Middle Eastern/Oriental/Islamic Gender
Women are oppressed and have few -- if any-- rights; men dominate everything
We in the West have advanced beyond "patriarchy"; our women vote and work outside the home; we believe in equal rights.
Women are veiled and sexually segregated (harem); men go and do what they please
We allow women to achieve independence; they keep them at home because neither women nor other men can be trusted to be moral outside.
Women are sex slaves; men are sex fiends (polygyny)
We in the West have a more advanced morality; we respect the whole individual while they still follow their lust and seek pleasure above all else.
Women and men are too emotive and don't control passion and temper
Our religion emphasizes values and ideals, while they have not learned to control their primitive emotions.
Neither women nor men challenge strictures of custom or religion
Our society is secular and we separate church and state; they blindly follow tradition and resist modernization and social change.
Perpetuating the Stereotypes
Secularism and rationalism have rescued the West from religious dogma and tyrannical political systems; Islam and traditional "Arab" culture are medieval, backward and a resistant to meaningful social change.
Women in the West are liberated and have achieved equal rights; women there are subject to a paradigmatic form of patriarchy.
We in the West have a sophisticated and liberated view of sex; women there are playthings for men who justify their lust as a God-given right.
We adapt (and therefore improve) to changing times; they want to turn back the clock on themselves and on us.
Have we in the West achieved a perfect society with true political equality liberated from racist bigotry and religious dogma? Based on the recent social and political problems of the West, why should "they" want to be like "us"?
Are the political and social limitations of their societies due to their own ideas and history or as much a product of Western colonial, intellectual and economic exploitation of the Middle East? Who put or allowed most of the rulers in the Middle East into power?
Has our advanced level of Western technological and scientific achievement resulted in a safer society with greater morality, more respect for our fellow man, less threat of war and equal rights in practice as well as in principle?
Are women in the West happier, better adjusted, more secure than all women in the Middle East or are issues of poverty, near political invisibility of women, self-esteem and sexism a continuing problem in gender construction across cultures?
Is any religion, including Islam, or any established culture capable of expanding and flourishing without desired change and application of viable moral principles to changing social contexts?
If they are such sexists, why is a woman more likely to be raped or abused in the West rather than in traditional Middle Eastern culture and why is the role of mother valued there more than in the West?
Given the historical polemic between Christian West and Islamic East and on-going economic and political domination of the Middle East by the West, is it surprising that our contruction of their gender may be biased and self-serving?
Abu-Lughod, Lila (1993) Writing Women's Worlds: Bedouin Stories. Berkeley: Univrsity of California Press. [series of vignettes on life among Egyptian Bedouin women]
Ahmed, Leila (1992) Women and Gender in Islam. New Haven: Yale University Press. [useful and accurate study of gender in historical development of Islamic culture]
Altorki, Soraya and C. F. El-Solh (1988) Arab Women in the Field. Studying Your Own Society. Syracuse: Syracuse Univ. Pr. [accounts by female anthropologists]
Beck, Lois and N. Keddie, eds. (1978) Women in the Muslim Middle East. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Pr. [seminal collection of important articles]
Mabro, Judy (1991) Veiled Half-Truths: Western Travellers' Perceptions of Middle Eastern Women. London: I. B. Taurus. [Annotated excerpts regarding women in the Middle East from Western travelogues]
Malti-Douglas, Fedwa (1991) Woman's Body, Woman's Word: Gender and Discourse in Arabo-Islamic Writing. Princeton: Princeton University Press. [literary analysis of how gender is constructed in classical and modern Arabic texts]
Mernissi, Fatima (1991) The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women's Rights in Islam. Reading: Addison-Wesley. [Moroccan sociologist argues for a feminist reading of Islam]
Murato, Sachiko (1992) The Tao of Islam: A Sourcebook on Gender Relationships in Islamic Thought. Albany: SUNY Press. [Comprehensive study of gender in Islamic philosophy and theology]
Spellberg, Denise A. (1994) Politics, Gender, and the Islamic Past: The Legacy of 'A'isha Bint Abi Bakr. New York: Columbia University Press. [Study of the symbolic role of the Prophet's favorite wife on the construction of Islamic gender]
Stowasser, Barbara F. (1994) Women in the Qur'an, Traditions, and Interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [historical study of how women are portrayed in the Quran and early Islam with excellent discussion of the Prophet Muhammad's wives)
