
Source: World Affairs Journal, 'Twice Branded: Western Women in Muslim Lands'
‘The veil should not be a barrier between women’
The writer and campaigner Rabina Khan talks to Charlotte Kemp about her drive to dispel the myths and stereotypes about the hijab, and how her latest project, which documents the views of Muslim and non-Muslim women on the subject, is helping to promote a new understanding.
With her beautiful face framed by a dusky pink headscarf, Rabina Khan arrives at our rendezvous in east London a slight and seemingly shy figure who looks no more than 20 years old. But as if to prove her mission to challenge people’s perceptions of each other, all is not quite as it seems. For in fact, not only is Khan 37, and married with two daughters, aged 15 and nine, she is far from shy, exuding a calm confidence which pervades her work as a novelist, editor, campaigner and general champion for Muslim women’s rights both in Britain and around the world.
There are more surprises. Though she now thrives in the ethnic diversity of London’s East End, she was born in Bangladesh but grew up in the predominantly white town of Rochester, Kent, in the south-east of England, less than 10 miles from my own childhood home.
“I made the decision to wear the hijab when I moved to London in my early 20s,” she tells me. “I felt the time was right. It was part of my faith – a gift. It enhances me but it doesn’t change who I am, and that is the point. The only identity we should bear is our human identity.”
Hence Khan’s latest projects, an anthology of thought-provoking essays, poems and short stories written by Muslim and non-Muslim women which tackle the contentious issues now surrounding the wearing of the veil.
Entitled Behind The Hijab, the book attempts to unravel the complex politics of the headscarf post-September 11, as well as broaching some uncomfortable questions. Is the veil a symbol of liberation or suppression? Does it free women from sexual harassment and objectification or denigrate them to second-class citizens?
Source: The National, 'The veil should not be a barrier between women.'
With her beautiful face framed by a dusky pink headscarf, Rabina Khan arrives at our rendezvous in east London a slight and seemingly shy figure who looks no more than 20 years old. But as if to prove her mission to challenge people’s perceptions of each other, all is not quite as it seems. For in fact, not only is Khan 37, and married with two daughters, aged 15 and nine, she is far from shy, exuding a calm confidence which pervades her work as a novelist, editor, campaigner and general champion for Muslim women’s rights both in Britain and around the world.
There are more surprises. Though she now thrives in the ethnic diversity of London’s East End, she was born in Bangladesh but grew up in the predominantly white town of Rochester, Kent, in the south-east of England, less than 10 miles from my own childhood home.
“I made the decision to wear the hijab when I moved to London in my early 20s,” she tells me. “I felt the time was right. It was part of my faith – a gift. It enhances me but it doesn’t change who I am, and that is the point. The only identity we should bear is our human identity.”
Hence Khan’s latest projects, an anthology of thought-provoking essays, poems and short stories written by Muslim and non-Muslim women which tackle the contentious issues now surrounding the wearing of the veil.
Entitled Behind The Hijab, the book attempts to unravel the complex politics of the headscarf post-September 11, as well as broaching some uncomfortable questions. Is the veil a symbol of liberation or suppression? Does it free women from sexual harassment and objectification or denigrate them to second-class citizens?
Source: The National, 'The veil should not be a barrier between women.'
Tuesday, 14 July 2009
Egypt divided by film of beaten wife
CAIRO // In a poignant moment in one of this summer’s most talked-about films, the host of a TV programme that focuses on the rights of women appears on screen covered in bruises.
“I just survived being beaten to death. I’m the programme’s oppressed and beaten guest. I never imagined that I, who tell people’s tales, could become a tale myself,” the TV presenter, Heba Younis, says in the final scene of Tell it, Scheherazade.
The film addresses women’s rights, their dreams and their suffering, contemporary topics in such a male-dominated society as Egypt, but it has drawn criticism from reviewers and on the internet, with most of it directed at the actress Mona Zaki, who plays Younis.
The criticism started when a trailers of the film showed Zaki being kissed on the neck by her on-screen husband.
“We adored Mona Zaki, her art, bashfulness and her respect for us. She was the model of clean art, therefore our disappointment and anger are huge because we loved her so much,” wrote Mohammed Adel on a Facebook group against the film.
“We lost you, Mona,” lamented Mahmoud Amer, another former fan on Facebook.
Zaki, in her early 30s, had been hailed as an icon of “clean cinema”, in which there is no kissing, show of intimacy between sexes or revealing clothing and which has appealed to the largely conservative society here.
But the film critic Magda Khirallah said the criticism was unfounded.
“Mona Zaki is an actress not a saint,” she said.
Ahmed Helmi, Zaki’s husband and also an actor, was even forced to phone The House is Yours, a prime-time TV talk show, to refute rumours that he and his wife had split because of the film.
The movie was written by the populist scriptwriter Wahid Hamed and directed by Yousry Nasrallah, more of an art house director who has been addressing women’s issues for more than 15 years but until now has received little popular acclaim.
It is the first co-operation between the two and nearly three weeks into its release, Tell it, Scheherazade is already a box office hit. According to Cinema Chamber, which is in charge of cinema incomes, the movie has taken in six million Egyptian pounds (Dh4m) since it opened June 24, which is high by Egyptian standards.
“Yousry Nasrallah, one of Egypt’s greatest filmmakers, has crafted not only this year’s best Egyptian film of the year so far, but one of the most important movies of the decade. A brilliantly provoking, fierce and audacious cinematic document about Egyptian women,” wrote the film critic Joseph Fahim in the Daily News Egypt recently.
The film focuses on the relationship between Younis and her husband, Karim Hassan, played by Hassan al Raddad.
The young, beautiful, rich and successful couple seem to have it all. But that begins to change when Younis starts to discover things about herself, her husband and their relationship through her interviews with other women.
At first she presents a political programme, but is forced to change focus after complaints from the bosses at the government-run newspaper where her husband hopes to become editor. So Younis shifts to social and women’s issues and interviews three women whose stories open her eyes to her own relationship.
The first story is of Amany, a middle-aged, middle-class, dreamy idealist who refuses to marry except for love and who is shocked to discover that many marriages are based not on love but on an agreement, which entails compromises by women just to have the title of being married.
She lives, by choice, in a psychiatric hospital “where everyone plays their own tune, without disharmony,” she tells Younis in the interview.
The second story, which is based on fact, is about three lower-income sisters in their 20s and 30s who live together after they inherit their father’s shop.
Each sister, unbeknown to the others, becomes intimately involved with their young employee, who in turn promises to marry each one. When they finally discover the deception, the elder sister kills the employee and subsequently spends 15 years in prison.
The third story is of Nahed, a dentist from a well-to-do family who falls in love with a businessman who manipulates her into sleeping with him before their official wedding. Although they are already married on paper, the businessman leaves her when she gets pregnant and demands a payment of three million pounds for a divorce.
Nahed has an abortion and takes the businessman to court, gaining a divorce without having to pay him anything.
“Actually they are four, not three, stories, as with every interview Heba Younis discovers that her marriage is falling apart and that she doesn’t have much in common with her husband, who only cares about his career and doesn’t appreciate hers or her compromises to save the marriage,” said Nasrallah, the director.
When Hassan is overlooked for the editor’s role at the paper he blames it on Younis’s “silly programme” and starts to beat her.
Younis, having become mentally stronger through her interviews, hits back and does not hide her bruises when she next appears on television.
One audience, mostly women, were mixed in their reaction.
“I came to the movie to watch Mona Zaki,” said Christine Nagy, 30, who is single and a manager at a medical office. “But unfortunately, I’m surprised that the whole movie is about sex and spinsterhood and that women are only concerned with these two issues, which is not true. I don’t know what the aim of this movie is.”
Nagwa Atwa, 60, a veiled housewife and mother of three, said she loved it.
“I really liked how it handles sexual issues, and that if sex is not based on real love, even between married couples, it could be destructive.
“I loved the message and the type of women that the film portrayed. They all, including the TV presenter, managed to overcome their weaknesses, and with their strong will, were able to start anew. I like that.”
“I just survived being beaten to death. I’m the programme’s oppressed and beaten guest. I never imagined that I, who tell people’s tales, could become a tale myself,” the TV presenter, Heba Younis, says in the final scene of Tell it, Scheherazade.
The film addresses women’s rights, their dreams and their suffering, contemporary topics in such a male-dominated society as Egypt, but it has drawn criticism from reviewers and on the internet, with most of it directed at the actress Mona Zaki, who plays Younis.
The criticism started when a trailers of the film showed Zaki being kissed on the neck by her on-screen husband.
“We adored Mona Zaki, her art, bashfulness and her respect for us. She was the model of clean art, therefore our disappointment and anger are huge because we loved her so much,” wrote Mohammed Adel on a Facebook group against the film.
“We lost you, Mona,” lamented Mahmoud Amer, another former fan on Facebook.
Zaki, in her early 30s, had been hailed as an icon of “clean cinema”, in which there is no kissing, show of intimacy between sexes or revealing clothing and which has appealed to the largely conservative society here.
But the film critic Magda Khirallah said the criticism was unfounded.
“Mona Zaki is an actress not a saint,” she said.
Ahmed Helmi, Zaki’s husband and also an actor, was even forced to phone The House is Yours, a prime-time TV talk show, to refute rumours that he and his wife had split because of the film.
The movie was written by the populist scriptwriter Wahid Hamed and directed by Yousry Nasrallah, more of an art house director who has been addressing women’s issues for more than 15 years but until now has received little popular acclaim.
It is the first co-operation between the two and nearly three weeks into its release, Tell it, Scheherazade is already a box office hit. According to Cinema Chamber, which is in charge of cinema incomes, the movie has taken in six million Egyptian pounds (Dh4m) since it opened June 24, which is high by Egyptian standards.
“Yousry Nasrallah, one of Egypt’s greatest filmmakers, has crafted not only this year’s best Egyptian film of the year so far, but one of the most important movies of the decade. A brilliantly provoking, fierce and audacious cinematic document about Egyptian women,” wrote the film critic Joseph Fahim in the Daily News Egypt recently.
The film focuses on the relationship between Younis and her husband, Karim Hassan, played by Hassan al Raddad.
The young, beautiful, rich and successful couple seem to have it all. But that begins to change when Younis starts to discover things about herself, her husband and their relationship through her interviews with other women.
At first she presents a political programme, but is forced to change focus after complaints from the bosses at the government-run newspaper where her husband hopes to become editor. So Younis shifts to social and women’s issues and interviews three women whose stories open her eyes to her own relationship.
The first story is of Amany, a middle-aged, middle-class, dreamy idealist who refuses to marry except for love and who is shocked to discover that many marriages are based not on love but on an agreement, which entails compromises by women just to have the title of being married.
She lives, by choice, in a psychiatric hospital “where everyone plays their own tune, without disharmony,” she tells Younis in the interview.
The second story, which is based on fact, is about three lower-income sisters in their 20s and 30s who live together after they inherit their father’s shop.
Each sister, unbeknown to the others, becomes intimately involved with their young employee, who in turn promises to marry each one. When they finally discover the deception, the elder sister kills the employee and subsequently spends 15 years in prison.
The third story is of Nahed, a dentist from a well-to-do family who falls in love with a businessman who manipulates her into sleeping with him before their official wedding. Although they are already married on paper, the businessman leaves her when she gets pregnant and demands a payment of three million pounds for a divorce.
Nahed has an abortion and takes the businessman to court, gaining a divorce without having to pay him anything.
“Actually they are four, not three, stories, as with every interview Heba Younis discovers that her marriage is falling apart and that she doesn’t have much in common with her husband, who only cares about his career and doesn’t appreciate hers or her compromises to save the marriage,” said Nasrallah, the director.
When Hassan is overlooked for the editor’s role at the paper he blames it on Younis’s “silly programme” and starts to beat her.
Younis, having become mentally stronger through her interviews, hits back and does not hide her bruises when she next appears on television.
