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Scholars, advocates, and activists seeking to make the U.S. a more responsible
global partner.

 


WOMEN IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Although there is no gender equality in the Middle East (including in Israel),
the phenomena of sexism and misogyny are global—not peculiar to Islam, or to the
Middle East.
By As'ad AbuKhalil | October 11, 2005


KEY POINTS

 * Although there is no gender equality in the Middle East (including in
   Israel), the phenomena of sexism and misogyny are global—not peculiar to
   Islam, or to the Middle East.
 * The status of women varies widely in the Middle East, and one should not
   project the norms in Saudi Arabia—one of the most sexist and oppressive
   states in the region—onto the larger Muslim world.
 * Many of the causes for the inferior status of Middle Eastern women are
   indigenous, but the West—especially the U.S.—has exacerbated this oppression.

In discussions of general issues facing women in the Middle East, the diversity
of female lifestyles and conditions is often lost. Accustomed to stereotypical
depictions, Westerners are told that Middle Eastern women are passive, weak, and
always veiled. It is often assumed that the severe conditions in Saudi
Arabia—where women are not even allowed to drive cars—represent the norm for
women throughout the Middle East and in the larger Muslim world. In reality,
Saudi Arabia’s versions of both Islam and sexism are rather unique in their
severities, although the rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan is now emulating the
sexist Saudi model. Women enjoy political and social rights in many Muslim
countries, and Egypt has recently granted women the right to divorce their
husbands. In Tunisia, abortion is legal, and polygamy is prohibited. Women have
served as ministers in the Syrian, Jordanian, Egyptian, Iraqi, and Tunisian
governments, and as Vice President in Iran.

Yet the problems of Middle Eastern women remain acute. Islamic, Christian, and
Jewish jurists and theologians—all of them males—have provided Middle Eastern
society with the most exclusivist and conservative interpretations of religious
laws, which have burdened women in the family, the society, and the state. The
top position in government, according to strict Islamic laws, is denied to women
based on a dubious Hadith (collections of sayings and deeds attributed to
Muhammad). According to the Interparlia-mentary Union, the political
representation of women in parliaments in Arab nations lags behind all other
countries of the world, and Kuwait has yet to grant women the right to vote.
Yet, Muslims in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Turkey have all been led by women. In
Israel, a woman (Golda Meir) once headed the government, although the political
elite has been almost exclusively of males since the creation of the state.

Islamic clerics continue to enjoy a tremendous amount of power, and often
exercise great influence in the field of education. The Middle East (including
Israel) is unduly hostage to clerics, who do not allow the codification of civil
personal status laws. For example, only Cyprus, of all the Middle Eastern
countries, recognizes interfaith marriages. Furthermore, Islam has sanctioned
and perpetuated many sexist practices and views, including polygamy, the
stigmatization of menstruation, the requirement of wifely obedience to the
husband, and the inequality of inheritance and court appearances. All of these
practices have at one point or another been part of Christian and Jewish
practices or cultures.

Although religion bears major responsibility for the inferior status of women,
it cannot be solely blamed for the gender problem in the Middle East. In
reality, the role of culture has been even more prominent in perpetuating the
oppression of women. Female genital mutilation, for example, is a cultural
practice that has afflicted women in several cultures at different times in
history. The practice, which in Islam garners dubious permission in an alleged
Hadith of the Prophet, is largely unknown in most Muslim countries, though it is
still practiced in rural areas of both Muslim and non-Muslim parts of Africa.
Similarly, the so-called “honor crimes” have no basis in Islam. Furthermore,
though veiling has become a symbol of Middle Eastern oppression of women, the
practice actually came to Muslim cultures from Christian Byzantium.

In fact, the role of the West regarding Middle Eastern women is often obscured.
Western colonial powers have historically shed crocodile tears over the plight
of Muslim women and have vilified Islam for its role in this oppression.
Ironically, in medieval times Islam was actually attacked by Christian
polemicists for being too permissive and tolerant in social and sexual matters.

Western treatment of Muslim women has been hypocritical at best. Leila Ahmed,
who published a study of women and gender in the Islamic world, dubs the Western
attitude as “colonial feminism.” According to Ahmed, colonial feminism refers to
the tendency among colonial officers to champion Muslim women’s rights, while at
the same time opposing women’s rights in their own countries. Thus the status of
women in the Middle East was used merely to denigrate Islam and the culture of
the region. The legacy of colonial feminism persists; feminism in the Middle
East is often discredited, by governments and by local enemies of feminism,
because it is associated with the sequels of colonialism.

