Price of Honor and Nine Parts of Desire: Women In The Muslim World

I have to say that, right now, after reading I don’t know how many horror stories about women living under Islam, I’m at the point where I don’t know how much more I can handle. Add to that 1) the Muslim women defending Islamic rules about women as “necessary” to “protect” them because they are so “weak” and “emotional,” or at least as being “true liberation” of women—as opposed to the “slavery” of having to work, mix with men, and pretty much do and say what they like, and 2) so-called “feminists” and “liberals” also defending this crap, for whatever reason, whether because of moral relativism, tribalism, or flat-out hatred of Western values. Let’s just say that I get in a very ugly mood.

I’ve been reading Nine Parts of Desire by Geraldine Brooks and Price of Honor by Jan Goodwin, as well as a book of academic essays called Faith and Freedom edited by Mahnaz Afkhami, and because of what I said above, I’ve only been able to read a little bit at a time. I shudder and start to think that Allah must not exist, if He allows His followers to do all of this in His name. This isn’t really a book review, more a collection of my thoughts on the books.

But anyway...

I’ll talk about the first two now (the third in a later entry), which are very similar: Western female journalist travels through the Middle East, speaking with women in many different countries and adding her own thoughts about the subject. Both date from the mid-1990s, so in some ways they are a bit dated. Both draw attention to the rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism, which is the most serious threat to women’s rights in that part of the world. While both can be quite harsh and pointed in their criticisms of Islamic culture and even Islam, both insist that this isn't the true message of Islam.

Let me discuss that last point first and get it out of the way. Both writers insist that the oppression of women is not “true Islam,” that this is a distortion from the “true message” of Muhammad. Price of Honor even has a chapter heading entitled, “Muslims: The First Feminists.” Both, to a greater or lesser extent, buy the notion that Muhammad did an incredible job in elevating the status of women. Of course, the problem is that the people doing the “distorting” just happen to be the highest religious authorities and religious scholars. Neither book seems aware just how strange it is for a non-Muslim, Western woman to proclaim what the “true Islam” is and declare the learned muftis and sheikhs “distorters” of Islam, or to state what exactly Muhammad had in mind regarding issues of women’s rights 1400 years ago.

It is very important to understand that Islamic law, Shari’ah, is not derived from the Qur’an alone, but also from the Sunnah (tradition) of Muhammad as recorded in hadiths. It displays a near-total ignorance of orthodox Sunni (or Shi’a) Islam to attempt to derive the “real Islam” from the Qur’an alone, as both Brooks and Goodwin do, and also as many Western Muslims do. Islamic law is what is written in the books of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), not necessarily what is written in the Qur’an.

It is unfortunately evident that neither Brooks nor Goodwin really “know” their Islam. For example, X mentions slave concubines, but says that the Qur’an forbids their masters from having sex with them without their consent. This is absolutely false; I have never in my life ever seen a discussion of whether the slave girl’s consent is required to have sex with her; she is her master’s property, and he can do with her as he likes. She is a thing, no more worthy of having her feelings taken into consideration than a camel or cow.

Brooks says that Muhammad “probably would have abolished slavery” “if the times had allowed”—apparently completely innocent of the many hadiths regarding Muhammad’s possession and sale of slaves, often conducting slave auctions in the mosque grounds in Medina. Also, Muhammad did ban alcohol, even though it was presumably difficult to do. One would think that the buying and selling of human beings like cattle is a lot worse than the drinking of a glass of wine, but Muhammad did not see fit to ban it, instead insuring its continuation through the practices of slave concubinage and jihad.

Brooks, to her credit, honestly describes the divorce laws under Islam (man can divorce by saying “I divorce you” three times for no reason, woman has no right to divorce without husband’s permission or court’s order), but then she says that it is only the result of the most misogynistic reading of the text possible. Well, once again, Islamic law is more than the Qur’an. This “reading” has been the orthodox position for 1400 years, and insisting that it is a “distortion” ignores the facts on the ground, where Muslim women actually live. She does critique many aspects of Muhammad's career, though, looking askance at the claim that Muhammad was simply looking out for poor or widowed women, or trying to make alliances with other tribes. If so, why so many marriages to younger, beautiful women, even if many of them did happen to be widows?

