Women in Middle East

Women in Middle East

Western Influence on the Lives of Islamic Women

September 11th and the war on Iraq have managed to demonize and stereotype Islam in the popular Western mind even more than its foreign nature had independently achieved. In addition to the furor over Islam spawning terrorism, renewed attention has been pointed at the supposed oppression and abuse of women in Islamic cultures, to the degree that these human rights abuses have been cited as one of the justifications for Bush's war on Iraq. However, there remains among thinking people, particularly those with cultural, religious, or ethnic ties to both Islamic and Western cultures, as to whether or not Islam has a negative impact on women's rights in the modern and historical Middle East. Because the false dichotomy between "good" Western ideals and "bad" Islamic ideals has been propagated for so long, it might surprise a Western reader to learn that many people, including many women, do not feel that Islam is abusive to women, and may even feel that it is Western ideals that threaten the well-being and freedom of women. When one attempts to answer the questions regarding the positive and negative impact which the West has had on the lives and status and rights of Islamic women, one is immediately confronted with the difficulty of determining what one will define as positive and what as negative. This is a value judgment which depends overly on one's point-of-view. To a socially conservative person (even a conservative Christian or Jew), negative factors would be those that undermine the traditional family, traditional marriage, and the heterosexuality and monogamy of Islamic women. Is this wrong? Bush just won an election in America campaigning largely on his commitment to family values. For a socially liberal person of any religion, on the other hand, those same factors might be construed as positive if they functioned by defeating patriarchy, paternalism, and restraint. So rather than try to approach this question by listing two positive and two negative factors, it would be more appropriate to list two issues and discuss the way in which each is seen as negative and positive by those experiencing it.

The first topic worthy of attention is the fact that Western military and economic colonialism (from British occupation to American banking interests and military meddling to Soviet expansionism) appears to have been one of the larger contributors to a resurgence of fundamentalist Islamic sentiment, whenever and wherever it occurred. This has been evidenced both in the aftermath of the Ottoman Empire and again today with the war in Iraq. Of course, such a cause-and-effect relationship is easily understood: when a culture is threatened with military or economic eradication, it may tend to become entrenched in custom and faith as a way to bulwark its unique identity. Retaining culture has always been a form of resistance. "The inroads made by European colonialism in the waning decades of the Ottomans, and particularly post-WWI, helped stir the pot of Arab nationalism, Pan-Arabism, and radical Islam, all of which arose in response to the splintering of Islamic civilization... It is this sequence of events that brings us...a decentralized and dispirited Islamic world ...resentful of previous Western colonialism, and defensive towards an encroaching globalization." (Kinney) Like many other conservative religions today (e.g. Judaism and Christianity), Islam was originally more liberal towards women than the surrounding culture. Certain Sufi mystics continue this liberality. The knee-jerk reaction of other muslims to feminism is directly related to the fact that it is seen as being pushed on them from colonize Westerners. One would do well to note that in Iraq, prior to America's invasion, urban women were commonly allowed to wear more liberal clothes, and interact relatively freely with men. After the invasion, this has changed. Islamic religious leaders are blatantly equating wearing any liberal clothing styles (such as blue jeans or going unveiled) as fraternizing with the invaders. "stop anyone who tries to imitate the American style... because they are trying to spoil Islam and the Muslim shrines." (Prusher) A return to traditional beliefs is one way that an outgunned and occupied nation can resist. More historically, the uber-conservative faction of Islam known as the Wahhabi rose in response to the fall of the Ottoman empire and the aftermath of the World Wars -- it struggles against any liberalism in other sects, and particularly targets mystics like the Sufis who have historically taught equality. The Wahhabi's resistance created the political and economic strength of Saudi Arabia, but it also supports terrorism to stop liberal muslims and Western forces. So there are negative and positive aspects to this entrenchment.