11182
07-06-2005, 01:44 PM
Islamic Feminism Finds a Different Voice
The Muslim women's movement is discovering its roots in Islam, not in imitating Western feminists.
By Elizabeth Warnock Fernea I first went to the Middle East as a bride in 1956. My new husband, Robert Fernea, was setting out to do the field research for his doctoral dissertation in social anthropology at the University of Chicago and we settled in a small southern Iraqi village. Before we left, my mother counseled me to "try to enlighten" Middle Eastern women, because, she said, they were in grave need of Western women's help. The little I knew about the Middle East at the time seemed to be in accord with my mother's opinion.
Rather than welcoming my enlightened self, though, the Muslim women of the town where we were to live pitied me. To them, I did not even come close to the local ideal of womanhood. I was childless, thin, had short hair. I couldn't cook and, since I had no gold, my parents and my husband's parents evidently did not value me. Further, my husband had to be cruel, since he had brought me all the way from America alone, without any of my female relatives for company and support. This was further indication that a beneficial marriage had not been arranged properly by my parents.
Still, instead of ignoring and rejecting me, these kind women, young and old, took me in, and proceed to enlighten me. They taught me to cook rice, helped me improve my Arabic, advised me to get more gold from my husband as insurance against an uncertain future, invited me to weddings and religious occasions. Quite literally, they took care of me, benighted creature that they perceived me to be. I am forever in their debt for their ministrations.
To be pitied for what I cherished -- free choice of a spouse, opportunity for education, freedom to travel -- was a humbling experience. It made me re-evaluate my view of the world of women. Yet, when, on returning to the U. S. after two years of village life, I tried to explain my new understanding of and respect for cultural differences, my mother and my old college friends looked at me in disbelief. They suggested that I was misled, perhaps even brainwashed, since they were certain that Muslim women were living in ignorance and oppression. I replied that I had no desire to live the life of Iraqi village women, but that their views of the world and ways of living in it were at least worthy of respect. My experience led to my first book, Guests of the Sheik, a chronicle of those two years in Iraq that literally changed my life. I have been writing about, lecturing on and filming Middle Eastern women ever since.
But I am still asked the same questions today that my mother and my friends asked 44 years ago. What is it about a Muslim, Middle Eastern woman that evokes such strong negative responses in the West? After all, the West is a patriarchal society, too, sanctioned by the same monotheistic belief in God the Father as Judaism and Islam, the other two Abrahamic religions. But in any Western discussion of women's condition around the world, Islam always implies a worst case scenario. Curiously, the same stereotypes are not found in Western representations of Hindu women whose official legal status falls far below that of Muslim women. When a Hindu woman marries, for instance, she is formally detached from her own family and officially becomes part of her husband's family. This means that if her husband dies, the wife has no place to go.
Women and the Koran In contrast, Muslim women remain members of their natal families throughout their lives. Divorced or widowed women have the right to return home and be supported. Further, under Koranic law a woman has legal status as a person and can perform religious duties similar to those of a man. She has the authority to prophesy, to accept or refuse a marriage offer, to administer economic enterprises and, most importantly, to inherit property. Though her share is only half a man's share, it is property nonetheless. Although greedy male kin have not always honored these rights, they stand on the books as sacred law and may be invoked in court by women who feel they have been unjustly treated.
When I visited the courts of Cairo and Rabat in 1995 and 1996, I met women and their lawyers who crowded the halls waiting to argue their cases to achieve what they perceived to be their just rights. Some observers have recently suggested that the outrage against Islam in the Christian medieval world had much to do with the revolutionary -- for the time -- Muslim pronouncements about women. What kind of religion would allow women to inherit? According to medieval thought, women were not capable of handling money. Economic rights like inheritance were not granted to women in England until the Married Women's Property Act in the mid-19th century. Until 1970, in some states in America, daughters still did not automatically inherit, particularly if valuable assets like farmland were at stake. Unless the father specifically designated his daughter as heir, and if there no brothers, the land passed to the nearest male relative. Muslim women have had better rights since 632 AD.
In America, the first states to grant women inheritance rights were Texas, California, Arizona and New Mexico, all of which were once under Spanish control. That means that Moorish --Islamic -- law was the basis for American women's contemporary inheritance rights.
Today, Muslim women are exercising economic and other prerogatives, moving ahead in personal and professional ways that would have been totally improbable a half century ago. Women of all social classes are moving into the labor force, into schools and universities and into the mosques, banks and courts. Scores of academic books, articles and conferences held in the Western world testify to this progress. Yet despite these changes, I keep being asked the same stereotyped questions by lay, educated Westerners. Why? The answer requires digging deeper into history.