Neither author really gets into the matter of Muhammad’s many misogynous sayings and actions as recorded in the hadiths, instead portraying him as something of a medieval crusader (or should I say jihadist!) for women’s rights. This view of Muhammad can only be supported by an incredibly selective reading of his life story, his sayings, and his laws. Unfortunately for the Muslim feminists who are attempting to change Islam by insisting that the later scholars and rulers somehow “corrupted” Muhammad’s message of liberation for women, this misogyny is inseparable from the story of Muhammad as told in Muslim texts. Either one simply ignores all of it, tries to explain it away, deny its reality (but then we have the problems of denying hadiths, with can render one outside the fold of Islam). Other Muslim women simply fall back on “Islam and Shari’ah are the real liberators of women!” and other such banal inanities.

But this lack of hard info on Islam should not overshadow the real mission of the books, to portray the lives of women today in Islamic countries in the Middle East, and in this respect they both do a very good job. The stories are often harrowing and horrifying, such as Goodwin’s opening story about Maria, an Afghan refugee living in Pakistan who was often beaten and then married off to an old man at the age of 11, and pregnant before she turned 12. (Now you see why I can only read a little bit at a time!) Another story Goodwin tells is of an Egyptian taxi-driver who keeps his wife at home in their tiny, cramped apartment in Cairo “to protect her,” not allowing her to set foot outside, not to buy food, attend weddings (a big social event in the lives of most women), speak to the other women in the building, or even to visit a mosque. At the end, the wife shrugs and says, “I guess this was my fate.”

Even the stories of richer women are dreary. One Western convert lives in Abu Dhabi as a secret second wife, and her husband only comes around for a couple of hours a week. (Goodwin wonders whether other women in their 30s having trouble finding a man in the US might agree to a polygamous arrangement—but the point is not whether they might agree in a moment of weakness, but how long they would be willing to tolerate it. Not more than a week, I’d say!)

Although there are some hopeful stories, the overall tone is one of despair. Not necessarily from the author, but just from the content of the stories, in which women are cut off from the rest of the world, locked away, covered and basically not even treated as human beings. In addition, the quotes from many of the fundamentalists, and even not-so-fundamentalists, do not suggest any kind of hope for the future. A woman politician in Jordan, supposedly one of the more modern Arab states, is hounded by the fundamentalists for denouncing polygamy, accused of apostasy, and forced to undergo several trials and hearings, and is forced into poverty after being unable to find a job.

One thing that really cut deep was reading fundamentalist Muslim women’s defense of such misogyny: for example, Goodwin meets a Kuwaiti woman with a master’s degree from USC, who says, “Muhammad the Prophet gave women all the benefits they need in Islam. A woman doesn’t need to work; her husband should take care of her, provide for her. I stopped teaching for the sake of the family, and for Allah. My children need me to take of them. And I need to be rested so that I am in a good mood to receive my husband. My husband has a right. He didn’t marry so that he could come home before me. A wife is the one to receive the husband, to soothe him. Allah created men physically stronger. As a woman, I have to be sensitive, nice, and nurturing...If a woman is unmarried, she still should not work. Her father, brother, uncle, grandfather, her male relatives should support her. A woman should not have a career where she can mix with men.” A single woman should instead “pray, fast, or talk to Allah. She can learn to sew and save the family money. But it is better for all women to get married. Her role is to have children.”

There’s plenty more (clitoridectomy is another horror covered in both books), but I’ll stop here, since this blog entry is already much too long and too depressing! All I want to add is that, typically, many Muslims just can’t deal with this kind of disclosure. If you go to Amazon.com and look at the reader comments, you’ll see a lot of upset comments from Muslims whose entire content may be summed up as: “Islam liberates women! You lie! Islam respects and honors women! You are racist and bigoted! Western women are oppressed! Muslim women are happy!” How can you even begin to talk to somebody who just denies every fact, every incident you present them with? It’s a classic symptom of True Believer syndrome: fiercely holding on to a belief system even when the facts are staring you in the face. (And don’t get me started on the comments saying, “Well, it’s bad, but American/Western women are not really any better off,” which I’ll just say are beneath contempt.)

What will happen in the future is anyone’s guess, but I pray that more women will become educated and find a way to control their own lives. Now, how that will happen, I don't know, especially with the fundamentalist revival.