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| Islamic Feminism Finds a
Different Voice The Muslim women's movement is discovering its roots in Islam, not in imitating Western feminists. 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 lounge 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." Occasionally an observer took exception to
such heated exotics. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, a poet and wife of the
first British ambassador to the Sublime Porte of Turkey, noted that most
Western accounts about harems tended to be written by men, based on
hearsay. In 1717, she wrote to a friend in London: "Your whole letter
is full of mistakes from one end to 'tother. I see you have taken your
ideas of Turkey from that worthy author Dumont, who has writ with equal
ignorance and confidence. 'Tis a particular pleasure to me here to read
the voyages to the Levant, which are generally so far remov'd from Truth
and so full of Absurditys I am very well diverted with 'em. They never
fail giving you an Account of the Women, which 'tis certain they never
saw, and talking very wisely of the Genius of the Men, into whose Company
they are never admitted, and very often describe Mosques, which they dare
not peep into." Lady Mary was a product of the
Enlightenment and an adherent of Deism, that benevolent belief that saw
all religions, including Islam, as worthy of respect. But, by the 19th
century, with the Industrial Revolution and the onset of imperialism and
colonialism, different images of Muslim women began to emerge from Western
women's observations. The new image was that of a combination household
slave and baby machine, a pathetic creature. This theme runs throughout
missionaries' diaries and travel accounts. It was the burden of Western
women to improve and enlighten these ladies they saw as downtrodden and
whose plight they attributed to Islam, not poverty. In 1966, Germaine
Tillion, a respected French ethnographer, wrote of Muslim women: "The
feminine veil has become a symbol; that of slavery of one portion of
humanity." Hidden or Protected? I, too, held such views, until I came to
know Middle Eastern Muslim women as friends and learned about the
diversity of their lives. For there is no single typical Muslim woman, any
more than there is a single Christian, Jewish, Buddhist or Hindu woman.
Muslim women's lives -- like Muslim men's lives -- differ depending on
their social class, economic means, their rural or urban roots, their
family position, and their interpretation and practice of their religion.
There is no central authority that dictates to all Muslims what is and
what is not religiously sanctioned behavior. Each group within the larger
Umma, or community of Muslims, regulates its own behavior, according to
the Koran and the sayings and traditions known as hadiths. But any given
group also uses its traditions and social customs to interpret the Koran.
Such interpretations are offered by jurists educated in one of six schools
of Koranic law -- four under the Sunni and two under the Shia. For
example, Mut'a, or "temporary marriage," (a couple signs a
contract to be married for a specific amount of time) is allowed by the
Shia, but forbidden by the Sunnis. The Sunnis split inheritance in a way
the Shia believe is unjust to women. If a Sunni father dies leaving no
sons, the daughters still inherit only part of the estate; the rest goes
to the nearest male relative. If there are no sons, Shia law gives
daughters all of the father's estate. Proper woman's dress is also subject to
diverse interpretation. Koranic verses suggest -- as do Biblical verses --
that women should be modest and cover their beauty before strangers. Does
that mean complete cover, as in Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan? Or partial
cover, such as a long, loose dress and headscarf? Or something in between? Though social practice varies throughout
the Islamic world, Westerners have often described Islam -- and
particularly women's roles in Islam -- as static and fixed. Yet, today
women's proper role is a central political issue throughout the Muslim
world. In most countries women are seen as the center of the family, as
complementary to men, who, with women, are the reproducers of family
lineage, culture and religious belief. But as Middle Eastern economic,
political and social life changes radically, people are looking back to
their shared religious roots for identity. The debates now going on within
a revived Islamic community center on how Islamic faith should guide the
direction of both men and women in the new millennium, with particular
emphasis on women's place in society. The contemporary Islamic women's movement,
then, must be viewed in relation to cultural and religious values, rather
than in the context of modern, Western, feminist stereotypes. Islam
enjoins both men and women to marry and have children. In this way, both
become mature persons and complete Muslims. In Islam, sex within the
bounds of marriage is to be enjoyed as one of the pleasures of this world,
a view closer to Judaism than to Christianity. In contrast, Christians
have always celebrated the elevation of the spirit and the suppression of
the flesh. Historically, Christian women have been
bound to the church, but without the Muslim woman's symbolic motherhood
powers and role within the family. They were forbidden divorce until after
the Reformation, and, most importantly, lacked economic resources of their
own. Even Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who was beholden to her own husband
for every penny, noted that Turkish women were "rich having all their
money in their own hands, which they take with 'em upon a divorce with an
addition which he is oblig'd to give 'em." Following the Industrial Revolution in the
19th century, Western men and women fought for the emancipation of women.