The Middle East has always constituted an exotic "other" for the West. When Europe was still in the process of developing from a backward economy and a group of warring states, the Islamic world was a center of culture, arts, sciences and technology. A source of silks and spices, the Eastern world became for the West a fabled land of enchantment, as well as one of hidden, erotic women. Historically, the Western relationship with the Middle East has been complicated not only by these exotic images, but by religious differences which go back to the founding of Islam in the 7th century. The Prophet Muhammad saw his new belief system as arising out of Judaism and Christianity, and even termed Jews and Christians "People of the Book," that is, those with the same original beliefs. The Christian hierarchy, however, immediately labeled Islam heresy. By the 11th century, Christians mounted the Crusades, a series of wars to reclaim the Holy Land from heretical peoples. Even in 1917, the Crusades were alive in the mind of British Gen. Edmund Allenby, who is reported to have shouted as he entered Jerusalem during the Palestinian campaign in World War I: "Saladin! Saladin! Sultan of Islam! We have returned!"
This state of mind is also reflected in media accounts that refer to Muslims as "believers in Allah," as if they are referring to some false god and not simply the Arabic word for God. And until the 19th century, when lay Orientalist scholars began to translate Arabic, Hebrew, Persian and Turkish texts, all information about Islam had been translated by Christian clerics with their own points to prove.
Of course, the political clout of Muslim countries certainly contributed to their demonization in the West. The Middle East was seen as an enemy, a rival for trade and natural resources. Late in the 7th century the Arab Empire arose, spreading north and west to Sicily, Spain and even to France. Finally, the grandfather of Charlemagne stopped Muslim armies at Tours in 722, almost a century after Muhammad's death. Muslim, Jewish and Christian merchants continued to conduct a lucrative trade across the Mediterranean until Granada fell in 1492 to the Catholic monarchists, Isabella and Ferdinand. But Muslims did not disappear from the political scene. The Ottoman Muslims next pushed east from the Anatolian peninsula to the gates of Vienna.
Odalisques and Slaves
Given this historical competition and enmity, is it any wonder that the West continues to stereotype the East? Muslim women have been doubly stereotyped. Early chronicles, novels, poems, plays and travel accounts characterize the Muslim woman as "hidden," but also an odalisque, a very sexy lady, lightly clad and much bejeweled, reclining provocatively on a chaise longue while being fanned by slaves with ostrich feather fans.
In 1849, the great French novelist Gustave Flaubert, in his Travels in Egypt, gives just such a description of Kuchuk Hanum, a prostitute with whom he enjoyed a memorable one-night stand. The 19th century French painters were also fascinated with the erotic, dream-like subject matter and painted harem scenes from fables, written descriptions and their own imaginations. Eugene Delacroix' Femmes d'Alger dans leur appartement is a well-known example of what was once a painter's favorite subject. Edward William Lane, noted Arabist, in his 1860 book, Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, confidently tells his readers, "The women of Egypt have the character of being the most licentious in their feelings of all females who lay any claim to be considered as members of a civilized nation."
The Muslim women's movement is discovering its roots in Islam, not in imitating Western feminists.
By Elizabeth Warnock Fernea I first went to the Middle East as a bride in 1956. My new husband, Robert Fernea, was setting out to do the field research for his doctoral dissertation in social anthropology at the University of Chicago and we settled in a small southern Iraqi village. Before we left, my mother counseled me to "try to enlighten" Middle Eastern women, because, she said, they were in grave need of Western women's help. The little I knew about the Middle East at the time seemed to be in accord with my mother's opinion.
Rather than welcoming my enlightened self, though, the Muslim women of the town where we were to live pitied me. To them, I did not even come close to the local ideal of womanhood. I was childless, thin, had short hair. I couldn't cook and, since I had no gold, my parents and my husband's parents evidently did not value me. Further, my husband had to be cruel, since he had brought me all the way from America alone, without any of my female relatives for company and support. This was further indication that a beneficial marriage had not been arranged properly by my parents.
Still, instead of ignoring and rejecting me, these kind women, young and old, took me in, and proceed to enlighten me. They taught me to cook rice, helped me improve my Arabic, advised me to get more gold from my husband as insurance against an uncertain future, invited me to weddings and religious occasions. Quite literally, they took care of me, benighted creature that they perceived me to be. I am forever in their debt for their ministrations.
To be pitied for what I cherished -- free choice of a spouse, opportunity for education, freedom to travel -- was a humbling experience. It made me re-evaluate my view of the world of women. Yet, when, on returning to the U. S. after two years of village life, I tried to explain my new understanding of and respect for cultural differences, my mother and my old college friends looked at me in disbelief. They suggested that I was misled, perhaps even brainwashed, since they were certain that Muslim women were living in ignorance and oppression. I replied that I had no desire to live the life of Iraqi village women, but that their views of the world and ways of living in it were at least worthy of respect. My experience led to my first book, Guests of the Sheik, a chronicle of those two years in Iraq that literally changed my life. I have been writing about, lecturing on and filming Middle Eastern women ever since.
But I am still asked the same questions today that my mother and my friends asked 44 years ago. What is it about a Muslim, Middle Eastern woman that evokes such strong negative responses in the West? After all, the West is a patriarchal society, too, sanctioned by the same monotheistic belief in God the Father as Judaism and Islam, the other two Abrahamic religions. But in any Western discussion of women's condition around the world, Islam always implies a worst case scenario. Curiously, the same stereotypes are not found in Western representations of Hindu women whose official legal status falls far below that of Muslim women. When a Hindu woman marries, for instance, she is formally detached from her own family and officially becomes part of her husband's family. This means that if her husband dies, the wife has no place to go.
