Introduction, The Debate on Arab Women

By Suha Sabbagh

Through Western eyes, Arab women are perceived in popular culture as docile, male dominated, speechless, veiled, secluded, subdued, and unidentifiable beings. This situation has been slowly changing in academic studies, where the tendency was to focus on what one academic woman has defined as the "hot spots" of anthropological research on Arab women, the exaggerated emphasis on all that makes Arab women different: honor killings, female circumcision, cousin marriage, the harem, and the renewed obsession with the veil. The image that most Westerners have of Arab women is a stereotypical image that has little to do with the lives of real Arab women; no Arab woman I know recognizes herself in it.

Leila Ahmed, a professor of Women's Studies at Amherst College and a well-known intellectual who has written extensively on Arab women, has argued that, "American women `know' that Muslim women are overwhelmingly oppressed without being able to define the specific content of that oppression." She goes on to say, "These are `facts' manufactured in Western culture, by the same men who have also littered the culture with `facts' about Western women and how inferior and irrational they are."' Leila Ahmed is making a reference here to the roots of the stereotype of Arab women in the visions of male Orientalists who visited the Arab world in the early nineteenth century. Indeed, for these early male travelers, the Orient is its women. There is a general consensus among Arab-American women in academia that there is something fundamentally wrong with the logic of those American writers who see no conflict between perpetrating these oppressive views of Arab women. produced by the dominant male culture while simultaneously fighting against the dominant culture's biased perception of women in general. Marnia Lazreg, a university professor and writer, points out that feminism, which purports to insure liberation for Western women from an epistemological and political domination, must do the same for Third World women. All Arab women writing on this subject agree that the perception of Arab women as an "Otherness" must be revised. Like the inter nationally renowned Columbia University Professor Edward Said, Marnia Lazreg proposes that greater emphasis be placed on a humanistic tradition in the field of Arab studies, including Arab women studies, which stresses the common experience of individuals, in this case women, in the East and West.2

THE CURRENT STEREOTYPE OF ARAB WOMEN

Popular novels about Arabs in the United States may be divided roughly into two categories. The first, representing by far the greater majority, consists of so-called thrillers: spy stories, international political intrigues, and war or nuclear disasters. The term "thriller" inscribed on the cover communicates to the reader a fast-moving plot coupled with scenes of sex and violence. The second category consists of what are described as "historical accounts," such as the best-selling novel The Haj, and similar adventure novels. The plots of both categories deal with three main topics: the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) within the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict; global atomic or financial disasters originating in the Middle East; and the excesses of Islamic fundamentalism. This last category accounts for a substantial amount of current literary offerings.' Occasionally, a mass market novel about Arab women is published, and almost invariably it purports to tell the whole story of Arab women's oppression and to remove the shroud of silence from what is generally considered as a wasted life, lived in total suffering and isolation.

Images of Arab women in Western novels are few and leave a com­paratively less powerful impression than images of Arab men or the images of their European counterparts. Yet, it is important to note that here, as also in the abundant magazine and newspaper articles about Arab women, a certain reversal takes place over the early se­ductive, alluring, feminine stereotype. The contemporary stereotype casts Arab women as quintessential victims of the beastliness and backwardness of Arab* men. Whereas in past stereotypes Arab women lived only for sensual pleasure and were condemned for their wantonness, Arab women's lives are now described as being devoid of the most simple pleasures or achievements. They are depicted as existing on the margins of society, victimized to such an extent that it defies credibility that such individuals could continue to wage the heroic daily battle that many Arab women in real life undertake to survive.

The stereotype of Arab women is presented even more forcefully in press and magazine accounts posing as facts. Whereas in the past the mere mention of Arab women evoked images of sensuality and physical pleasure, the same mention now evokes images of women as the victims of Islamic tradition, presented as an unmitigated fountain of oppression against women. This analysis suffers from the naïveté of perceiving another culture through the prism of Western consciousness. That women indifferent cultures might have a somewhat different agenda or methods of achieving their objectives is rarely considered. The titles of articles that purport to analyze the oppression of women under Islam stress sensationalism and show that when it comes to writing about Arab women stereotypical, distorted imaging has continued unabated since the early days of Orientalist writings. The press continues to show irresponsibility through its tantalizing titles and subtitles. A recent article, "Women of the Veil," written by two overnight American experts, Deborah Scroggins and Jean Shifrin, contains all the following sensational headings: "Women of the Veil: Islamic militants pushing women back to an age of official servitude"; "Male Honor Costs Women's Lives: It's dangerous to be born female in the Islamic world"; "A Mother's Glory Is Her Sons: Daughters barely count"; "Women: Political Islam brands them as inferior"; "Using Rape to Settle Scores: Women are pawns in men's game of revenge"; "Rapes Are Rarely Investigated"; "Honor and Shame: A life spent locked away."