One audience, mostly women, were mixed in their reaction.
“I came to the movie to watch Mona Zaki,” said Christine Nagy, 30, who is single and a manager at a medical office. “But unfortunately, I’m surprised that the whole movie is about sex and spinsterhood and that women are only concerned with these two issues, which is not true. I don’t know what the aim of this movie is.”
Nagwa Atwa, 60, a veiled housewife and mother of three, said she loved it.
“I really liked how it handles sexual issues, and that if sex is not based on real love, even between married couples, it could be destructive.
“I loved the message and the type of women that the film portrayed. They all, including the TV presenter, managed to overcome their weaknesses, and with their strong will, were able to start anew. I like that.”
Thursday, 11 June 2009
Turkey fined for failing to protect woman
ISTANBUL // In a debut that was inglorious but could yet turn out to be a watershed for women’s rights in this country, Turkey this week became the first member state of the Council of Europe to have been convicted by the Council’s court for failing to protect a woman from violent abuse by her former husband.
In the verdict, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, ordered Turkey to pay a total of €36,500 (Dh187,748) in damages and expenses to Nahide Opuz, 37, from the city of Diyarbakir in Turkey’s south-east. The court ruled unanimously that Turkey’s judiciary and police had failed to protect Mrs Opuz from repeated assaults and threats by her former husband, Huseyin Opuz, despite numerous pleas for help by Mrs Opuz and despite the fact that Opuz killed her mother to prevent the two women from fleeing.
“I want to see an end to violence against women and I want the state, the judiciary and the police to take it seriously,” Mrs Opuz said through her lawyer, Mesut Bestas. Mrs Opuz still feels threatened by her former husband and does not want to speak to the media herself, Mr Bestas said in a telephone interview. She wants to lead a “free life, far away from worries”, the lawyer quoted her as saying. Mr Bestas said his client had not received police protection.
Click here to find out more!
According to a statement by the Strasbourg court, the couple got married in 1995. They had three children. Soon after the wedding, Mrs Opuz said she and her mother were beaten and threatened by her husband. Opuz was repeatedly remanded in custody, but always released. Charges against him were dropped when the two women withdrew their complaints, apparently under pressure from Opuz, the court said.
Although Mrs Opuz and her mother told the authorities their lives were in danger and although Opuz was repeatedly questioned over the years, he was never held in custody for a long period. In Oct 2001 he stabbed his wife seven times with a knife and in March 2002 he shot and killed his mother-in-law as the two women were preparing to run away. He told police “his honour had been at stake”, the court said. He was later convicted of murder, but he was again released pending an appeal. Mrs Opuz filed for divorce after the killing.
Seven years after Mrs Opuz first applied to Strasbourg, the court ruled that Turkey’s judiciary and police had ignored the fact that “further violence, indeed a lethal attack, had not only been possible but even foreseeable”. Rejecting Turkey’s argument that Mrs Opuz had withdrawn her complaints several times, the court said that given the husband’s history of violence, authorities should have made sure “that the prosecution continue in the public interest”.
In one of the most damning passages of the verdict, the court accused Turkish authorities of “passive” behaviour. Judicial decisions “had been ineffective and even disclosed a certain degree of tolerance” towards the violence against the two women, the court said. As a member of the Council of Europe, an organisation of 47-member countries founded in 1949 to develop and uphold democratic and human rights principles, Turkey is obliged to abide by the rulings from Strasbourg.
The verdict and the public humiliation for Turkey, a country that sees itself as a modern republic with equal rights for men and women but is plagued by high rates of domestic violence, made front-page news throughout the country. According to a government-sponsored study released this year, four out of 10 women in Turkey say they are victims of physical domestic violence.
The decision of the seven-judge panel in Strasbourg was like a “slap in the face” for Turkey, the Yeni Safak newspaper said. Canan Arin, a lawyer specialising in cases of domestic violence, said she was happy about the verdict, but felt ashamed at the same time. “I am ashamed because the Turkish republic is a country that does not attach great value to human life, to the life of women,” she told the NTV news channel.
Pinar Ilkkaracan, a founding member of the Association for Human Rights for Women – New Solutions, a pressure group, told NTV the verdict had the potential to change the way Turkish authorities deal with cases of domestic violence. “Women who experience such a [violent] behaviour and are confronted with indifference when they turn to the authorities now have a weapon in their hands.”
Remziye Tanrikulu, a women’s rights lawyer in Mrs Opuz’s hometown of Diyarbakir, also said the Strasbourg verdict was a “very important decision”. Speaking in a telephone interview, Mrs Tanrikulu said Turkey had improved its laws against domestic violence, but there were problems with the application of these laws. “After this decision, there is pressure from Strasbourg,” she said. The justice ministry in Ankara started an inquiry to establish what went wrong in the case of Mrs Opuz, newspapers reported yesterday.
But Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, criticised the verdict. The decision was “shameful”, Mr Erdogan told NTV in a live interview yesterday. He said it was wrong for the court to condemn the whole of Turkey for a single case and that Turkey’s law enforcement agency was trying to fight domestic violence. “We have laws,” he said, adding that no country could guarantee the safety of its citizens “100 per cent”.
As the debate continued, Turkish media yesterday reported another suspected case of deadly domestic violence. Fadile Karatoprak, 23, from the capital Ankara, was found strangled in her house, the reports said. Mrs Karatoprak had divorced her husband shortly before her death. Her three-year-old son was reported to have told police that “my mum was killed by my dad”.
In the verdict, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, ordered Turkey to pay a total of €36,500 (Dh187,748) in damages and expenses to Nahide Opuz, 37, from the city of Diyarbakir in Turkey’s south-east. The court ruled unanimously that Turkey’s judiciary and police had failed to protect Mrs Opuz from repeated assaults and threats by her former husband, Huseyin Opuz, despite numerous pleas for help by Mrs Opuz and despite the fact that Opuz killed her mother to prevent the two women from fleeing.
“I want to see an end to violence against women and I want the state, the judiciary and the police to take it seriously,” Mrs Opuz said through her lawyer, Mesut Bestas. Mrs Opuz still feels threatened by her former husband and does not want to speak to the media herself, Mr Bestas said in a telephone interview. She wants to lead a “free life, far away from worries”, the lawyer quoted her as saying. Mr Bestas said his client had not received police protection.
Click here to find out more!
According to a statement by the Strasbourg court, the couple got married in 1995. They had three children. Soon after the wedding, Mrs Opuz said she and her mother were beaten and threatened by her husband. Opuz was repeatedly remanded in custody, but always released. Charges against him were dropped when the two women withdrew their complaints, apparently under pressure from Opuz, the court said.
Although Mrs Opuz and her mother told the authorities their lives were in danger and although Opuz was repeatedly questioned over the years, he was never held in custody for a long period. In Oct 2001 he stabbed his wife seven times with a knife and in March 2002 he shot and killed his mother-in-law as the two women were preparing to run away. He told police “his honour had been at stake”, the court said. He was later convicted of murder, but he was again released pending an appeal. Mrs Opuz filed for divorce after the killing.
Seven years after Mrs Opuz first applied to Strasbourg, the court ruled that Turkey’s judiciary and police had ignored the fact that “further violence, indeed a lethal attack, had not only been possible but even foreseeable”. Rejecting Turkey’s argument that Mrs Opuz had withdrawn her complaints several times, the court said that given the husband’s history of violence, authorities should have made sure “that the prosecution continue in the public interest”.
In one of the most damning passages of the verdict, the court accused Turkish authorities of “passive” behaviour. Judicial decisions “had been ineffective and even disclosed a certain degree of tolerance” towards the violence against the two women, the court said. As a member of the Council of Europe, an organisation of 47-member countries founded in 1949 to develop and uphold democratic and human rights principles, Turkey is obliged to abide by the rulings from Strasbourg.
The verdict and the public humiliation for Turkey, a country that sees itself as a modern republic with equal rights for men and women but is plagued by high rates of domestic violence, made front-page news throughout the country. According to a government-sponsored study released this year, four out of 10 women in Turkey say they are victims of physical domestic violence.
The decision of the seven-judge panel in Strasbourg was like a “slap in the face” for Turkey, the Yeni Safak newspaper said. Canan Arin, a lawyer specialising in cases of domestic violence, said she was happy about the verdict, but felt ashamed at the same time. “I am ashamed because the Turkish republic is a country that does not attach great value to human life, to the life of women,” she told the NTV news channel.
Pinar Ilkkaracan, a founding member of the Association for Human Rights for Women – New Solutions, a pressure group, told NTV the verdict had the potential to change the way Turkish authorities deal with cases of domestic violence. “Women who experience such a [violent] behaviour and are confronted with indifference when they turn to the authorities now have a weapon in their hands.”
Remziye Tanrikulu, a women’s rights lawyer in Mrs Opuz’s hometown of Diyarbakir, also said the Strasbourg verdict was a “very important decision”. Speaking in a telephone interview, Mrs Tanrikulu said Turkey had improved its laws against domestic violence, but there were problems with the application of these laws. “After this decision, there is pressure from Strasbourg,” she said. The justice ministry in Ankara started an inquiry to establish what went wrong in the case of Mrs Opuz, newspapers reported yesterday.
But Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, criticised the verdict. The decision was “shameful”, Mr Erdogan told NTV in a live interview yesterday. He said it was wrong for the court to condemn the whole of Turkey for a single case and that Turkey’s law enforcement agency was trying to fight domestic violence. “We have laws,” he said, adding that no country could guarantee the safety of its citizens “100 per cent”.
As the debate continued, Turkish media yesterday reported another suspected case of deadly domestic violence. Fadile Karatoprak, 23, from the capital Ankara, was found strangled in her house, the reports said. Mrs Karatoprak had divorced her husband shortly before her death. Her three-year-old son was reported to have told police that “my mum was killed by my dad”.
Tuesday, 9 June 2009
Challenging Sex Taboos, With Help From the Koran
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates
WEDAD LOOTAH does not look like a sexual activist. A Muslim and a native Emirati, she wears a full-length black niqab — with only her brown eyes showing through narrow slits — and sprinkles her conversation with quotes from the Koran.
Yet she is also the author of what for the Middle East is an amazingly frank new book of erotic advice in which she celebrates the female orgasm, confronts taboo topics like homosexuality and urges Arabs to transcend the backward traditions that limit their sexual happiness.
The book, “Top Secret: Sexual Guidance for Married Couples,” is packed with vivid anecdotes from Ms. Lootah’s eight years as a marital counselor in Dubai’s main courthouse. It became an instant scandal after it was published in Arabic in the Emirates in January, drawing praise from some liberals and death threats from conservatives, who say she is guilty of blasphemy or worse.
Ms. Lootah, a strong-willed and talkative 45-year-old, is one of a small but growing number of Arabs pushing for more openness and education about sex. Unlike earlier generations of women who often couched their criticism in a Western language of female emancipation, Ms. Lootah and her peers are hard to dismiss as outsiders because they tend to be religious Muslims who root their message in the Koran.
Ms. Lootah, for instance, studied Islamic jurisprudence in college, not Western psychology, and her book is studded with religious references. She submitted the text to the Mufti of Dubai before publishing it, and he gave his approval (though he warned her that Arab audiences might not be ready for such a book, especially by a woman).
“People have said I was crazy, that I was straying from Islam, that I should be killed,” Ms. Lootah said. “Even my family ask why I must talk about this. I say: ‘These problems happen every day and should not be ignored. This is the reality we are living.’ ”
She is not a liberal by Western standards. One of the themes of her book is the danger of anal sex and homosexuality generally, not because of AIDS but because they are banned by the Koran. But her openness about the issue was itself a shock to many here.
In Saudi Arabia and other countries where the genders are rigorously separated, many men have their first sexual experiences with other men, which affects their attitudes toward sex in marriage, Ms. Lootah said.
“Many men who had anal sex with men before marriage want the same thing with their wives, because they don’t know anything else,” Ms. Lootah said. “This is one reason we need sex education in our schools.”