Women and the Koran In contrast, Muslim women remain members of their natal families throughout their lives. Divorced or widowed women have the right to return home and be supported. Further, under Koranic law a woman has legal status as a person and can perform religious duties similar to those of a man. She has the authority to prophesy, to accept or refuse a marriage offer, to administer economic enterprises and, most importantly, to inherit property. Though her share is only half a man's share, it is property nonetheless. Although greedy male kin have not always honored these rights, they stand on the books as sacred law and may be invoked in court by women who feel they have been unjustly treated.
When I visited the courts of Cairo and Rabat in 1995 and 1996, I met women and their lawyers who crowded the halls waiting to argue their cases to achieve what they perceived to be their just rights. Some observers have recently suggested that the outrage against Islam in the Christian medieval world had much to do with the revolutionary -- for the time -- Muslim pronouncements about women. What kind of religion would allow women to inherit? According to medieval thought, women were not capable of handling money. Economic rights like inheritance were not granted to women in England until the Married Women's Property Act in the mid-19th century. Until 1970, in some states in America, daughters still did not automatically inherit, particularly if valuable assets like farmland were at stake. Unless the father specifically designated his daughter as heir, and if there no brothers, the land passed to the nearest male relative. Muslim women have had better rights since 632 AD.
In America, the first states to grant women inheritance rights were Texas, California, Arizona and New Mexico, all of which were once under Spanish control. That means that Moorish --Islamic -- law was the basis for American women's contemporary inheritance rights.
Today, Muslim women are exercising economic and other prerogatives, moving ahead in personal and professional ways that would have been totally improbable a half century ago. Women of all social classes are moving into the labor force, into schools and universities and into the mosques, banks and courts. Scores of academic books, articles and conferences held in the Western world testify to this progress. Yet despite these changes, I keep being asked the same stereotyped questions by lay, educated Westerners. Why? The answer requires digging deeper into history.
The Middle East has always constituted an exotic "other" for the West. When Europe was still in the process of developing from a backward economy and a group of warring states, the Islamic world was a center of culture, arts, sciences and technology. A source of silks and spices, the Eastern world became for the West a fabled land of enchantment, as well as one of hidden, erotic women. Historically, the Western relationship with the Middle East has been complicated not only by these exotic images, but by religious differences which go back to the founding of Islam in the 7th century. The Prophet Muhammad saw his new belief system as arising out of Judaism and Christianity, and even termed Jews and Christians "People of the Book," that is, those with the same original beliefs. The Christian hierarchy, however, immediately labeled Islam heresy. By the 11th century, Christians mounted the Crusades, a series of wars to reclaim the Holy Land from heretical peoples. Even in 1917, the Crusades were alive in the mind of British Gen. Edmund Allenby, who is reported to have shouted as he entered Jerusalem during the Palestinian campaign in World War I: "Saladin! Saladin! Sultan of Islam! We have returned!"
This state of mind is also reflected in media accounts that refer to Muslims as "believers in Allah," as if they are referring to some false god and not simply the Arabic word for God. And until the 19th century, when lay Orientalist scholars began to translate Arabic, Hebrew, Persian and Turkish texts, all information about Islam had been translated by Christian clerics with their own points to prove.
Of course, the political clout of Muslim countries certainly contributed to their demonization in the West. The Middle East was seen as an enemy, a rival for trade and natural resources. Late in the 7th century the Arab Empire arose, spreading north and west to Sicily, Spain and even to France. Finally, the grandfather of Charlemagne stopped Muslim armies at Tours in 722, almost a century after Muhammad's death. Muslim, Jewish and Christian merchants continued to conduct a lucrative trade across the Mediterranean until Granada fell in 1492 to the Catholic monarchists, Isabella and Ferdinand. But Muslims did not disappear from the political scene. The Ottoman Muslims next pushed east from the Anatolian peninsula to the gates of Vienna.
Odalisques and Slaves
Given this historical competition and enmity, is it any wonder that the West continues to stereotype the East? Muslim women have been doubly stereotyped. Early chronicles, novels, poems, plays and travel accounts characterize the Muslim woman as "hidden," but also an odalisque, a very sexy lady, lightly clad and much bejeweled, reclining provocatively on a chaise longue while being fanned by slaves with ostrich feather fans.
In 1849, the great French novelist Gustave Flaubert, in his Travels in Egypt, gives just such a description of Kuchuk Hanum, a prostitute with whom he enjoyed a memorable one-night stand. The 19th century French painters were also fascinated with the erotic, dream-like subject matter and painted harem scenes from fables, written descriptions and their own imaginations. Eugene Delacroix' Femmes d'Alger dans leur appartement is a well-known example of what was once a painter's favorite subject. Edward William Lane, noted Arabist, in his 1860 book, Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, confidently tells his readers, "The women of Egypt have the character of being the most licentious in their feelings of all females who lay any claim to be considered as members of a civilized nation."