None of these titles reflects the resistance or strength of Arab women or their cultural institutions; rather they reflect a greater de­gree of domination than that actually exercised by men over women within Muslim culture. The unmistakable interest in focusing on what I call a "culture of misery" serves only to establish the positional su­periority of the writers and, through them by proxy, Western women.

The result of such articles is not to form bonds of sisterhood across cultures, nor to depict the happy and unhappy realities of women's lives; nor to liberate  Arab women, but rather to establish the, superiority of Western women's lives and, through them, Western culture.  This body of literature is clearly about establishing Western domina­tion and not about liberating Muslim women.

            During the Gulf crisis, misinterpretations of the role of Arab women reached their seasonal peak. The National Organization of Women (NOW) issued a statement by Molly Yard, president of NOW at that time, in which she stated that her organization was opposed to the involvement of the United States in the Gulf War because the countries of the Gulf (Saudi Arabia and Kuwait) practiced apartheid against their own women and denied them basic human rights. Her reasoning and that of her group maintained that since the U.S. is opposed to apartheid it must refuse to come to the aid of countries in which a social system evolved where men and women lead somewhat segregated lives. What is wrong with this statement is that it is ethnically insensitive and it also perpetrates a double standard in foreign policy. All countries of the world still practice some form of discrimination against women. But U.S. foreign relations are not always based on how its allies treat their female population, although one might wish that this were indeed the case. The NOW statement went on to say that the Arab world treats it women like "chattel." Well intentioned as it might have been, NOW's statement, which purports to support Arab women, denies Arab women recognition for the serious daily battles that each wages to meet her needs in the field of education, work, and family. Molly Yard and members of NOW met with members of the Arab-American community over the wording of this statement, and NOW has since shown greater sensitivity to the concerns of Arab women. My point is that if the largest women's organization in the U.S. can make such a mistake it is because the stereotypical view of Arab women ac non-entities has permeated the culture to the point where even a women's group failed to see the misrepresentation of Arab women's reality.

            Ancient cultures cannot always be judged by the same yardstick we employ to judge progress on women's issues in the industrialized world. The Arab world is the cradle of civilization; the oldest continu­ally inhabited town in the world, of Jericho, is located in the West Bank. Early on, Arab culture evolved a social system in which the extended family offered each individual all the amenities that the state currently offers its citizens in the West. The similarity between these two systems prompted one intellectual to name the Arab world the "republic of cousins," since the patriarchal extended family system operated like a mini-republic.' Unemployment benefits, health insurance, and protection against all forms of disaster were and continue to be offered to women through the extended family. The social system that evolved in the Arab world based on segregation of the sexes maintained the extended family, which in turn protected the individual, including women. Before we ask women to give up this system we must insure their survival from a social and  an economic standpoint. Like a modern day corporation, in order for the extended family to survive as a social unit men and women are assigned different roles. For women these roles have come to be labeled as "traditional," referring generally to the fact that women's responsibilities are within the home while men are the providers. At one point Arab women's traditional lifestyle offered them a very viable system that protected them, and one can only hope that any new system that evolves will be equally viable for women. But, as with all ancient cultures, the deep historical and traditional roots have proved to be a mixed blessing for women today. The extended family is slowly breaking down under the impact of greater mobility and added financial pressures. Fathers or husbands can no longer protect women against premature entry into the workforce or unemployment or sweatshop exploitation as they once could in a less chaotic, more primitive society, while the state is ill-equipped to provide the same amenities to the individual as in Western countries.