The West began to see itself as advanced, a role model for other nations
and peoples. This view continues today, with Western women citing their
20th century freedoms as shining examples for others to follow. As late as
1982, Juliette Minces, a well-known French feminist, wrote, "Is it
Euro-centric to put forward the lives of Western women as the only
democratic, just and forward-looking model? I do not think so. They (the
Muslim women, that is) must become like us." Muslim women are searching their own
traditions for the means to achieve gender justice, however, rather than
trying to be "like us." One of the principal avenues of their
struggle is the arena of religion. This may perplex the average Westerner,
who does not see religion and women's liberation on the same page.
Certainly the West has believed that church and state must be separated
before democracy can develop. But in Islamic society, no such division has
ever taken place. In Islamic countries, religion, as Islamic scholar John
A. Williams once stated, "is not part of the structure, it is the
structure." Since religion equals power, Muslim women's move to work
for gender justice through the existing power structure seems a reasonable
and advantageous decision. To the average Westerner, however,
religious Islam does not seem at all reasonable. The term conjures up
media photos of women wearing veils, modest long dresses or headscarves.
To see women on the streets and in their places of work in "Islamic
dress" only proves what was never doubted: that Muslim women are
dominated by men and forced to look unattractive by husbands and fathers.
But the reality behind the image is complex and varies from place to
place. In Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan state law obliges women to dress in
this fashion. But that is not the case in Egypt, Morocco or most other
Middle Eastern countries. In Tunisia, the veil is forbidden. In Turkey, it
is a source of controversy, as secular feminists march against its use and
religious women march for their freedom to wear it. Yet, in Western minds
the "cover" is an indication of oppression. Perhaps that
assumption comes from the west's own experience that religious states and
societies may be oppressive. Gender Justice Many Muslim women are finding that
religious affiliation is often more freeing than restricting. A woman
wearing hijab, modest dress, is able to move more easily in crowded
streets and can expect respect rather than harassment in the work place.
Westerners like Gustave Flaubert viewed Islamic society as charged with
eroticism; men of the society certainly viewed women as either sexual
objects or mother figures. But as more and more Muslim women become
religiously identified and objects of public respect more than sexual
desire, that is changing. Islamic dress also carries authority with it. A
growing group of highly educated, religious women see themselves as
engaged in a new effort to use their education to, as they say, look deep
into the spirit of the Koran and find there the gender justice they
believe was the original intent of the Prophet Mohammed. Hundreds of
women's groups -- with more than 300 in Cairo alone -- have sprung up all
over the Middle East. They have been formed not only as secular
consciousness-raising groups, but also as Koranic study groups. Thus women
have become today not only the subjects of intense religious debate, but
also participants in that discourse. In the past, men interpreted the
Koranic verses and the hadiths that described women's rights. Women
themselves are now arguing for new evaluations of those older
interpretations -- and supporting their arguments with evidence from the
sacred texts. These new movements differ from earlier
Middle Eastern women's movements because they cross class lines. Further,
they must be seen in the background of other developments in Middle
Eastern society in the past 50 years. The new nationalist governments that
came to power after the end of European colonial rule made many promises:
equal access to education and health care for men and women, land and
judicial reform, industrialization. Though not all promises have been
fulfilled, most countries have made great strides in education. From a
tiny minority of elite men and women in school before the 1950s, the
number of men and women receiving primary, secondary and post-secondary
education has jumped enormously. In Egypt, which has a literacy rate of 50
percent, half the students in universities are women. According to UNESCO
comparative surveys, in 1959 in Morocco, three years after independence,
only 2,500 men and women were enrolled in university programs. By 1997 the
total was more than 250,000 students; half were women. In Saudi Arabia,
literacy rates for women have climbed from two percent in 1970 to 48
percent in 1990. The transformation of the Middle East
economy from rural and agricultural to urban and industrial has meant that
most families need two incomes to survive. Thus, for the first time, women
have entered the labor force, not to take "creatively fulfilling
jobs," but to put bread on the table. In 1973 studies showed that
only 7 percent of Middle Eastern women worked outside the home. Today,
that figure is nearly 30 percent. And official statistics do not include
women who work part-time, domestic workers, nannies or seasonal
agricultural laborers. The new Middle Eastern woman can be found in almost
