Muslim Women in Eastern and Western Literature

The Representation of Muslim Women in Eastern and Western Literature: A Comparison

Representations of women in Middle Eastern literature represent a means by which the appreciation, perspective and overall role of women and how they are viewed by society can be determined. While some argue that literature and actually lived daily life are separate, literature serves as a measuring stick by which one can ascertain a definitive viewpoint on what the experience of being a Muslim woman is, and how such women are viewed. Literature can tell one volumes about how societies work and underscore the role that women play or don’t play and how others see them. While both eastern and western literature is incredibly vast, it is possible to get a definitive sense of how Muslim women are viewed; however, it is possible to get an overall sense of certain trends that arise over and over. This paper will examine the ways in which Muslim women appear to be used as inspiration and as a vehicle by which stereotypes are expressed through the comparison of eastern versus western literature.
One finds that in Middle Eastern literature, there’s more of a range of representations of Muslim women, with more of an opportunity to view how Muslim women suffer substantial obstacles. Nazik al-Mal'aika, the poet, wrote the following world-famous poem regarding the injustice and devastating inequalities that besiege so many Muslim women in her piece, Insignificant Woman (Mikhai).  

No eyes followed her coffin
to the end of the road
Only a memory of a lifeless form
passing in some lane...
A moon mourned in silence.

This poem clearly laments the way that Muslim women are treated in Middle eastern society: as essentially invisible citizens who aren’t given the same ritualistic treatments in life or in death. There’s a sense of the tragedy of this level of inequality, and how even the living natural world (via the moon) mourns this component of unfairness. An interesting aspect of Middle Eastern literature is how it represents Muslim women in the written scripts for film and television—treating the film or TV script as a form of modern literature in the middle east. This is an important assessment to make, because this form of modern literature has a more powerful impact on the local regions in perpetuating stereotypes or problematic dogmas. Consider the research article, “Selfish, vengeful, and full of spite” by Mary Lou O’Neil 2013). This article assesses the depictions of women who have abortions in four Turkish television series: Gümü?, A?k-? Memnu, Han?m?n Çiftli?i, and Öyle Bir Geçer Zaman ki, all of which appeared on TV in the last decade or so (O’Neil, 810). “O’Neil’s study reveals that women in all four series are portrayed negatively and blamed for failing to conform to family and society’s gender expectations” (Eltantawy, 766). Essentially the literature of television and film has decided to punish these women for defying all cultural expectations of womanhood as a result of their failure and refusal to put motherhood above all else. These women are given questionable moral characters within the realm of the television script: they have affairs outside of marriage and they make a point of putting their careers ahead of their husbands or the primacy they put on being a mother. This is a lucid example of the traditional dogma towards women and femininity as it appears in Middle eastern literature.

Most notably, in the Qur’an, Aisha who was one of the wives of the prophet Mohammad encompasses a truly powerful and independent role of much influence. Aisha was highly visible and took on a very influential role during her time in Muhammad’s life. Aisha accompanied Muhammad to the early Islamic battles, and following Muhammad’s death she opposed Ali’s rise to the caliphate” (Ujayli, 18). It’s also important to note that Aisha was instrumental when it came to interpreting Muhammad’s will and many of the teachings of Islam as a whole, after his death (Ujayli, 18). She was a consultant in all matter religious and over 2,00 hadith are given credit to her (Ahmed, 73). Aisha is someone who stands out in the literature of this culture, as she is someone who viewed as a truth teller, and a woman of great expertise in all aspects of inheritance, law, literature, history and genealogy (Ujayli, 19). This honor, importance, wisdom and reverence given to Aisha in an early and classic Middle eastern text is a far cry from how current middle Eastern literature portrays Muslim women. Current literature continues to despair the plight of the warped patriarchy that shapes so much of life within this part of the world. For example, one of the most famous Palestinian writers, Sahar Kahlifeh, does not flinch when it comes to portraying the sobering realities of the feminine life in areas where there is continuous aggressive conflict. The novel The Inheritance tells a devastating and vivid tale that is common in this part of the world and in Palestine in the past and present: Palestinian women give up everything they have and everything that matters to them for the men in their lives, only to receive zero acknowledgement or commemoration by their nation or their relatives (Khalifeh). This is a common thread in feminist middle eastern literature today: a scathing portrayal of the treatment of women and the tremendous sacrifice of Muslim women—as well as the often cruel and uncaring world around them.

Inequality continues to define the lives of women in the Middle East, something that is undeniably captured within literature. Part of this is because women’s active sexuality has always been viewed as a threat to men and to the patriarchy as a whole (Mernissi, 57). Hence part of the subjugation of women revolves around fear of their sexuality and their power. This theme is something that is commonly repeated within Middle Eastern literature. For example, the collection of short stories, Women of Algiers in Their Apartment (Djebar) is a scathing response to the severe patriarchy that surrounds Muslim women, even in modern society. These short stories attempt to demonstrate how Muslim women today have to frequently do battle with the ongoing inequality that shapes and suffocates their lives (Djebar, 2).