            When Western women ask the implied question, "Why can't Arab women be more like us?", they mean why can't Arab women be individuals as opposed to being part of an extended family system which is patriarchal and where the family is the social unit. Figuratively, the question also implies the recommendation that Arab women should jump out of an airplane without the benefit of a parachute. Worn down and ill-equipped to deal with women's growing needs, the extended family nevertheless remains the best insurance system around. In fact, many women have returned to the principles of Islam based on the traditional role of women within the family, because of their disappointments with the alternatives.

Until such time as the Arab world reaches a state of development that can offer women education, guaranteed employment, benefits, and all the protections offered by the state to its citizens in the West, women will have to accommodate as best they can to the patriarchal rules of the extended family, while fighting for a greater compliance with their needs. But even in a developed world, few Arab women will be willing to give up the social relations, warmth, and sense of security afforded by family ties, and the family will remain at the center of Arab society for a long time to come.

            Also during the Gulf War, Time magazine published an article on Arab women in a special issue on women around the world, which carried the headline "Life Behind the Veil: Muhammad Boosted Women's Rights, But Today Islam Often Means Oppression." There are one billion Muslims in the world today and the Arabo-Islamic world alone exceeds two hundred million people living in 22 Arab countries. Each country interprets women's rights under Islam somewhat differently, and within each country social class is a determining factor in the way in which women's personal rights are treated. We must ask ourselves how is it possible to discuss women and Islam in such sweeping generalizations as this one-page article purports to do? Would it be possible to speak of women's rights in Christianity in the same way, without arousing scorn for such vulgar journalistic methods of reporting?

            The attack on the Arab world under the guise of supporting the rights of women was also reflected during the Gulf War in many cartoons. One such cartoon by Jeff Macnelly for the Chicago Tribune juxtaposes two short Arab women covered with a black abaya (cloak) showing only their perplexed eyes with a tall and clearly emancipated American woman soldier dressed in fatigues and looking down on the two creatures. The caption underneath reads "When Mideast Meets Midwest."' Just because there is a stringent patriarchal system in the Arab world does not mean that women are docile non-entities. In fact, strong patriarchies often breed the opposite: strong women who work very hard to insure the compliance of the system with their needs. What such an attitude reflects is the ignorance about cultural differences on the part of Western writers, cartoonists, and readers of the press.

Letters to the editor often reflected the impact that these stereotypical views have on readers who have not been exposed to the Arab world. On August 23, 1991, the style section of the Washington Post published an article by Molly Moore and Amy Goldstein that included comments on the life of Saudi women. In a letter to the editor, Margaret M. Basheer, a Chevy Chase resident whose last name suggests a relation to the Arab world, commented on the responses of some of the Post's female readers through their letters to the editor regarding the above article. She wrote, "The letter writers were quick to describe the rules governing female conduct as `humiliating, "disgusting' and `sexist' while labeling the Saudi government as one `that treats its women like cattle."' She argues that difference should not be automatically understood in this culture as "wrong" or "disgusting." However, her most poignant argument was that undressing a woman's body for material exploitation, to sell commodities, is perhaps less forgivable than excessively covering a woman's body. She writes, "Perhaps it is better to veil a woman than to exploit her body across the pages of tasteless magazines." It is important to remember that all cultures are sensitized to internal forms of oppression, but it is essential not to judge other cultures through the norms of the culture that we live in. Viewed in this way, all cultures seem wanting and the exercise only serves to establish the positional superiority of the culture of the speaker rather than reveal any serious information about the culture described.

Championing Arab women's rights as a means of attacking Arab culture has not subsided very much since the Gulf War. A recent novel, Princess: A True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia, by Jean Sasson, the purported autobiography of a Saudi princess which made the bestseller list, contains preposterous lies about Arab values. The book gives the impression that honor killings occur in the Arab world as often as afternoon teas and that families discuss together the premeditated killings of their daughters who get in the way of family honor. The back cover reads as follows: "Because she is a woman she is considered worthless - a slave to the whims of her male masters. She has watched her sisters, cousins, and friends ... brutally murdered for the slightest transgression, in accordance with cruel and ancient religious laws:" There are no statistics about how many honor killings occur in the Arab world because they are an aberration, occurring far less often than random murders in this country. Yet, few critics seemed to mind this twist between fact and fantasy, and the magazines and papers which have formed a chorus hailing this book for revealing the truth about the Arabs include People, the San Francisco Chronicle, Entertainment Weekly, and USA Today.