She is also emphatic about the importance of female sexual pleasure, and the inequity of many Arab marriages in that respect. One of the cases that impelled her to write the book, she said, was a 52-year-old client who had grandchildren but had never known sexual pleasure with her husband.
“Finally, she discovered orgasm!” Ms. Lootah said. “Imagine, all that time she did not know.”
Another important theme of the book is infidelity. The prevalence of foreign women in Dubai and the ease of e-mail and text-message communication has made cheating easier (and easier to detect), Ms. Lootah said, helping push the divorce rate to 30 percent.
The Gulf’s oil-fueled modernization in recent decades has also shattered some old Arab social structures. At the same time, the rise of political Islam has undermined traditional authorities, leaving many Arabs confused about moral issues.
“Before, people lived in one place and the community was like one big family,” Ms. Lootah said. “Now, people have spread to different areas, everything’s mixed up and traditions have changed.”
ONE result is the Family Guidance section in the Dubai Courthouse, which opened in 2001 with Ms. Lootah as its first counselor (there are now six others, all men). Kuwait’s government has had a similar social-services wing since the 1990s, and other Persian Gulf countries are following suit. Private psychologists and marriage counselors also exist throughout the Arab world, though they are still rare.
“We’re making a lot of progress,” said Heba Kotb, who runs an Islam-oriented sex therapy clinic in Cairo, and ran a satellite television talk show on sexual and marital issues from 2006 until 2008. “Ten years ago we were unable to even mention the subject, and now people are getting used to hearing it.”
There are still formidable obstacles. In a region where “honor killings” of women who have sex outside marriage remain fairly common, sex education is widely viewed as a portal to sin. Genital cutting of women still takes place in Egypt, though it is now illegal. Arab writers and artists have begun to tackle these subjects.
Thirty years ago the Egyptian director Saleh Abu Seif wrote a screenplay called “Sex School,” but the censorship bureau had yet to approve it when he died in 1996. His son was finally allowed to direct a modified version of the film, about a sexually dissatisfied couple who go to see a therapist, and it was released in 2002 under the title “The Ostrich and the Peacock.”
Ms. Lootah never expected to become part of this debate. One of nine children born to an illiterate water-seller in Dubai, she married early and taught elementary school for years. Later, she took a job working for an Islamic endowment, where her efforts to introduce education and family-reunion days in prison earned her two government-service awards. When Dubai introduced the Family Guidance section of its courthouse, Dubai’s ruler, Sheik Muhammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, asked her to be the first counselor.
THE family guidance section was established in part to comply with Islamic precepts calling for couples who want a divorce to try to work out their problems first. In practice, it has become an all-purpose therapy destination for people with marital problems.
Ms. Lootah sees about seven cases a day, individuals and couples. Most of them are native Emiratis, but in the multicultural world of Dubai — where about 90 percent of the population is foreign — she has also counseled some Europeans and Asians. As in the criminal courts next door, a translator sits in on the session, and sometimes even offers advice to bridge cultural gaps.
“Some people are amazed I can work with people with only my eyes showing,” Ms. Lootah said, with a ripple of laughter. “Maybe it’s because of the way I move my hands! But I can tell you that people come here, and they speak very frankly with me.”
She reels off stories from her practice in rapid fire: the Emirati military officer whose wife had an affair because he was away from home too much; the woman who thought fellatio was against Islam (not true at all, Ms. Lootah notes); the wife who discovered her husband dressing up as a woman and going out to gay bars. She seems bent on showing that there is a whole world of sexual confusion that would benefit from open discussion.
Publishing the book, she notes, was a difficult choice. Her father supported her, but other family members sometimes wondered why she had to be so public about it all. After it was published a man called her office phone and threatened to kill her. Other threats appeared on the Internet.
She brushes them off, saying she has declined an offer of protection from the government. Besides, she adds, educating the public is worth the risk.
“A few days ago a woman came in and asked me if it is O.K. to kiss the man all over his body,” she said. “I told her, ‘Read my book!’ ”
WEDAD LOOTAH does not look like a sexual activist. A Muslim and a native Emirati, she wears a full-length black niqab — with only her brown eyes showing through narrow slits — and sprinkles her conversation with quotes from the Koran.
Yet she is also the author of what for the Middle East is an amazingly frank new book of erotic advice in which she celebrates the female orgasm, confronts taboo topics like homosexuality and urges Arabs to transcend the backward traditions that limit their sexual happiness.
The book, “Top Secret: Sexual Guidance for Married Couples,” is packed with vivid anecdotes from Ms. Lootah’s eight years as a marital counselor in Dubai’s main courthouse. It became an instant scandal after it was published in Arabic in the Emirates in January, drawing praise from some liberals and death threats from conservatives, who say she is guilty of blasphemy or worse.
Ms. Lootah, a strong-willed and talkative 45-year-old, is one of a small but growing number of Arabs pushing for more openness and education about sex. Unlike earlier generations of women who often couched their criticism in a Western language of female emancipation, Ms. Lootah and her peers are hard to dismiss as outsiders because they tend to be religious Muslims who root their message in the Koran.
Ms. Lootah, for instance, studied Islamic jurisprudence in college, not Western psychology, and her book is studded with religious references. She submitted the text to the Mufti of Dubai before publishing it, and he gave his approval (though he warned her that Arab audiences might not be ready for such a book, especially by a woman).
“People have said I was crazy, that I was straying from Islam, that I should be killed,” Ms. Lootah said. “Even my family ask why I must talk about this. I say: ‘These problems happen every day and should not be ignored. This is the reality we are living.’ ”
She is not a liberal by Western standards. One of the themes of her book is the danger of anal sex and homosexuality generally, not because of AIDS but because they are banned by the Koran. But her openness about the issue was itself a shock to many here.
In Saudi Arabia and other countries where the genders are rigorously separated, many men have their first sexual experiences with other men, which affects their attitudes toward sex in marriage, Ms. Lootah said.
“Many men who had anal sex with men before marriage want the same thing with their wives, because they don’t know anything else,” Ms. Lootah said. “This is one reason we need sex education in our schools.”
She is also emphatic about the importance of female sexual pleasure, and the inequity of many Arab marriages in that respect. One of the cases that impelled her to write the book, she said, was a 52-year-old client who had grandchildren but had never known sexual pleasure with her husband.
“Finally, she discovered orgasm!” Ms. Lootah said. “Imagine, all that time she did not know.”
Another important theme of the book is infidelity. The prevalence of foreign women in Dubai and the ease of e-mail and text-message communication has made cheating easier (and easier to detect), Ms. Lootah said, helping push the divorce rate to 30 percent.
The Gulf’s oil-fueled modernization in recent decades has also shattered some old Arab social structures. At the same time, the rise of political Islam has undermined traditional authorities, leaving many Arabs confused about moral issues.
“Before, people lived in one place and the community was like one big family,” Ms. Lootah said. “Now, people have spread to different areas, everything’s mixed up and traditions have changed.”
ONE result is the Family Guidance section in the Dubai Courthouse, which opened in 2001 with Ms. Lootah as its first counselor (there are now six others, all men). Kuwait’s government has had a similar social-services wing since the 1990s, and other Persian Gulf countries are following suit. Private psychologists and marriage counselors also exist throughout the Arab world, though they are still rare.
“We’re making a lot of progress,” said Heba Kotb, who runs an Islam-oriented sex therapy clinic in Cairo, and ran a satellite television talk show on sexual and marital issues from 2006 until 2008. “Ten years ago we were unable to even mention the subject, and now people are getting used to hearing it.”
There are still formidable obstacles. In a region where “honor killings” of women who have sex outside marriage remain fairly common, sex education is widely viewed as a portal to sin. Genital cutting of women still takes place in Egypt, though it is now illegal. Arab writers and artists have begun to tackle these subjects.
Thirty years ago the Egyptian director Saleh Abu Seif wrote a screenplay called “Sex School,” but the censorship bureau had yet to approve it when he died in 1996. His son was finally allowed to direct a modified version of the film, about a sexually dissatisfied couple who go to see a therapist, and it was released in 2002 under the title “The Ostrich and the Peacock.”
Ms. Lootah never expected to become part of this debate. One of nine children born to an illiterate water-seller in Dubai, she married early and taught elementary school for years. Later, she took a job working for an Islamic endowment, where her efforts to introduce education and family-reunion days in prison earned her two government-service awards. When Dubai introduced the Family Guidance section of its courthouse, Dubai’s ruler, Sheik Muhammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, asked her to be the first counselor.
THE family guidance section was established in part to comply with Islamic precepts calling for couples who want a divorce to try to work out their problems first. In practice, it has become an all-purpose therapy destination for people with marital problems.
Ms. Lootah sees about seven cases a day, individuals and couples. Most of them are native Emiratis, but in the multicultural world of Dubai — where about 90 percent of the population is foreign — she has also counseled some Europeans and Asians. As in the criminal courts next door, a translator sits in on the session, and sometimes even offers advice to bridge cultural gaps.
“Some people are amazed I can work with people with only my eyes showing,” Ms. Lootah said, with a ripple of laughter. “Maybe it’s because of the way I move my hands! But I can tell you that people come here, and they speak very frankly with me.”
She reels off stories from her practice in rapid fire: the Emirati military officer whose wife had an affair because he was away from home too much; the woman who thought fellatio was against Islam (not true at all, Ms. Lootah notes); the wife who discovered her husband dressing up as a woman and going out to gay bars. She seems bent on showing that there is a whole world of sexual confusion that would benefit from open discussion.
Publishing the book, she notes, was a difficult choice. Her father supported her, but other family members sometimes wondered why she had to be so public about it all. After it was published a man called her office phone and threatened to kill her. Other threats appeared on the Internet.
She brushes them off, saying she has declined an offer of protection from the government. Besides, she adds, educating the public is worth the risk.
“A few days ago a woman came in and asked me if it is O.K. to kiss the man all over his body,” she said. “I told her, ‘Read my book!’ ”
Sunday, 31 May 2009
A tradition shrouded in mystery
Moza al Muhairi, better known among her people as Umm Nasser, has been wearing the burqa since the age of 12. Now 47, she has worn hundreds of the traditional UAE face masks and even makes them herself whenever she runs out of stock.
“The burqa is our version of the Islamic niqab [veil], where there are different designs for different ages and for different occasions,” she says.
The burqa, pronounced “burga”, one of the oldest items of dress in the Gulf region, is a mask that was traditionally worn by girls when they came of age. Quite different from the head-to-toe one-piece cover used in Afghanistan, also called a burqa, the Gulf burqa is a traditional, metallic-coloured red or golden embroidered cloth used to cover part of the face. Today, it is mainly worn by the older generation.
The inside surface of the mask is rubbed and polished using oyster shell or stone and painted with indigo dye, reputed to have a “beautifying and whitening” effect on the skin, says Umm Nasser, as she rubs the burqa’s cloth on her hand, leaving a dark, bluish mark. Further rubbing brings a shiny, pearly tinge to the skin. “The dye gives the skin a glow,” she says.
While largely perceived from a Western perspective as a mask designed to conceal a woman’s facial features, Umm Nasser says the burqa is in fact “part of our zeena [beauty regime], where it is meant to beautify the woman and hide all her flaws. It is not about suppression.”
Nevertheless, the burqa has left its impression on more than Arabic culture; some of the older types, says Umm Nasser, used to leave a mark on the nose, while some could permanently change the shape of the wearer’s nose.
Because of the lack of written records about the history of the burqa, the origin of the mask is uncertain, and speculation has it coming variously from Yemen, Oman or even further afield, from the Muslim communities in India. Among the Arabic tribes of the Gulf, at some point the metallic finish was added – a development now lost in time but which has been handed down through successive generations.
“The only written records here were made by the British, and often the British men would not have access to the local women and so a lot of the women-related heritage was not recorded,” says Dr Jane Bristol-Rhys, an anthropologist in the department of humanities and social sciences at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi.