When it comes to representations of Muslim women in the west, there’s more of a sense of overall distortion, with the West using the East as an inverted mirror, something noted famously by Edward Said (12). Perhaps even before western literature chained Muslim women to overt stereotypes, this marriage to the stereotypes of exoticism occurred in the art world initially. “In a book titled Orientalism, he showed us how this perceived binary separating the Semitic East and the Christian West has traditionally manifested itself in art through romanticized scenes of Eastern cultures presented as alien, exotic, and often dangerous” (Engh). European art of he 1800s showed images of Muslim women in the context over overt hedonism and titillating provocative imagery. “Ingre’s 1814 Grande Odalisque, for example, depicts a concubine languidly lounging about, lightly dusting herself with feathers as she peers over her shoulder at the viewer with absent eyes” (Engh). 19th century art helped to further the ideas of fluid, frequent sex and the notions of opium enhanced pleasure; these images helped to foster and identification of the Middle East as an arena of indulgent sex, pleasure enhancing substances, and tantalizing, exotic women more than willing to cater to the whims of men (Engh). These women have been portrayed as exotic and uncivilized in literature as well.

In a post 9/11 world, western literature and media representations of women in the Middle East are viewed in a way that largely depicts them as victims. They are victims of an obscenely patriarchal society, and they need to be saved, as western literature asserts. Women of the veil in western literature are often a symbol of the suppression and oppression of Muslim cultures and of the middle east as a whole. For example, not everyone is a fan of the acclaimed book Reading Lolita in Tehran (Nafisi). Many scholars consider the portrayals of women there to be very narrow and myopic and to rehash the same old stereotypes of Muslim women as objects of oppression. “Native writers settled in the west also dish out heart-rending tales of women's oppression in fundamentalist Islamic societies, targeting a western audience long fed on tales of Islam's intolerance towards women. These 'New Orientalist' narratives, portraying Muslim women as hapless victims of Islamic fundamentalism, only serve to reinforce the stereotypes entrenched in popular western imagination” (Asha). While one could argue that Nafisi’s acclaimed memoir just regurgitates so many themes of oppression that many Muslim and feminist authors assert about women in Middle Eastern society, many still find it to be too myopic. As Asha illuminates, this bestseller only creates an image of dichotomy in depicting women of Islamic culture, and under-represent the consistent struggle for women’s rights, that so many are committed to. This bestselling memoir showed nothing about the fight for equality of women and the risks and sacrifices they have taken, rather just focusing on the oppression of the present day (Tayyen, 101). Those who disagree with this perspective do argue that while the text should be viewed as one woman’s experience of Iran, the entire text can be viewed as offering women in the middle east a means of resistance. Nafisi’s memoir offers women the resistance of the imagination, something that some scholars dismiss, but that others celebrate (Clemens, 584).

British and American literature continue to further the trope that Islamic women suffer from oppression—a blanket stereotype that does nothing but perpetuation harmful ideas about the culture. This literature portrays Muslim women as passive, submissive, wives, others and sex slaves (Gill) (Laboni, 77). Some argue it is almost impossible to find positive portrayals of these women: they remain rooted in this very negative archetype. Muslim women are active members of the workforce but they do not receive acknowledgement for this in western literature. The only positive representation that Islamic women receive in Western culture is when they have refused the hijab or veil and do not wear it at all (Gill).

However, it’s important to stress that this very narrow and dismissive view of Muslim women is a very modernist, aside from being very prevalent in this post-9/11 world. When Muslim women were portrayed as exotic and sexual, they were viewed in western literature as having more agency (Kahf, 33-39). There are numerous examples from medieval and Renaissance times with European authors representing Muslim women in ways we just don’t see today: as forceful empresses of extravagant and daunting sexuality (Kahf). If one traces the journey of this stark transformation of how the portrayal of women has shifted one can see that this change had a lot to do with the transformation of European relations with Islam (Kahf). Much of it was also strongly connected to the shift in gender dynamics within Western culture (Kahf).

Many modernist pieces of literature in Western culture continue to taper the experience of the Muslim women and how she is portrayed in bestselling novels all over the world. In recent times, John Updike’s Terrorist and Don Delillo’s Falling Man have fortified what some scholars refer to as “the old Orientalist discourse” (Mirandi & Tari, 5). Aside from the scathing damage that novels like these do in their insistent representation of all Muslims as terrorists, these novels show Muslim women in the same tired and derivative manner: as objects of oppression, as practical non-entities who fundamentally exist within circumstances of abject slavery, forced on them by Islamic dogma. “While Oriental women in general and Muslim women in particular are represented as the oppressed ones they are also regarded as being seductive, submissive and often an epitome of immorality and transgressive sexuality” (Mirandi & Tari, 5). This sentence best captures the standard duality of how Islamic women are so often captured within Western culture.

In conclusion, there is an enormous divide in the manner in which Muslim women are represented in Middle Eastern literature and culture versus western. There’s more nuanced in the portrayals of Muslim women in eastern literature: yes, there’s a sense of oppression shown, and a narrowness of the existence of inequality. However, there’s much more depth present, such as a sense struggle against this unfairness and resistance. Tangentially, Middle eastern media does continue to perpetuate this archaic standard of restricted femininity to the roles of mother and wife. Western literature historically portrayed Islamic women in extremes: as creatures of sexuality and exoticism or of prisoners of their own society. In these extreme portrayals no accuracy can exist.


Works Cited

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