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

Perturbed, Disturbed and Angry

I was at Sam's last week, yes, Sam's  Club - Walmart's cousin, and I saw a woman dressed in a full burka.  Basically, she looked like this.  My mouth dropped open, and I literally stopped walking.   I looked again.  She was with a man, presumably her husband, and she had a little girl by the hand, who was about four.  The little girl was wearing a lightweight short sundress and a pair of sandals. 

Then, I felt this incredible rush of anger. 

I walked away really shaken and trying to figure out why I felt such anger which felt intolerant and prejudiced.  It took me a few minutes to get my feelings under control, but the sense of 'this isn't right' just wouldn't go away.  I wished I'd gone up and talked to her, but as Drake put it, "Thank God your better judgement prevailed."  What I felt was based on my Western perception that this garb symbolizes the oppression of women.  Then I had to step back and ask, does it?

First, wearing a 'burka' is NOT a requirement in the Qur'an  (Koran).  Yes, this holy book does prescribe modesty for women, but  apparently, the full covering stems from custom in the time of Mohamed rather than scripture.  So, let's say you're a 21st century Muslim woman and you choose to wear the burka.  Are you oppressed because you choose modesty in the strict Eastern interpretation?   There are some women around the world who wear the burka as a  symbol of their direct rejection of Western culture.  Others say they wear it because they don't like being judged by their bodies.

It still seems like oppression because I'm not convinced that women in an Islamic society are exercising free choice.  Are we not all brainwashed  to a greater or lesser extent by our culture?  The strict Islam culture believes in the subjugation of women and enforces this view by teaching women they must conform or they will bring shame on themselves and their families and ultimately damn themselves to hell.  Guilt and shame are powerful emotions which can cause anyone buckets of anguish and doubt.   

Clothing customs are very much a matter of culture.  Throughout history, men always seems to be obsessed with how much (or how little) women wear.  Islamic men do not have a corner on this.   In our own country's experience, clothing was very much an instrument of control.  A woman can not run, or even move very fast in 50 pounds of clothing in nine layers  which was commonly accepted dress throughout most of the 19th century.  

Corsets have been a standard undergarment since the 1600's.  The Victorians refined it into an instrument of torture by prescribing the lacing be so tight as to obstruct breathing and cause actual physical deformity.  A woman appearing in public without a corset was tantamount as a declaration of prostitution.  In most places in America in the 1800's there were laws prohibiting women from wearing trousers in public.  You could certainly expect to be arrested, and your husband/father would be chastised for allowing their wife/daughter to appear in pubic dressed indecently.  Sound familiar?

My point is that women have been conditioned throughout history to accept cultural clothing strictures, and it is very, very recently, and only in a relatively small percentage of the world that a woman ACTUALLY  has free choice. in the matter of her own clothing.  There is also no 'choice' involved if a woman is considered fair game for rape or being beaten or both if she doesn't choose to wear the burka.  Since the woman in Sam's doesn't run that risk from the general public, you have to accept she is choosing the burka.   This is America.  She can wear what she wants even if I think it's nuts.   

Some Western countries are banning the burka.  They cite the faux choice argument (pressured by men, religious custom, etc.), as well as something I think is much more important.  Burkas cover bruises.  One rationale for burka ban is that women can be more easily abused, when only their eyes and hands are visible.  There are some studies that seem to indicate women who live in societies that insist on the burka have higher rates of abuse than societies that are more clothing flexible. 

When I finally sorted myself out about why this woman at Sam's Club disturbed me so, I realized that it wasn't her that bothered me - it was the little girl whose hand she was holding.  That little girl was dressed in typical little American girl attire.  What is going to happen to her when she's thirteen?  How in good conscience can her mother wear clothing that screams oppression and subjugation over a vast part of the world?  Why would she set this example?  All said and done - that's what really, really made me so angry.  We've struggled and struggled as women to have cultural and economic equality in this country.  I don't want any little girl who lives in America to be sent the message by her own mother that inferior and unequal and subjugated to men is in ANY way OK.