“There was also a greater focus on the political and economic aspect of life here, and less so on the social history.”
Some believe the traditional design of the burqa deliberately mimics the features of the falcon, a traditional Arabic symbol of grace, pride and strength, but for Umm Nasser it serves a practical purpose, helping to emphasise some features of the face, while concealing the others. “The wrinkles, broken or discoloured teeth, unattractive eyebrows, the burqa hides it all and helps the eyes stand out,” she says. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the slit around the eyes “is larger in younger women, and gets smaller as they get older”.
Traditionally, the colour of the burqa was red, known locally as “nili”, the colour of a firm, shiny cloth imported from India for more than 100 years. The more modern burqa, made with a material also imported from India, is golden.
Before the UAE came into being in 1971, the old handmade burqa cost about Dh1 to Dh2. Today, modern machine-made examples cost about Dh10, but for her traditionally made burqas, which take about 20 minutes to make, Umm Nasser charges Dh20.
She starts by cutting the eye slit in a folded piece of a nili cloth with a pair of scissors, leaving space for the “saif”, the wooden piece that rests on the nose and is placed vertically between the thicker portion of the mask on the forehead, “al jabha”, and the curved part along the cheeks, “al khad”.
“A jabha is sewn extra thick with many folds to prevent it from getting damaged too quickly from water or sweat,” she says as she quickly stitches in the tiny multiple folds that give the burqa its shape.
After she cuts out the eye slits, she forms a sleeve in the middle into which the stick is inserted which holds the burqa straight. Next, she carefully forms small folds to form the ruffled top edge, through which is fed the “seer”, the thread that ties the burqa in place at the back of the head.
This used to be a simple cotton thread, but the modern ones are synthetic, with more of a shine to them. Some call this the “shubug”, and prefer it to be red, although today others favour silver.
In the past, because of the harsh climate and lack of air conditioning, it was not uncommon to see women with bluish streaks around the openings of the burqa, as the dye ran with the heat, and the burqa would have to be replaced almost daily.
“The burqas of today are more disposable and cheap to buy, so the minute there is any damage, we discard them and put on a new one,” says Um Nasser.
“It was much harder before as we would have to make our own burqa each time and often our hands would be so sore from all the sewing.”
As well as the burqa, Umm Nasser would have to sew all of her own clothing, as well of that of her children. “The old days were hard,” she says, “but we enjoyed making everything with our own hands.”
The design of a burqa varies according to which part of the UAE its owner is from. The Dubai design, the “Zabeel cut”, also worn in Abu Dhabi, has a narrow top and broad, curved bottom. The Al Ain design, on the other hand, features both a narrow top and bottom – a design that Umm Nasser declines to wear because, she says, it “looks like a moustache” and hides the least amount of face. In Sharjah, the burqa resembles the Zabeel cut but is shaped so the top of the mask is inclined forwards.
The burqa is not limited to the UAE. Variations can be found in nearby countries such as Oman, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait. The Bahraini and Qatari burqas are square-shaped, whereas the Omani burqa, also worn in Fujairah, is very large. It is broader at the top and its tip rises above the forehead. In Saudi Arabia the niqab, a black cloth that covers the face, with a slit for the eyes is worn, not the burqa.
Umm Nasser’s husband is a retired pearl diver and the family does what it can to keep up the old ways; she says she is fond of Freej, the popular home-grown animated cartoon series, because it brought back the “allure” of the burqa. “The younger generation started asking about the burqa again, and that is a great thing to remind the young of the old ways and dress.”
Although women have dressed modestly since the spread of Islam, the method of covering the face has been less standardised than the clothing they have worn. But whatever style is worn, use of the burqa was widespread just a generation ago, while today some may wear it while others do not, even within the same Emirati family.
One who does is Maitha al Mazroui. Now 35, she has been wearing the burqa since age 10, unlike the rest of the women in her family.
Out of personal interest, she once tried to research the origin of the burqa, but ran up against the lack of documentary evidence. All she could glean from elders in the Al Gharbia region was “my grandmother and the grandmother before me wore it, so then I did. For some reason, nobody thought of keeping records of things like where our dress or heritage pieces came from.” This, she said, is a “downside” to nomadic tradition.
In previous generations, she says, some men would never see their wives without their burqa, which in effect became part of the women’s face.
“It just became a part of us, often we would forget we are wearing it,” she says. “I feel exposed without it.” Laughing, she adds: “And if I take it off now, people might accuse me of going wild.”
Times, says Umm Nasser, have changed. She recalls that Sheikh Zayed used to encourage the preservation of traditional clothing and said that “he will not attend a wedding, unless the bride wears a burqa”.
But although Umm Nasser taught her daughters how to make the burqa, she doubts they will ever wear one in public. The reality, she fears, is that “it is a traditional wear that will fade in 20 years. It will be just a museum piece.”
“The burqa is our version of the Islamic niqab [veil], where there are different designs for different ages and for different occasions,” she says.
The burqa, pronounced “burga”, one of the oldest items of dress in the Gulf region, is a mask that was traditionally worn by girls when they came of age. Quite different from the head-to-toe one-piece cover used in Afghanistan, also called a burqa, the Gulf burqa is a traditional, metallic-coloured red or golden embroidered cloth used to cover part of the face. Today, it is mainly worn by the older generation.
The inside surface of the mask is rubbed and polished using oyster shell or stone and painted with indigo dye, reputed to have a “beautifying and whitening” effect on the skin, says Umm Nasser, as she rubs the burqa’s cloth on her hand, leaving a dark, bluish mark. Further rubbing brings a shiny, pearly tinge to the skin. “The dye gives the skin a glow,” she says.
While largely perceived from a Western perspective as a mask designed to conceal a woman’s facial features, Umm Nasser says the burqa is in fact “part of our zeena [beauty regime], where it is meant to beautify the woman and hide all her flaws. It is not about suppression.”
Nevertheless, the burqa has left its impression on more than Arabic culture; some of the older types, says Umm Nasser, used to leave a mark on the nose, while some could permanently change the shape of the wearer’s nose.
Because of the lack of written records about the history of the burqa, the origin of the mask is uncertain, and speculation has it coming variously from Yemen, Oman or even further afield, from the Muslim communities in India. Among the Arabic tribes of the Gulf, at some point the metallic finish was added – a development now lost in time but which has been handed down through successive generations.
“The only written records here were made by the British, and often the British men would not have access to the local women and so a lot of the women-related heritage was not recorded,” says Dr Jane Bristol-Rhys, an anthropologist in the department of humanities and social sciences at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi.
“There was also a greater focus on the political and economic aspect of life here, and less so on the social history.”
Some believe the traditional design of the burqa deliberately mimics the features of the falcon, a traditional Arabic symbol of grace, pride and strength, but for Umm Nasser it serves a practical purpose, helping to emphasise some features of the face, while concealing the others. “The wrinkles, broken or discoloured teeth, unattractive eyebrows, the burqa hides it all and helps the eyes stand out,” she says. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the slit around the eyes “is larger in younger women, and gets smaller as they get older”.
Traditionally, the colour of the burqa was red, known locally as “nili”, the colour of a firm, shiny cloth imported from India for more than 100 years. The more modern burqa, made with a material also imported from India, is golden.
Before the UAE came into being in 1971, the old handmade burqa cost about Dh1 to Dh2. Today, modern machine-made examples cost about Dh10, but for her traditionally made burqas, which take about 20 minutes to make, Umm Nasser charges Dh20.
She starts by cutting the eye slit in a folded piece of a nili cloth with a pair of scissors, leaving space for the “saif”, the wooden piece that rests on the nose and is placed vertically between the thicker portion of the mask on the forehead, “al jabha”, and the curved part along the cheeks, “al khad”.
“A jabha is sewn extra thick with many folds to prevent it from getting damaged too quickly from water or sweat,” she says as she quickly stitches in the tiny multiple folds that give the burqa its shape.
After she cuts out the eye slits, she forms a sleeve in the middle into which the stick is inserted which holds the burqa straight. Next, she carefully forms small folds to form the ruffled top edge, through which is fed the “seer”, the thread that ties the burqa in place at the back of the head.
This used to be a simple cotton thread, but the modern ones are synthetic, with more of a shine to them. Some call this the “shubug”, and prefer it to be red, although today others favour silver.
In the past, because of the harsh climate and lack of air conditioning, it was not uncommon to see women with bluish streaks around the openings of the burqa, as the dye ran with the heat, and the burqa would have to be replaced almost daily.
“The burqas of today are more disposable and cheap to buy, so the minute there is any damage, we discard them and put on a new one,” says Um Nasser.
“It was much harder before as we would have to make our own burqa each time and often our hands would be so sore from all the sewing.”
As well as the burqa, Umm Nasser would have to sew all of her own clothing, as well of that of her children. “The old days were hard,” she says, “but we enjoyed making everything with our own hands.”
The design of a burqa varies according to which part of the UAE its owner is from. The Dubai design, the “Zabeel cut”, also worn in Abu Dhabi, has a narrow top and broad, curved bottom. The Al Ain design, on the other hand, features both a narrow top and bottom – a design that Umm Nasser declines to wear because, she says, it “looks like a moustache” and hides the least amount of face. In Sharjah, the burqa resembles the Zabeel cut but is shaped so the top of the mask is inclined forwards.
The burqa is not limited to the UAE. Variations can be found in nearby countries such as Oman, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait. The Bahraini and Qatari burqas are square-shaped, whereas the Omani burqa, also worn in Fujairah, is very large. It is broader at the top and its tip rises above the forehead. In Saudi Arabia the niqab, a black cloth that covers the face, with a slit for the eyes is worn, not the burqa.
Umm Nasser’s husband is a retired pearl diver and the family does what it can to keep up the old ways; she says she is fond of Freej, the popular home-grown animated cartoon series, because it brought back the “allure” of the burqa. “The younger generation started asking about the burqa again, and that is a great thing to remind the young of the old ways and dress.”
Although women have dressed modestly since the spread of Islam, the method of covering the face has been less standardised than the clothing they have worn. But whatever style is worn, use of the burqa was widespread just a generation ago, while today some may wear it while others do not, even within the same Emirati family.
One who does is Maitha al Mazroui. Now 35, she has been wearing the burqa since age 10, unlike the rest of the women in her family.
Out of personal interest, she once tried to research the origin of the burqa, but ran up against the lack of documentary evidence. All she could glean from elders in the Al Gharbia region was “my grandmother and the grandmother before me wore it, so then I did. For some reason, nobody thought of keeping records of things like where our dress or heritage pieces came from.” This, she said, is a “downside” to nomadic tradition.
In previous generations, she says, some men would never see their wives without their burqa, which in effect became part of the women’s face.
“It just became a part of us, often we would forget we are wearing it,” she says. “I feel exposed without it.” Laughing, she adds: “And if I take it off now, people might accuse me of going wild.”
Times, says Umm Nasser, have changed. She recalls that Sheikh Zayed used to encourage the preservation of traditional clothing and said that “he will not attend a wedding, unless the bride wears a burqa”.
But although Umm Nasser taught her daughters how to make the burqa, she doubts they will ever wear one in public. The reality, she fears, is that “it is a traditional wear that will fade in 20 years. It will be just a museum piece.”
Friday, 8 May 2009
Fatwa empowers women in marriage and education
ABU DHABI // Young women should be free to take a job and pursue a higher education, said a major ruling from the Islamic affairs office.
The declaration, published by the General Authority for Religious Affairs and Endowments (AWQAF) says daughters can overrule parental objections when taking a job or going to university when it is in their best interest to do so.
The 10-page fatwa, published last Thursday, is the first result of a collaboration between the UAE and the Grand Mufti of Egypt, Dr Ali Jumaa, on religious matters. Published on the AWQAF website, it is the response of the Grand Mufti to a direct question from the Abu Dhabi-based authority.