            Sandra Mackey, author of The Saudis: Inside the Desert Kingdom, who reviewed the book for the Washington Post, is critical of some of the misconceptions on which the book is based. She writes, "Statements such as `Young men of Saudi Arabia could not afford to purchase a wife' make it sound as though women are bought. The `bride price' is not a purchase price, but rather is the financial settlement bestowed on a woman at the time of her marriage; it remains solely her property whether the marriage survives or not." However, Mackey's contribution lies less in her analysis of Princess than with her description of a culture which has evolved in a way where the family, rather than the individual, is the social unit. She writes, "Before the mid-1920s, there was no government to control the desert tribes. An individual’s only security lay with his family. A family's s security in turn depended on its size and the alliances it could make with other kinship groups. Consequently, every member drew an assigned role in keeping the family strong. The men were the protectors, the women the producers of children. Marriages were arranged for the benefit of the family, not the happiness of the individual. The system worked because without it the individual could not survive." Mackey does not refute all the preposterous statements of Sasson, yet she provides a context in which to view the role of women in Saudi society, while explaining that change is being introduced in this system. Mackey continues, "A half-century later, a Saudi still regards the family as his or her guarantee of security. Major changes in the role of either sex within the family threaten the stability of the linchpin of the entire society. Yet the Saudi family has not escaped the pressures of change. The middle and upper classes are educating women if for no other reason than to make them better mothers But this education is pushing women on beyond their traditional roles."

            The status of women under Islam is probably one of the least understood subjects in the Western world. But the intentionality of the writer needs to be questioned when a nine-page article entitled "Tearing off the Veil" (Vanity Fair, August 1993) dedicates the first several pages to the issue of female circumcision - not an Islamic but a traditional African practice - while reserving to the last page conversations with Fatima Mernissi, the renowned Moroccan feminist who has published a large number of books and articles on women's roles and has a virtual army of women doing research for her on issues touching women's lives. Mernissi is mentioned only briefly in connection with her statements on Islam. One might ask, why doesn't the article discuss some achievements of women, such as the ambitious research projects that Mernissi heads and which deal with nearly every aspect of the role and image of women? Why are there virtually no positive articles in the popular press that describe how much Arab women are doing to-change their world?

On the first page o t e same Vanity Fair article a caption reads: "As the influence of Islamic fundamentalism spreads, more and more women are fleeing its repressive laws - compelling Western nations to deal with such cruel traditions as forced marriages, honor killings, and female circumcision." One 22-year-old Saudi woman requested asylum in Canada in April 1991 based on gender discrimination, and that is reason enough to ponder such a hypothetical question as "what to do if half of all Muslim women, who number roughly 500 million, were to seek refuge in the West?" The question is absurd because women living in Muslim culture do not see themselves in the same way as the authors of this article see them. Through non-formal education and through traditions, all cultures inculcate into the deepest recesses of every individual in young adulthood the role that he or she- must perform in society. The result is that the individual becomes sensitized to the forms of oppression in which he or she lives, whether it is in Arab or Western culture. Consequently, the majority of women in the Arab world do not see their oppression as overwhelming and might indeed view women in other cultures as being less fortunate than themselves. Women do not regard their own world with the same degree of "disgust" and of "otherness" expressed toward them as the writers of this Vanity Fair article. In place of wasting space pondering an absurd question, why is it that there are not more articles about the problems that really -concern Arab women, such as education, work, and problems involving personal rights. Why is it that we don't see articles written by Arab or Arab-American women who understand the issues instead of the overnight experts who don't even speak or understand the Arabic language.

            Arab women appear less often in television soaps and thrillers than Arab men, yet their image does not fair much better. Also during the Gulf War, NBC aired a soap called Santa Barbara. The plot of this soap focused on two feuding Arab rulers: the Sheikh, ruler of Kabir, and the Pasha, ruler of Khareef. The Sheikh is interested in stealing the Pasha's oil, and toward this end he is about to invade Khareef. In the process the viewer is treated to a full range of misconceptions s about Arabs in general and Arab women in particular. In his vibrant analysis of this soap, Jack Shaheen said, "The Pasha has `sacred ways' that include `a harem.' None of his wives pleases him. To him, Arab women are chattel. He believes `the kind of love' Eden shares with Cruz (two Americans) is rarely seen in Khareef."6 Shaheen implies that Santa Barbara posits love between men and women in the West on a higher plane than love between men and women in the Arab world. Love, which is a universal human trait, is here given a hierarchical structure, whereby love between the American couple is on a higher level while love in the Arab world belongs to a lower order.

