More Observations of Women in the Islamic World

(Readers,  this is a guest column from one of my long time friends who spent ten years living and working in Saudi Arabia.  These are his observations based on that experience.) 

Dear Jan,

It is not the black robes and veil that oppress women.  It is the entire Islamic culture that oppresses women.  There are a dozen mainstream laws of Islam which demand and require that women become and remain second class citizens in any Islamic society.  "Women are your tilth" (property as a field or garden) the faithful are told in so many words in the Koran "Use them as you will".  Women can not join men in the mosque; they must be invisible behind a screen in the back.  Men can divorce at will; women must petition an Islamic court.  Men can take up to 4 wives at any one time; women can have only one husband.  Men can marry Jews or Christians if they wish.  Women must marry only Muslim men.  In a court of law a man's testimony is worth that of two women.  If a man who has washed for prayers encounters a woman, he must repeat his ablutions because contact with a woman makes him unclean.  After sex, there are no tender cuddles in the afterglow; the man must rise immediately to wash off the pollution of contact.  Women taken in adultery are stoned to death.  Men have so many opportunities for fornication, what with multiple wives and concubines and ''temporary" wives, etc. that you can never (well almost never) hear of a man getting in trouble for adultery.  

Add to that the cultural baggage of Arab, Persian, Turkish and Egyptian societies, and those black robes are actually the least of women's worries.  In Saudi Arabia, those women could not drive or even the leave the house without their husbands' permission.  

One of my co-workers in Saudi Arabia, "Al", a fellow Okie, told me about a rough and ready Arab technician he worked with, a very hard case who kept a British .303 rifle in the trunk of his Chevy sedan.  One day this technician just took off from work, didn't sign out for vacation, didn't leave word, just wasn't there for a week.  

When he came back, Al asked him, "Hey Abdullah, where have you been?"

Abdullah answered casually, "I had to go kill my sister."

Al did a double-take and said, "Say whaaattt???"

Abdullay said, "Yeah, my sister dishonored the family.  So me and my brothers, we took her out into the desert, shot her and buried her."

As Al told the tale, Abdullah did not even have his paycheck docked for time off work for this homicidal (sororicidal?) episode. 

The Arab women who were born into this culture were basically stuck with it.  To renounce any part of Islamic law and custom was considered heresy, and in Islam the penalty for heresy is death.  

But why any Western woman would voluntarily sign up for such a situation mystifies me.  But I knew half a dozen British and American women with stars in their eyes who married Arab men and willingly converted to Islam, took on the veil, and the black robes and the whole routine.  As converts tend to be, some of them were more Islamic than the Muslims.  There ain't no limit to human folly.  If Katy (Dale's young daughter) ever tells me she wants to marry a Muslim man, I'll knock her on the head, carry her home and lock her in the basement until common sense returns.

But, do Arab women consider themselves oppressed?  In a word, no.  They think they are being protected, and honored, and valued, and supported in the manner to which they wanted to become accustomed.  They pity western women who have to go out into the world with bare faces and bare arms and legs and make a living on their own.  They pitied the American women soldiers who came over during Desert Storm because they had to work with men and sleep in tents next to men and thus were obviously debased prostitutes of no more status than a slave.

So here is that yawning cultural divide again.  We think Islamic women are oppressed, and that the robes and veils are visible symbols of that oppression.  They think they are not, and prefer to cover up especially if Auntie and Granny are around to cry "shame" on them.  They think all you Western women are forlorn sluts and do not think the freedom to go out into the world and make their own living is worth the risk of disgrace and dishonor.  

And on that note, we and they may have to agree to disagree.

All best wishes,

Dale