The question asked: “What are the limits of a father’s guardianship over his daughter? Does he have the right to prevent her seeking an education? Or working (outside the home)? And where does a father stand in matters of marriage and seeking treatment for ailment?”
Dr Jumaa’s reply stated: “If a father wanted to prevent his daughter from seeking an education and she wanted otherwise, then she is not obliged to obey his wishes in this matter ... because obeying the father is an obligation but only under the condition that no harm comes of it to the child.”
Working out of the home is acceptable, the Grand Mufti said, as long as the young woman “is safe from harm to her person, honour and religion, and the work is compatible with her physique and nature.”
Dr Jumaa’s response was backed by jurisprudent interpretation in accordance Dr Jumaa’s reply stated: “If a father wanted to prevent his daughter from seeking an education and she wanted otherwise, then she is not obliged to obey his wishes in this matter ... because obeying the father is an obligation but only under the condition that no harm comes of it to the child.”
Working out of the home is acceptable, the Grand Mufti said, as long as the young woman “is safe from harm to her person, honour and religion, and the work is compatible with her physique and nature.”
Dr Jumaa’s response was backed by jurisprudent interpretation in accordance with the Hanafi tradition, one of four schools of interpreting Islamic law and the main school in Egypt. The UAE follows the Maliki school, which is very close to Hanafi interpretations.
Islamic law extends the concept of guardianship beyond adulthood. In Islam, femininity is a basis for coming under guardianship of the family patriarch, whether a father, uncle or, in the absence of older male guardians, a brother.
The fatwa states that a father’s interference in his daughter’s major decisions must stop when following the father’s opinion could cause the daughter harm.
“The purpose of guardianship is to look after the interests of and provide care for the dependent party,” Dr Jumaa states. “Therefore, if a father’s opinion is contradictory to her current and future best interest ... then he is in breach of (the guardianship contract).
“The harm that befalls a girl for not receiving an education is clear and known. If she abandons her college education, then she will miss a great deal of enlightenment about her religion and about everyday knowledge. She will have a limited awareness of the world around her as compared to ... her educated counterparts in society, which will limit her marriage prospects and her capacity to be a good mother.”
Asking for a fatwa is similar to seeking advice from a lawyer, although the response is not legally binding, with individuals free to decide if they will accept it.
The new fatwa also covers a daughter’s right to seek medical treatment and her choice of a husband. The Grand Mufti’s opinion states that fathers may not turn down “reasonable prospects” when it comes to marriage.
Dr Jumaa stated clearly the conditions that must be met before a father’s objection to his daughter’s work becomes invalid. Taking a job did not breach the guardianship contract as long as: “There is a personal need for it, or a public need, and it is work that does not overstep the line into what is forbidden in Islam.”
On marriage, Dr Jumaa noted that Islamic scholars had long disagreed over the extent of a father’s guardianship. “In the Hanafi opinion, absolute guardianship happens only when the girl is a minor. But the adult woman cannot be subject to absolute guardianship when choosing her husband.
“Some fathers can be unreasonable when it comes to the marriage choices of their daughter. They turn down a reasonable prospect that their daughter wants to marry, and they do so for no reason or for petty reasons. It is forbidden for a father to do so. Such behaviour is unfair. It also opens the door for vice to enter into society.”
On seeking medical treatment, the fatwa said a guardian “must also pay for such treatment for as long as he is able, and for as long as he is her guardian”.
al Azhar
awqaf fi misr
The declaration, published by the General Authority for Religious Affairs and Endowments (AWQAF) says daughters can overrule parental objections when taking a job or going to university when it is in their best interest to do so.
The 10-page fatwa, published last Thursday, is the first result of a collaboration between the UAE and the Grand Mufti of Egypt, Dr Ali Jumaa, on religious matters. Published on the AWQAF website, it is the response of the Grand Mufti to a direct question from the Abu Dhabi-based authority.
The question asked: “What are the limits of a father’s guardianship over his daughter? Does he have the right to prevent her seeking an education? Or working (outside the home)? And where does a father stand in matters of marriage and seeking treatment for ailment?”
Dr Jumaa’s reply stated: “If a father wanted to prevent his daughter from seeking an education and she wanted otherwise, then she is not obliged to obey his wishes in this matter ... because obeying the father is an obligation but only under the condition that no harm comes of it to the child.”
Working out of the home is acceptable, the Grand Mufti said, as long as the young woman “is safe from harm to her person, honour and religion, and the work is compatible with her physique and nature.”
Dr Jumaa’s response was backed by jurisprudent interpretation in accordance Dr Jumaa’s reply stated: “If a father wanted to prevent his daughter from seeking an education and she wanted otherwise, then she is not obliged to obey his wishes in this matter ... because obeying the father is an obligation but only under the condition that no harm comes of it to the child.”
Working out of the home is acceptable, the Grand Mufti said, as long as the young woman “is safe from harm to her person, honour and religion, and the work is compatible with her physique and nature.”
Dr Jumaa’s response was backed by jurisprudent interpretation in accordance with the Hanafi tradition, one of four schools of interpreting Islamic law and the main school in Egypt. The UAE follows the Maliki school, which is very close to Hanafi interpretations.
Islamic law extends the concept of guardianship beyond adulthood. In Islam, femininity is a basis for coming under guardianship of the family patriarch, whether a father, uncle or, in the absence of older male guardians, a brother.
The fatwa states that a father’s interference in his daughter’s major decisions must stop when following the father’s opinion could cause the daughter harm.
“The purpose of guardianship is to look after the interests of and provide care for the dependent party,” Dr Jumaa states. “Therefore, if a father’s opinion is contradictory to her current and future best interest ... then he is in breach of (the guardianship contract).
“The harm that befalls a girl for not receiving an education is clear and known. If she abandons her college education, then she will miss a great deal of enlightenment about her religion and about everyday knowledge. She will have a limited awareness of the world around her as compared to ... her educated counterparts in society, which will limit her marriage prospects and her capacity to be a good mother.”
Asking for a fatwa is similar to seeking advice from a lawyer, although the response is not legally binding, with individuals free to decide if they will accept it.
The new fatwa also covers a daughter’s right to seek medical treatment and her choice of a husband. The Grand Mufti’s opinion states that fathers may not turn down “reasonable prospects” when it comes to marriage.
Dr Jumaa stated clearly the conditions that must be met before a father’s objection to his daughter’s work becomes invalid. Taking a job did not breach the guardianship contract as long as: “There is a personal need for it, or a public need, and it is work that does not overstep the line into what is forbidden in Islam.”
On marriage, Dr Jumaa noted that Islamic scholars had long disagreed over the extent of a father’s guardianship. “In the Hanafi opinion, absolute guardianship happens only when the girl is a minor. But the adult woman cannot be subject to absolute guardianship when choosing her husband.
“Some fathers can be unreasonable when it comes to the marriage choices of their daughter. They turn down a reasonable prospect that their daughter wants to marry, and they do so for no reason or for petty reasons. It is forbidden for a father to do so. Such behaviour is unfair. It also opens the door for vice to enter into society.”
On seeking medical treatment, the fatwa said a guardian “must also pay for such treatment for as long as he is able, and for as long as he is her guardian”.
al Azhar
awqaf fi misr
Three-year project helps Yemen’s battered women
SANA’A // When Katibah Awdhah asked her uncle for the rights to her father’s land and property because he was mentally ill, he locked her up in a small room under his home in Yemen’s mountainous district of Manakha.
For the past three years, Katibah’s mother, Nimah, has campaigned for her daughter’s release, appealing to village chiefs as well as officials in the capital, Sana’a, but to little avail.
“I have approached all social dignitaries of the village and appealed to them to interfere to get my daughter set free. No one listened to me as I am poor and helpless.
“Her uncle claims my daughter suffers from epilepsy and it would be shameful for the family to go out. If she is sick, she needs medication,” Nimah said.
The case of Katibah is just one example of an alarming trend of violence against women in Yemen, according to a non-governmental agency that has taken up her case.
The Sisters Arab Forum (SAF), a Yemeni NGO, has launched a three-year project to provide legal protection for women and child victims of violence. The project is funded by the Netherlands.
“This three-year programme is the first project of its kind in the sense it covers the whole of Yemen and offers psychological and legal support to victims of violence. It aims to provide better protection for women and children exposed to violence and sexual abuse,” said Majed al Madhaji, a SAF spokesman.
The US$700,000 (Dh2.6 million) project started in March and includes training, among others, prosecutors, police and social workers and mosque leaders as well as a review of current laws.
There will be 20 Yemeni lawyers to provide legal support to victims of violence. At a later stage, there will be a shelter to accommodate 15 women and their children.
Mr al Madhaji said another aim is to create a database of violent incidents during the first year that will enable them to assess the magnitude of violence against women and children. A 24-hour hotline set up to receive complaints from women and children has already taken dozens of calls and recorded 30 cases of alleged abuse.
“I am really amazed by the large number of women calling to complain about violence; most of the callers complain about domestic violence, including sexual harassment and beatings,” said Jamilah al Masnaee, a SAF programme officer.
“I am sure that many women tolerate this violence and do not report it due to the culture of shame,” Ms al Masnaee said.
The interior ministry reported 2,694 incidents of violence against women in 2007 – the most recent figures available – in which 130 women died (88 of them were premeditated murders while 24 were accidental) and 790 injuries.
According to a report on the status of women in 2007, there were 33 reported cases of rape, including 18 against underage girls.
The report, released in May 2008 by the governmental Women’s National Committee, also said a 2003 health survey found that five per cent of married women suffered domestic violence, most of which was beatings from their husbands, and 21.5 per cent of these happened apparently without any reason.
The report said about 54.3 per cent of cases of violence against women in 2007 occurred at home and were rarely reported to the police.
The report cited illiteracy, poverty and lack of respect for the law as primary elements behind the violence.
“There are different reasons; it is a combination of cultural and religious discourse that underestimates women. Some laws contain partial discrimination against women. The marginal position of women in power makes their voice faint,” said Rashidah al Hamdani, the chairwoman of the Women’s National Committee.
She pointed to a provision in the penal code that restricts sentencing a man who kills his wife or female relative after catching her in an adulterous situation to no more than a year in prison or a fine. There is no such provision for women who catch husbands having an affair.
“Such a provision is discriminatory and encourages domestic violence. We are still fighting against these legislations,” Mrs al Hamdani said.
The SAF programme tries to resolve conflict in the home first. However, in instances where the family refuses to co-operate, such as in Katibah’s case, SAF reports the incident to the interior ministry for prosecution.
“We have tried with Katibah’s uncle; we travelled to his remote area, but he refused to let us even see her. We had to inform the prosecution and we are still waiting for their response,” Ms al Masnaee said.
“The interior ministry responds positively when it comes to harassment of children, but for women, particularly if it is sexual abuse, they are a bit reluctant, maybe because of the mainstream belief that talking about such issues is a shame.”
Katibah’s mother, Nimah, said she has been allowed to see her daughter only once. “She was crying for help. This is all for land and property. This is haram.”
malqadhi@thenational.ae
For the past three years, Katibah’s mother, Nimah, has campaigned for her daughter’s release, appealing to village chiefs as well as officials in the capital, Sana’a, but to little avail.
“I have approached all social dignitaries of the village and appealed to them to interfere to get my daughter set free. No one listened to me as I am poor and helpless.
“Her uncle claims my daughter suffers from epilepsy and it would be shameful for the family to go out. If she is sick, she needs medication,” Nimah said.
The case of Katibah is just one example of an alarming trend of violence against women in Yemen, according to a non-governmental agency that has taken up her case.
The Sisters Arab Forum (SAF), a Yemeni NGO, has launched a three-year project to provide legal protection for women and child victims of violence. The project is funded by the Netherlands.
“This three-year programme is the first project of its kind in the sense it covers the whole of Yemen and offers psychological and legal support to victims of violence. It aims to provide better protection for women and children exposed to violence and sexual abuse,” said Majed al Madhaji, a SAF spokesman.