            In fact, perhaps no culture has produced as much poetry or prose on love as Arab culture has. Volumes of classical poetry on the same subject are still recited in schools and in poetry readings that constitute a national preoccupation in much of the Arab world that rivals the place occupied by football in this country. Nearly all songs heard daily on the radio in every Arab country are about the beauty of love or the longing for the beloved. In Arab culture, love between men and women is held in the highest esteem, although perhaps it is not practiced with the same degree of sexual freedom as it is currently in North America. When Spanish culture first came in contact with Arab culture in twelfth-century Spain, European culture adopted from Arab culture the courtly love tradition reflected in poetry. It is quite ironic, then, that in the twentieth-century, when the media has turned the world into a global village, that such important information is dropped.

            Arabs are also portrayed in Santa Barbara as willing to exploit their wives sexually in order to achieve political goals and to increase their wealth. The Pasha orders his wife Shaila to sleep with Cruz in order to obtain from him a talisman. Anyone who knows Arab culture is aware of the strict sexual restrictions placed on the conduct of women. Even the story line of Santa Barbara emphasizes this point. How is it, then, that a husband is likely to make such a dumbfounding request from his wife in such a cultural context? One must assume that when it comes to defaming Arabs all contradictions are permissible. The plot, which posits Western women in a superior role, has some clear objectives which Jack Shaheen describes as follows: "Santa Barbara depicts Eden as the Ann Landers of Arabia. She teaches the Pasha to eliminate his `prejudice' against women. Eden convinces the poten­tate to free Shaila, to grant other women freedom and equal rights."' Not only are Western women portrayed as superior to Arab women, but they are also their saviors. This kind of propaganda, which pur­ports to support the rights of Arab women, is in fact intended to dem­onstrate the positional superiority of Western women and through them the Western world. It is a discourse that legitimizes racist views of the "Other" and anyone who subscribes to this view is missing the point of the feminist motto "sisterhood is global"

After the show had aired, NBC conceded that the Santa Barbara story line described Arabs in a negative way and offered an apology, following a letter of objection from the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC). In its response to the ADC letter, NBC acknowledged "unfortunate and misleading stereotypical portrayals" and said the offending story line had ended. However, this did not erase the damage, since the negative image of Arab women was viewed by millions of viewers and no alternative image was provided to form an unlearning process. To date, there are no positive roles for Arab women to counteract the prevailing negative stereotypes on television.

Like women everywhere, Arab women lead full lives that include moments of happiness and a degree of struggle. In some Arab coun­tries, women pursue their daily lives in especially difficult conditions. Whether in remote and spartan rural areas, in refugee camps, in shanty towns, or under stringent patriarchal institutions, all have had to develop strong and self-protective methods of coping with a heavy-handed patriarchal system. Their strengths, rather than their pur­ported weaknesses, or their marginalization, should be recognized in articles that seek to define them or to champion their rights. Precisely because of their difficult living conditions they are forced to develop strong methods of resistance, fighting for their rights within a difficult environment. To a certain degree, the difference between Arab and Western women writing about Arab women is the difference between seeing the glass half full or half empty: Arab women focus on the strength and resistance shown by their illiterate and disenfranchised sisters, while Western reporters interpret such oppression as an unchallenged aspect of "Muslim" culture.

The stereotypes of Arab women will have disappeared on the day that the titles and the text of articles about Arab women stress their strength, their resistance, and the commonality of their experience with women in the West. Since the current stereotypes are inextricably bound to the power struggle between the West and the Arab world, Western women writing about Arab women need first to consciously disengage themselves from the dominant male discourse and ideology toward the Arab world.

Arab Women: Between Defiance and Restraint, EDITED BY SUHA SABBAGH, OLIVE BRANCH PRESS, An imprint of Interlink Publishing Group, Inc. New York