every arena: education, economics, the media, hospitals, factories, the
courts, banks and industrial complexes. One of the newest representatives
to OPEC is Kuwaiti Siham Rizouki, who was elected chairman for 1998. And
although some countries still do not allow women to serve as judges, 20
percent of all judges in Morocco are women, more than in the U.S. Egyptian
Heba Handoussa, an economist, heads the powerful Economic Forum of the
Middle East and North Africa. Consciousness Raising What, then, if they don't want to be
"like us," do Middle Eastern women want? Equal pay for equal
work is the law in many Middle Eastern countries, though it is not always
implemented. Egyptian factories employing more than 100 women are required
to provide free childcare. Maternity leave, which is justified as better
for the family, is taken for granted in professional jobs. Abortion is
more or less accepted, if it is seen as better for the family or for the
mother. Middle Eastern women do not seem interested in destroying the
family structure, but they do want to equalize their position in it. Hence
the call for equal access to divorce, equal access to child custody, equal
inheritance and an end to polygamy. These issues are seldom discussed
publicly in Saudi Arabia, but Moroccan women campaigned successfully in
1994 to partially improve child custody laws. In the past, custody
automatically went to fathers, but now mothers receive custody, at least
until they remarry. Women in Egypt recently celebrated a great
triumph: the passage by the People's Assembly of khula, or consensual
divorce. Women are now free to ask for and get a divorce if they are
willing to return their dowries; the law was justified on religious
grounds. "The khula right is undoubtedly
provided in the Islamic sharia. It is mentioned explicitly in Quran and
sunna," said Muhammad Hakashi, a leading scholar at Dar al Ifta, the
official body which issues religious decisions (fatwas) in cooperation
with Al-Azhar University, the Islamic institution that helps define the
laws of public morality in Egypt. My friends in the religious women's
groups who supported the move said that the right had been in Islamic law
all along, but they had to point it out to the men. Western feminists may rightly ask about the
incidence of honor crimes (whereby a brother may kill a sister who has
committed adultery to uphold the family honor), female genital mutilation
and the total suppression of women by the Taliban government in
Afghanistan. It is important to note that these practices are based on
local social mores, rather than on Islam. The difference today, I believe,
is that women are no longer content to accept the status quo or worse, but
are actively taking steps against these crimes. Women's groups in Eqypt
and the Sudan are fighting against genital mutilation, and have won some
victories. For example, a joint effort by Muslim and Coptic women has
helped end the practice in Upper Eqypt. Rana Hussaini, a Jordanian women's
activist, heads a task force seeking to reform laws governing honor crimes
in her country. Women's non-governmental organizations across the Muslim
world are battling for better lives for women and children. Organizations
such as Mara al Jadida in Egypt are fighting domestic violence, while
women-run orphanages and adoption agencies in Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt
are dealing with the growing numbers of abandoned children. Other groups,
such as Parsa Kabul, an NGO based in Kabul with an office in the U.S., are
quietly sending aid to the isolated women of Afghanistan. Certainly, women of any society will see
women of another society through the prison of their own values and
stereotypes. Both my mother and I did that long ago. But if we in the West
look carefully at what is actually going on in the Middle East, if we can
see behind the veil, it is clear that Muslim women are working hard to
improve themselves and their families, to live comfortably and peaceably
in the world. In that struggle, they are utilizing elements of their own
tradition and culture. This includes Islam. For this, they are worthy of
our admiration and respect. Their efforts offer alternate cultural methods
to resolve the difference between males and females, which, as British
author and journalist Rebecca West wrote in her early novel, The Thinking
Reed, "is the rock on which civilization will split before it can
reach any goal that could justify its expenditure of effort. There are
many things in life that seem to be contradictions, and we will be able to
reconcile them only when we know more." According to psychologists, deep
stereotypes take longer to disappear than superficial ones, because they
are based on gut instinct and unexamined emotional reactions. For this
reason, the West has clung to stereotypes long associated with Islam. As
descendants of the philosophers of the Age of Reason, we should know
better. But religiously based hostilities have always had great vitality,
just like traditional attitudes toward the role of women. Such attitudes
and hostilities may remain in place long after the particular religious
beliefs have disappeared or women's roles as they are lived no longer bear
any resemblance to past reality. Elizabeth Warnock Fernea's latest book is
In Search of Islamic Feminism. Copyright © 2000 AFSA, American Foreign
Service Association, 2101 E Street NW, Washington, DC 20037 |