The US$700,000 (Dh2.6 million) project started in March and includes training, among others, prosecutors, police and social workers and mosque leaders as well as a review of current laws.
There will be 20 Yemeni lawyers to provide legal support to victims of violence. At a later stage, there will be a shelter to accommodate 15 women and their children.
Mr al Madhaji said another aim is to create a database of violent incidents during the first year that will enable them to assess the magnitude of violence against women and children. A 24-hour hotline set up to receive complaints from women and children has already taken dozens of calls and recorded 30 cases of alleged abuse.
“I am really amazed by the large number of women calling to complain about violence; most of the callers complain about domestic violence, including sexual harassment and beatings,” said Jamilah al Masnaee, a SAF programme officer.
“I am sure that many women tolerate this violence and do not report it due to the culture of shame,” Ms al Masnaee said.
The interior ministry reported 2,694 incidents of violence against women in 2007 – the most recent figures available – in which 130 women died (88 of them were premeditated murders while 24 were accidental) and 790 injuries.
According to a report on the status of women in 2007, there were 33 reported cases of rape, including 18 against underage girls.
The report, released in May 2008 by the governmental Women’s National Committee, also said a 2003 health survey found that five per cent of married women suffered domestic violence, most of which was beatings from their husbands, and 21.5 per cent of these happened apparently without any reason.
The report said about 54.3 per cent of cases of violence against women in 2007 occurred at home and were rarely reported to the police.
The report cited illiteracy, poverty and lack of respect for the law as primary elements behind the violence.
“There are different reasons; it is a combination of cultural and religious discourse that underestimates women. Some laws contain partial discrimination against women. The marginal position of women in power makes their voice faint,” said Rashidah al Hamdani, the chairwoman of the Women’s National Committee.
She pointed to a provision in the penal code that restricts sentencing a man who kills his wife or female relative after catching her in an adulterous situation to no more than a year in prison or a fine. There is no such provision for women who catch husbands having an affair.
“Such a provision is discriminatory and encourages domestic violence. We are still fighting against these legislations,” Mrs al Hamdani said.
The SAF programme tries to resolve conflict in the home first. However, in instances where the family refuses to co-operate, such as in Katibah’s case, SAF reports the incident to the interior ministry for prosecution.
“We have tried with Katibah’s uncle; we travelled to his remote area, but he refused to let us even see her. We had to inform the prosecution and we are still waiting for their response,” Ms al Masnaee said.
“The interior ministry responds positively when it comes to harassment of children, but for women, particularly if it is sexual abuse, they are a bit reluctant, maybe because of the mainstream belief that talking about such issues is a shame.”
Katibah’s mother, Nimah, said she has been allowed to see her daughter only once. “She was crying for help. This is all for land and property. This is haram.”
malqadhi@thenational.ae
Thursday, 7 May 2009
Veiled women and the emergence of global political Islam
“The veil appears as a regression only if we assume progress to be teleological and linearly moving towards secularization”. Yale political philosopher Seyla Benhabib has discussed in Genoa the struggles over cultural identity in the scenario of contemporary Europe. In occasion of her lecture, we propose here a conversation with the Editor in chief of Reset Giancarlo Bosetti.
The role of the woman and the woman’s body is the focus of possible cultural conflicts in Europe. As a philosopher concerned on politics and jurisdiction, your interest must be addressed to this topic involving pluralism, minorities rights and their treatment in Europe.
There are several points, one is about the constitution of identities. In situations of migration and immigration in general, and in the situation of the coexistence of cultures that don’t know each other, that are not familiar one with another, there’s always the issue of preserving the boundaries of identity. The burden of preserving identity seems to fall on the private sphere, because to the immigrant, the one that moves to other cultures, public economy and the form of the law of the state by en large seem to be what we share. Identity becomes particularly under these conditions more and more refocused on the private sphere which places women and the control over women bodies in strategic position.
Issues of identity and gender converge on the woman.
I think identity in general has to do with gender differences issues and the distinction between the boundaries of the male and female sex, but particularly under the conditions of immigration and the mixing of different cultures there is an emphasis on this “private sphere” and that is to say mainly the sphere of women, considered to be what constitutes what we are. That’s why sometimes you see such violent reactions, if the woman in minority culture or immigrant cultures suddenly breaks away, for example in the context of Islam, and wants to join the majority culture. I think that the point is to understand why there is this emphasis on the strategic and existential importance of the position of woman. When individuals from different faiths, languages and culture live together, have to live together, without sharing much in the same civic culture, they look at identity markers that they can interpretate. In this context visual communication becomes centered on things as the symbolism of the foulard, in front of which one will say “here she is, an oppressed Muslim woman”.
Which is not necessarily true. If one looks at the way women are dressed today in Cairo, Rabat, Tunis or especially in the milieu of Istanbul, someone will say we are going backwards, that there is more control over women bodies from the society.
We are dealing with a device. We are dealing with a very strong political movement which is political Islam. This is not the same thing as Islamic fundamentalism or Islamic terrorism; Taliban and al Qaeda are very extreme forms. We are dealing with the resurgence or reemergence of a kind of global political Islam, an identity assertion which is very recent. This is the paradox: the veil appears as a regression only if we assume progress to be teleological and linearly moving towards secularization, then Islam will seem as a step back. What we have to face now is that the secularization hypothesis is wrong, since there is the emergence of multiple modernities and religiosities. In a lot of Muslim countries political Islam is emerging also because they have lost faith in the project of modernity.
What about Turkey?
Turkey is a more complicated case. In many countries as Egypt, probably Tunisia, this kind of modern state building ideology that will give to the state development and prosperity has failed. The result is the emergence of political Islam and the appearance of veiled women, sometimes self-consciously. In Turkey what you have is also a class situation where a new class of Muslim entrepreneurs, a middle class that was always put aside from having power in the state by the Kemalist secular elite, has come back since the Seventies. To some extent in Turkey there’s the emergence of a new Islamic bourgeoisie and this Islamic bourgeoisie wants to assert itself.
Could this be a regression for women?
In many cases it can be. But on the other hand you have to understand that the same father who is saying to her daughter “wear your head” is also a father saying to her to go to the university to become educated. Besides the end of secularization in the West, there are also the emergence of religion and religiosities, the one of political Islam and the failing of modernizing elites.
In Europe there is a complex discussion around the dress code of Muslim women. What is going to be the condition of these women in Europe, a continent with “ Christian roots”? The encounter between the democratic liberal culture and the Catholic and Muslim ones can be filtered through the experience of secularism?
I think we should remember the cultures of the separate nations involved and try to not reduce the overall issue only to religion. Take the case of Italy and Spain. They are both catholic observant countries but Spain went more recently through the experience of Franco fascism and it has created itself in terms of a culture of opposition, especially in the Seventies. Furthermore you find in Spain regional differences and even national differences between Basque, Catalans and so on. As a national culture Spain recognizes plurality including Muslim plurality because of its own national historical experiences as a nation state. Catholicism in Spain assumes a different form right now than it does in Italy. Spain is emerging as one of the most progressive countries as far of the treatment of its minorities.
What is the original marker of the Spanish experience?
Spain recognizes officially its background as a cradle of Judaism, Catholicism and Islam in the Golden Age, in the XIII, XIV and XV centuries. Of course this ended with the Inquisition, but now there is a going back to it. You can’t focus simply at the level or religious tradition, you have to look at the civic traditions, political cultures and political institutions of a state. What is in a country that enables you to create a civic culture of coexistence, what resources do you have? I don’t think religion alone will be sufficient to do this, because religion itself is always interpreted and believed, sought in different ways. A lot of people ignore the distinction between Italy and Spain but this is a good sort of contrary example to reflect upon. I think a country’s ability to absorb larger numbers of immigrants, in this case we are focusing more on Muslims, is very much depending not only from its religion or religious orthodoxy, but is depending a lot more from its political and civic cultures and the degree to which it could interpretate its own history and be open to heterogeneity.
What about the comparison between laicité in France and in Turkey? They both have been a model of pure laicité.
In terms of laicité in Turkey it’s important to realize that laicité here means strong state influence on religion. We think it as the strict separation of the public and the private, like no religious symbols in the public sphere, but this is the simplest definition of laicité. For example, in the Usa, if the Christian community wants to have a cross in the public square for Christmas you will have also a star of David to celebrate Hanukkah and in February you will have a Kwanzaa to celebrate the African new year. This is the American model, First Amendment rights: the state doesn’t intervene in religion, the state does not prohibit it, it does not encourage it but it regulates it. Now in the Turkish and French models theoretically you will not have any of this. You will neither have the cross, the star of David, the Kwanzaa symbol.
France is now proposing a softer model of laicité; President Sarkozy calls it “ laicité positive”. In Turkey the majority is represented by Islam reformism that won the elections. Is a change going to affect these models?
All this transforming is at principles in France. You do have educational religious schools here, but only private; the Jewish or Catholic schools, and now also private Muslims schools. In these countries the big issue is what is the state founding or not founding. In Turkey you have the state educating the religious clerics called Imam that study and sing the Koran. So you have a state education of religious clerics. Turkish laicité means State direction, directoire: the state directs and channels religion. Now a big question in Turkey is whether the laicité is the same for all Turkish citizens not just the Muslim ones. As far for Christian church proprieties in Turkey there is a case in front of the European Court of Human Rights because there is the claim that the way Turkey is interpreting laicité is actually against the way the European convention of human rights - to which Turkey is a member - does. Laicité must be coupled with equal and fair treatment of all religious perspectives but it usually never is. I can’t speak much of the French case but for what I see now there is an attempt to control the religiosity of the immigrant community by building up more councils of migrants to communicate with the state; this has been true for the Jewish communities since Napoleon. They are trying to do the same thing with the Muslim, there’s a Muslim council that deals with the state directly. It’s always a question of control, being the state an institution of domination, one way or another.
The role of the woman and the woman’s body is the focus of possible cultural conflicts in Europe. As a philosopher concerned on politics and jurisdiction, your interest must be addressed to this topic involving pluralism, minorities rights and their treatment in Europe.
There are several points, one is about the constitution of identities. In situations of migration and immigration in general, and in the situation of the coexistence of cultures that don’t know each other, that are not familiar one with another, there’s always the issue of preserving the boundaries of identity. The burden of preserving identity seems to fall on the private sphere, because to the immigrant, the one that moves to other cultures, public economy and the form of the law of the state by en large seem to be what we share. Identity becomes particularly under these conditions more and more refocused on the private sphere which places women and the control over women bodies in strategic position.
Issues of identity and gender converge on the woman.
I think identity in general has to do with gender differences issues and the distinction between the boundaries of the male and female sex, but particularly under the conditions of immigration and the mixing of different cultures there is an emphasis on this “private sphere” and that is to say mainly the sphere of women, considered to be what constitutes what we are. That’s why sometimes you see such violent reactions, if the woman in minority culture or immigrant cultures suddenly breaks away, for example in the context of Islam, and wants to join the majority culture. I think that the point is to understand why there is this emphasis on the strategic and existential importance of the position of woman. When individuals from different faiths, languages and culture live together, have to live together, without sharing much in the same civic culture, they look at identity markers that they can interpretate. In this context visual communication becomes centered on things as the symbolism of the foulard, in front of which one will say “here she is, an oppressed Muslim woman”.
Which is not necessarily true. If one looks at the way women are dressed today in Cairo, Rabat, Tunis or especially in the milieu of Istanbul, someone will say we are going backwards, that there is more control over women bodies from the society.
We are dealing with a device. We are dealing with a very strong political movement which is political Islam. This is not the same thing as Islamic fundamentalism or Islamic terrorism; Taliban and al Qaeda are very extreme forms. We are dealing with the resurgence or reemergence of a kind of global political Islam, an identity assertion which is very recent. This is the paradox: the veil appears as a regression only if we assume progress to be teleological and linearly moving towards secularization, then Islam will seem as a step back. What we have to face now is that the secularization hypothesis is wrong, since there is the emergence of multiple modernities and religiosities. In a lot of Muslim countries political Islam is emerging also because they have lost faith in the project of modernity.
What about Turkey?
Turkey is a more complicated case. In many countries as Egypt, probably Tunisia, this kind of modern state building ideology that will give to the state development and prosperity has failed. The result is the emergence of political Islam and the appearance of veiled women, sometimes self-consciously. In Turkey what you have is also a class situation where a new class of Muslim entrepreneurs, a middle class that was always put aside from having power in the state by the Kemalist secular elite, has come back since the Seventies. To some extent in Turkey there’s the emergence of a new Islamic bourgeoisie and this Islamic bourgeoisie wants to assert itself.
Could this be a regression for women?
In many cases it can be. But on the other hand you have to understand that the same father who is saying to her daughter “wear your head” is also a father saying to her to go to the university to become educated. Besides the end of secularization in the West, there are also the emergence of religion and religiosities, the one of political Islam and the failing of modernizing elites.
In Europe there is a complex discussion around the dress code of Muslim women. What is going to be the condition of these women in Europe, a continent with “ Christian roots”? The encounter between the democratic liberal culture and the Catholic and Muslim ones can be filtered through the experience of secularism?
I think we should remember the cultures of the separate nations involved and try to not reduce the overall issue only to religion. Take the case of Italy and Spain. They are both catholic observant countries but Spain went more recently through the experience of Franco fascism and it has created itself in terms of a culture of opposition, especially in the Seventies. Furthermore you find in Spain regional differences and even national differences between Basque, Catalans and so on. As a national culture Spain recognizes plurality including Muslim plurality because of its own national historical experiences as a nation state. Catholicism in Spain assumes a different form right now than it does in Italy. Spain is emerging as one of the most progressive countries as far of the treatment of its minorities.
What is the original marker of the Spanish experience?
Spain recognizes officially its background as a cradle of Judaism, Catholicism and Islam in the Golden Age, in the XIII, XIV and XV centuries. Of course this ended with the Inquisition, but now there is a going back to it. You can’t focus simply at the level or religious tradition, you have to look at the civic traditions, political cultures and political institutions of a state. What is in a country that enables you to create a civic culture of coexistence, what resources do you have? I don’t think religion alone will be sufficient to do this, because religion itself is always interpreted and believed, sought in different ways. A lot of people ignore the distinction between Italy and Spain but this is a good sort of contrary example to reflect upon. I think a country’s ability to absorb larger numbers of immigrants, in this case we are focusing more on Muslims, is very much depending not only from its religion or religious orthodoxy, but is depending a lot more from its political and civic cultures and the degree to which it could interpretate its own history and be open to heterogeneity.
What about the comparison between laicité in France and in Turkey? They both have been a model of pure laicité.
In terms of laicité in Turkey it’s important to realize that laicité here means strong state influence on religion. We think it as the strict separation of the public and the private, like no religious symbols in the public sphere, but this is the simplest definition of laicité. For example, in the Usa, if the Christian community wants to have a cross in the public square for Christmas you will have also a star of David to celebrate Hanukkah and in February you will have a Kwanzaa to celebrate the African new year. This is the American model, First Amendment rights: the state doesn’t intervene in religion, the state does not prohibit it, it does not encourage it but it regulates it. Now in the Turkish and French models theoretically you will not have any of this. You will neither have the cross, the star of David, the Kwanzaa symbol.
France is now proposing a softer model of laicité; President Sarkozy calls it “ laicité positive”. In Turkey the majority is represented by Islam reformism that won the elections. Is a change going to affect these models?
All this transforming is at principles in France. You do have educational religious schools here, but only private; the Jewish or Catholic schools, and now also private Muslims schools. In these countries the big issue is what is the state founding or not founding. In Turkey you have the state educating the religious clerics called Imam that study and sing the Koran. So you have a state education of religious clerics. Turkish laicité means State direction, directoire: the state directs and channels religion. Now a big question in Turkey is whether the laicité is the same for all Turkish citizens not just the Muslim ones. As far for Christian church proprieties in Turkey there is a case in front of the European Court of Human Rights because there is the claim that the way Turkey is interpreting laicité is actually against the way the European convention of human rights - to which Turkey is a member - does. Laicité must be coupled with equal and fair treatment of all religious perspectives but it usually never is. I can’t speak much of the French case but for what I see now there is an attempt to control the religiosity of the immigrant community by building up more councils of migrants to communicate with the state; this has been true for the Jewish communities since Napoleon. They are trying to do the same thing with the Muslim, there’s a Muslim council that deals with the state directly. It’s always a question of control, being the state an institution of domination, one way or another.
Tuesday, 17 March 2009
Beyond the book
The demure young woman with her charming manners and friendly smile was something of a shock. Dressed from head to toe in abaya and hijab, surely this could not be Rajaa Alsanea, whose debut novel was banned by her government, denounced in Friday prayers and who received death threats from outraged countrymen for bringing her nation’s women into disrepute.
Surely the author of the 2005 publishing sensation Girls of Riyadh would be some sort of rebel cocking a snook at Saudi Arabia for forcing its women into living a submissive and repressed lifestyle in a male-dominated society.
It is quite the reverse, actually. In a quiet corner of a Dubai hotel, the 27-year-old explained that she loves her country and intends to settle down and live there after she completes her specialist studies in endodontics in America. Another shock. How could the author of a bestseller that is now likely to be made into a movie, not want to be a writer? Why would she want to fix people’s teeth for a living?
“I may be a good writer, but I’m also a very good dentist and that’s what I am going to be. It’s a part of my life that the public don’t know about,” she says, laughing. “I’m getting the highest results in my specialisation, root canals. Dentistry balances my life. Going to work knowing that you’re not famous puts your feet on the ground. Dentistry is my job and writing will always be my passion,” she says firmly, insisting that in her world it is perfectly possible to do both.
Alsanea, whose three older brothers are doctors and whose sister and another brother are orthodontists, studied for her Bachelor of Dentistry at King Saud University in Riyadh before moving to Chicago to do her masters at the University of Illinois. She gained her MSc last year and is now studying for her specialist American Boards degree in endodontics.
“It’s a big thing to get onto the course. I went to Chicago because it’s an excellent dental school and one of my brothers and my sister studied there,” she says with some pride.
She is also working on her second novel and starting to think about a screenplay which she intends to write herself. She is currently considering offers from several film companies and is reluctant simply to turn the project over to somebody else. The prospect of a fat cheque from a big Hollywood studio doesn’t appear to be a factor in her decision-making process. “If I do the movie, I will be writing the screenplay. I am in love with that work. It’s my baby and I don’t want it to be misinterpreted. I haven’t signed anything but it will probably be an American film. It’s a very difficult thing because we don’t have a movie industry in Saudi.”
Writing the screenplay will postpone publication of her second novel, as yet untitled. She says it is a more mature work than her first, which she started writing at the age of 18. “People will definitely have the feeling that I have grown up and matured. I have lived outside my country and experienced a different culture and all of this reflects on the person that I am today. Hopefully, it will be published next year or maybe in two years. Over there [in Chicago], my book has a ‘local author’ sticker on it. People are very proud of me there. They even asked me to do Girls of Chicago,” she says.
As the author of a controversial bestselling first novel, she is much in demand as a speaker at international literary festivals and book fairs all over the world and will speak at the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair, which starts on Saturday. She also spoke at the Emirates Airline International Festival of Literature in Dubai last month. Girls of Riyadh tells the stories of four young Saudi women from wealthy families growing up in a closed society.
The book chronicles the love lives of the girls, Gamrah, Lamees, Michelle – who is half Saudi and half American – and Sadeem. It is told in the form of a series of e-mails from an unnamed narrator and describes relationships between young men and women in the conservative Saudi Arabian Islamic culture in a way that had never been dealt with before, touching on tricky subjects such as infidelity, homosexuality and domestic violence.
When it was first published in Beirut in Arabic four years ago, it was immediately banned in Saudi Arabia because of what was seen as inflammatory content. Black-market copies were smuggled into the country and soon the internet was abuzz with excited chatter about the new literary sensation. Alsanea was eventually given permission to publish it in Saudi Arabia and it became a bestseller there. It was translated into English in January 2008.
Safely ensconced in the classrooms of her Chicago dental college, Alsanea was largely but not altogether cushioned from the storm her novel caused back home. “I lost friends over the book. It was sad. The book was banned for six months. My scholarship was threatened. I was mentioned in Friday prayers and you can guess what they were saying. It was not pleasant. I received life-threatening e-mails and letters and it affected my life,” she says.
At the height of the controversy she was receiving more than 1,000 emails a day, which she attempted to answer personally, many supportive but many angry and threatening. A group of furious citizens filed a lawsuit with the Court of Grievances in Riyadh against the Ministry of Information for giving the author permission to distribute the novel and demanding that Alsanea be punished for tarnishing the image of Saudi girls. The court rejected their claims.
Alsanea’s close-knit family backed her fully and she says she would never have dared publish without their support. “You can’t publish in a very conservative country without a circle of protection. One of my brothers suggested that I published under an assumed name but I refused. The good thing was that after the book was published in Lebanon, it was allowed to be sold in my country. With the internet you can’t control censorship. The internet has challenged the myth of censorship,” she says.
She grew up as the youngest of six children in considerable comfort in an upper-middle-class Riyadh family. Her father, a journalist and editor, died when she was eight and her mother encouraged all her children to gain a university education and broaden their horizons. “Ours was a very liberal family and I have always known that I would become a writer. I won my first writing competition in a children’s magazine when I was seven. I don’t remember the subject but I remember the Mickey Mouse watch that I won. At school I was always writing and performing plays, so it wasn’t a huge shock for people when I released the book because they have always known that I had this passion and talent for writing.”
Growing up in a family of doctors and dentists, however, she developed a keen interest in medicine and dentistry. “I grew up thinking that I don’t want to make a living in writing. I thought it would kill it for me and make me less creative. This will put pressure on me when I’m writing and I’m happy with this decision. It’s not the same in the Arab world as it is in the West. In the Arab world writers don’t make a lot of money out of their books.”
An avid reader, Alsanea was always aware that in Saudi Arabia there was very little in the way of novels for young women of her generation.
“There was always a gap between intellectuals and readers, whether it was due to the very sophisticated language used in the books or the fact that young people in Saudi preferred to read blogs. The more sophisticated you sound, the more intellectual you were. That was the attitude. Also novels written in Saudi were mostly written by older male authors.
“I was criticised for using Saudi dialect in the novel but I did that on purpose as I didn’t have that urge to be distant from my readers. I wanted to write a novel that I saw myself in as a young girl in Saudi Arabia. I was also criticised for the title that was very general, but I wanted something that describes many of the different types of women I see on a daily basis in my country.”
People often ask her which one of the four girls, five if you count the narrator, represents herself. They also want to know if she is still friends with the others.
“Actually, there were no girlfriends in real life. It’s all fiction. The stories do happen. These were more than four characters. The stories were gathered from 50 or 100 girls in Saudi. I did put parts of my personality in each one of them and I do relate with the stories that I wrote about. Most girls in Saudi relate to one or other of them. The book is not about a personal experience – it’s about a generation’s experiences.”
Before she was published, Alsanea sent her manuscript to Dr Ghazi al Gosaibi, a prominent liberal author and politician, whose writing she admires. It reached him via a chain of about seven people and one day Alsanea received a phone call from him. “I nearly had a heart attack. He was a very humble and funny kind of a guy. He said he usually has a 40-page test for a book. He called me in 30 minutes saying that I passed the test and he was on page 100. That phone call changed my life for ever. It was a magical moment, a dream come true that your mentor and the writer that you grew up reading read something that you wrote. He got the book exactly the way I wanted people to get it.”
Knowing that she was unlikely to receive permission if she were to submit her manuscript to the Ministry of Information, she contacted a publisher in Beirut. The novel came out in September 2005, three months after Alsanea graduated from dental college. “The day after it was published in Lebanon, I did my first Saudi newspaper interview which tells you how quickly the book reached Saudi. Many others followed and there were days when you could read 10 articles in one newspaper because there was such a debate.”
Despite the controversy her book caused for shining a light on the seamier side of the lives of young Saudis, Alsanea is passionately attached to her culture. She always wears a hijab in public even at university in Chicago, although she doesn’t wear an abaya in the States. In the clinic, she will wear a long-sleeved shirt under her medical scrubs.
“It was an entirely personal decision. It reflects a generation or part of a generation of Muslim girls who are religious but at the same time open-minded and open to other cultures and experiences without losing their religious and Islamic identity.”
When she first went to Chicago, she lived with her brother and sister. This year, for the first time, she has been living on her own in a small studio apartment. Looking after herself took a little getting used to. “I had to get used to doing my own laundry, driving a car, buying my own groceries, cooking and all those things that I hadn’t done before.
“It took me two and a half years to start cooking. I will cook the traditional kapsa: rice and chicken with raisins and caramelised onions. Sometimes I cook for friends, but I have noticed that American people are less open-minded towards food. They like traditional eggs and bacon, bagels and cheese. I tried to convince them to eat a few Saudi dishes but I wasn’t successful, so I ended up eating everything that I cooked and I gained 15kg since I went to the USA.”
Alsanea has a wide circle of friends, she says, dissolving into a fit of giggles when asked if she had ever been in love. She’s clearly not unlike her fictional characters in some respects. Although she insists that she will marry for love, she is adamant that she will only marry a Muslim and it will be somebody of whom her family approves.
“I don’t have a boyfriend. I do have friends but I haven’t had someone who I would consider closer than a friend. But my family would support me if I ever fall in love.
“A non-Muslim would not be an option because I would not be allowed religiously to marry him. We don’t have civil marriage and I’m not the kind of person that would want to live totally away from my culture and religion. There are plenty of nice Muslim men, although you can’t control your heart. I would like to be married and have children but I don’t stress about it. I want to fall in love and I want things to happen naturally. I totally want to take this decision for myself and I want to blame myself if it goes bad.”
She sees her future back in Riyadh, still writing novels but working as an orthodontist and staying close to her family.
“I am very attached to my culture and my language; even though I sometimes write in English I think in Arabic. I know for a fact that I am not going to live outside Saudi unless something changes in the future. I love my country and being around my family. That’s the most important thing for me.”
Surely the author of the 2005 publishing sensation Girls of Riyadh would be some sort of rebel cocking a snook at Saudi Arabia for forcing its women into living a submissive and repressed lifestyle in a male-dominated society.
It is quite the reverse, actually. In a quiet corner of a Dubai hotel, the 27-year-old explained that she loves her country and intends to settle down and live there after she completes her specialist studies in endodontics in America. Another shock. How could the author of a bestseller that is now likely to be made into a movie, not want to be a writer? Why would she want to fix people’s teeth for a living?
“I may be a good writer, but I’m also a very good dentist and that’s what I am going to be. It’s a part of my life that the public don’t know about,” she says, laughing. “I’m getting the highest results in my specialisation, root canals. Dentistry balances my life. Going to work knowing that you’re not famous puts your feet on the ground. Dentistry is my job and writing will always be my passion,” she says firmly, insisting that in her world it is perfectly possible to do both.
Alsanea, whose three older brothers are doctors and whose sister and another brother are orthodontists, studied for her Bachelor of Dentistry at King Saud University in Riyadh before moving to Chicago to do her masters at the University of Illinois. She gained her MSc last year and is now studying for her specialist American Boards degree in endodontics.
“It’s a big thing to get onto the course. I went to Chicago because it’s an excellent dental school and one of my brothers and my sister studied there,” she says with some pride.
She is also working on her second novel and starting to think about a screenplay which she intends to write herself. She is currently considering offers from several film companies and is reluctant simply to turn the project over to somebody else. The prospect of a fat cheque from a big Hollywood studio doesn’t appear to be a factor in her decision-making process. “If I do the movie, I will be writing the screenplay. I am in love with that work. It’s my baby and I don’t want it to be misinterpreted. I haven’t signed anything but it will probably be an American film. It’s a very difficult thing because we don’t have a movie industry in Saudi.”
Writing the screenplay will postpone publication of her second novel, as yet untitled. She says it is a more mature work than her first, which she started writing at the age of 18. “People will definitely have the feeling that I have grown up and matured. I have lived outside my country and experienced a different culture and all of this reflects on the person that I am today. Hopefully, it will be published next year or maybe in two years. Over there [in Chicago], my book has a ‘local author’ sticker on it. People are very proud of me there. They even asked me to do Girls of Chicago,” she says.
As the author of a controversial bestselling first novel, she is much in demand as a speaker at international literary festivals and book fairs all over the world and will speak at the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair, which starts on Saturday. She also spoke at the Emirates Airline International Festival of Literature in Dubai last month. Girls of Riyadh tells the stories of four young Saudi women from wealthy families growing up in a closed society.
The book chronicles the love lives of the girls, Gamrah, Lamees, Michelle – who is half Saudi and half American – and Sadeem. It is told in the form of a series of e-mails from an unnamed narrator and describes relationships between young men and women in the conservative Saudi Arabian Islamic culture in a way that had never been dealt with before, touching on tricky subjects such as infidelity, homosexuality and domestic violence.
When it was first published in Beirut in Arabic four years ago, it was immediately banned in Saudi Arabia because of what was seen as inflammatory content. Black-market copies were smuggled into the country and soon the internet was abuzz with excited chatter about the new literary sensation. Alsanea was eventually given permission to publish it in Saudi Arabia and it became a bestseller there. It was translated into English in January 2008.
Safely ensconced in the classrooms of her Chicago dental college, Alsanea was largely but not altogether cushioned from the storm her novel caused back home. “I lost friends over the book. It was sad. The book was banned for six months. My scholarship was threatened. I was mentioned in Friday prayers and you can guess what they were saying. It was not pleasant. I received life-threatening e-mails and letters and it affected my life,” she says.
At the height of the controversy she was receiving more than 1,000 emails a day, which she attempted to answer personally, many supportive but many angry and threatening. A group of furious citizens filed a lawsuit with the Court of Grievances in Riyadh against the Ministry of Information for giving the author permission to distribute the novel and demanding that Alsanea be punished for tarnishing the image of Saudi girls. The court rejected their claims.
Alsanea’s close-knit family backed her fully and she says she would never have dared publish without their support. “You can’t publish in a very conservative country without a circle of protection. One of my brothers suggested that I published under an assumed name but I refused. The good thing was that after the book was published in Lebanon, it was allowed to be sold in my country. With the internet you can’t control censorship. The internet has challenged the myth of censorship,” she says.
She grew up as the youngest of six children in considerable comfort in an upper-middle-class Riyadh family. Her father, a journalist and editor, died when she was eight and her mother encouraged all her children to gain a university education and broaden their horizons. “Ours was a very liberal family and I have always known that I would become a writer. I won my first writing competition in a children’s magazine when I was seven. I don’t remember the subject but I remember the Mickey Mouse watch that I won. At school I was always writing and performing plays, so it wasn’t a huge shock for people when I released the book because they have always known that I had this passion and talent for writing.”
Growing up in a family of doctors and dentists, however, she developed a keen interest in medicine and dentistry. “I grew up thinking that I don’t want to make a living in writing. I thought it would kill it for me and make me less creative. This will put pressure on me when I’m writing and I’m happy with this decision. It’s not the same in the Arab world as it is in the West. In the Arab world writers don’t make a lot of money out of their books.”
An avid reader, Alsanea was always aware that in Saudi Arabia there was very little in the way of novels for young women of her generation.
“There was always a gap between intellectuals and readers, whether it was due to the very sophisticated language used in the books or the fact that young people in Saudi preferred to read blogs. The more sophisticated you sound, the more intellectual you were. That was the attitude. Also novels written in Saudi were mostly written by older male authors.
“I was criticised for using Saudi dialect in the novel but I did that on purpose as I didn’t have that urge to be distant from my readers. I wanted to write a novel that I saw myself in as a young girl in Saudi Arabia. I was also criticised for the title that was very general, but I wanted something that describes many of the different types of women I see on a daily basis in my country.”
People often ask her which one of the four girls, five if you count the narrator, represents herself. They also want to know if she is still friends with the others.
“Actually, there were no girlfriends in real life. It’s all fiction. The stories do happen. These were more than four characters. The stories were gathered from 50 or 100 girls in Saudi. I did put parts of my personality in each one of them and I do relate with the stories that I wrote about. Most girls in Saudi relate to one or other of them. The book is not about a personal experience – it’s about a generation’s experiences.”
Before she was published, Alsanea sent her manuscript to Dr Ghazi al Gosaibi, a prominent liberal author and politician, whose writing she admires. It reached him via a chain of about seven people and one day Alsanea received a phone call from him. “I nearly had a heart attack. He was a very humble and funny kind of a guy. He said he usually has a 40-page test for a book. He called me in 30 minutes saying that I passed the test and he was on page 100. That phone call changed my life for ever. It was a magical moment, a dream come true that your mentor and the writer that you grew up reading read something that you wrote. He got the book exactly the way I wanted people to get it.”
Knowing that she was unlikely to receive permission if she were to submit her manuscript to the Ministry of Information, she contacted a publisher in Beirut. The novel came out in September 2005, three months after Alsanea graduated from dental college. “The day after it was published in Lebanon, I did my first Saudi newspaper interview which tells you how quickly the book reached Saudi. Many others followed and there were days when you could read 10 articles in one newspaper because there was such a debate.”
Despite the controversy her book caused for shining a light on the seamier side of the lives of young Saudis, Alsanea is passionately attached to her culture. She always wears a hijab in public even at university in Chicago, although she doesn’t wear an abaya in the States. In the clinic, she will wear a long-sleeved shirt under her medical scrubs.
“It was an entirely personal decision. It reflects a generation or part of a generation of Muslim girls who are religious but at the same time open-minded and open to other cultures and experiences without losing their religious and Islamic identity.”
When she first went to Chicago, she lived with her brother and sister. This year, for the first time, she has been living on her own in a small studio apartment. Looking after herself took a little getting used to. “I had to get used to doing my own laundry, driving a car, buying my own groceries, cooking and all those things that I hadn’t done before.
“It took me two and a half years to start cooking. I will cook the traditional kapsa: rice and chicken with raisins and caramelised onions. Sometimes I cook for friends, but I have noticed that American people are less open-minded towards food. They like traditional eggs and bacon, bagels and cheese. I tried to convince them to eat a few Saudi dishes but I wasn’t successful, so I ended up eating everything that I cooked and I gained 15kg since I went to the USA.”
Alsanea has a wide circle of friends, she says, dissolving into a fit of giggles when asked if she had ever been in love. She’s clearly not unlike her fictional characters in some respects. Although she insists that she will marry for love, she is adamant that she will only marry a Muslim and it will be somebody of whom her family approves.
“I don’t have a boyfriend. I do have friends but I haven’t had someone who I would consider closer than a friend. But my family would support me if I ever fall in love.
“A non-Muslim would not be an option because I would not be allowed religiously to marry him. We don’t have civil marriage and I’m not the kind of person that would want to live totally away from my culture and religion. There are plenty of nice Muslim men, although you can’t control your heart. I would like to be married and have children but I don’t stress about it. I want to fall in love and I want things to happen naturally. I totally want to take this decision for myself and I want to blame myself if it goes bad.”
She sees her future back in Riyadh, still writing novels but working as an orthodontist and staying close to her family.
“I am very attached to my culture and my language; even though I sometimes write in English I think in Arabic. I know for a fact that I am not going to live outside Saudi unless something changes in the future. I love my country and being around my family. That’s the most important thing for me.”
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