In the present-day Middle East, the Western powers’ responsibility (America’s in
particular) for the current state of affairs, cannot be denied. Ever since the
1950s, successive American governments have supported Saudi Arabian Islam and
have funded and armed Islamic fundamentalist groups, which have tormented Middle
Eastern women and frustrated their efforts at emancipation. Furthermore, since
many of the oppressive governments in the Middle East survive only because of
Western military and/or economic support, the responsibility for local
oppression has external dimensions.


PROBLEMS WITH CURRENT U.S. POLICY

Key Problems

 * The U.S. continues to support a very conservative and intensely misogynist
   version of Islam through its staunch support of the Saudi Arabian government.
 * U.S. financial aid supports the oppressive regimes in the region, rather than
   the civil and feminist organizations.
 * American policy during the cold war promoted conservative Islamic
   fundamentalism, which now terrorizes the region and its women.

The U.S. government (especially since the days of Jimmy Carter, who hailed the
Iranian shah’s regime a few months before its overthrow) has for years exploited
human rights rhetoric by highlighting its enemies’ human rights violations and
ignoring its friends’ violations. The people of the Middle East have not
forgotten that Washington ignored the shah of Iran’s abysmal record of human
rights violations while strictly scrutinizing the human rights records of Libya
and Syria, for example. Of course Libya and Syria do violate human rights, but
Washington’s double standard is blatant and cruel.

The antipathy to U.S. economic and political interests in the Middle East stems
largely from the inability or unwillingness of the U.S. to judge human rights on
a universal and neutral basis. Not that the U.S. should view itself, or that it
should be viewed by others, as the ultimate arbiter of the human rights
situation around world. Many human rights organizations have documented human
rights violations within the United States. But the U.S. presents itself to the
Middle East, and to other regions of the world, as the authority on and the
judge of human rights standards, and does not admit that its actions both within
and outside the U.S. often worsen human rights situations.

In the Middle East, Saudi Arabia stands as a clear example of American
hypocrisy. No serious and credible policy on human rights can ignore the abysmal
record of the Saudi royal family, which has imposed on the Saudi Arabian people
one of the most oppressive regimes in the world. Saudi Arabia’s government is
based on institutional sexism, misogyny, and intolerant religious exclusiveness.
The brand of Wahhabi Islam imposed in Saudi Arabia is seen in no other country.
(Qatar, which follows Wahhabi doctrine, has been launching a series of social
and political reforms affecting women in the past few years.)

American support for the Saudi royal family has permitted that government to
violate human rights and to ignore the pleas of Saudi men and women for reforms.
Crown Prince Abdullah, who has assumed more powers in the past two years in the
wake of the near incapacitation of King Fahd, has publicly alluded to popular
demands for social, political, and legal reforms affecting Saudi women. Yet
Washington, which routinely interferes in the minute affairs in the region and
in the internal domestic situation of many Arab countries, has not made one
public statement in support of Saudi women in the face of state oppression and
discrimination. How can the U.S. government make speeches and statements in
support of 13 Iranian Jews who are accused of treason and yet remain silent
about the plight of millions of Arab women who are oppressed daily by a
pro-American government? How can the U.S. scrutinize the human rights records of
Libya and Iran but not of Saudi Arabia? Iran’s political system, with all its
shortcomings, is certainly superior to the archaic political system in Saudi
Arabia.

U.S. support for Saudi Arabia has also harmed the cause of reforming Islam,
because Saudi oil wealth helps to promote a very conservative branch of Islamic
theology and jurisprudence throughout the Muslim world. The Saudi Arabian branch
of Wahhabiyyah Islam targets women: they are denied political roles, they are
deprived of driving privileges, they are confined to educational institutions
inferior to those reserved for men, and they are still subject to the legal
practice of guardianship, which treats women as legal inferiors who cannot move
or travel without the notarized legal permission of their fathers, brothers,
husbands, or a remote male relative in some cases. While Saudi Arabia welcomes
technology allowing it to accommodate U.S. military needs and requirements, it
fights political reforms under the slogan of maintaining its cultural and
Islamic authenticity. The campaign against gender equality and religious reforms
spearheaded by the Saudi royal family, is directly or indirectly sponsored by
the U.S., the main political benefactor of the Wahhabi government. Though the
Saudi case is exceptional, it is illustrative of the determinants and
consequences of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.

Unfortunately, U.S. aid programs don’t help Middle Eastern women either.
Although the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have belatedly
accommodated themselves to the needs of civic organizations around the world,
the U.S. foreign aid program is not based on need and is severely tarnished by
its political agenda. The Canadian foreign aid program is geared toward the
empowerment of both the poor and women, and it awards grants and aid on the
basis of need. But the largest recipient of U.S. aid remains Israel, which has a
per capita income comparable to that of the UK. Moreover, the U.S. government
still favors rewarding and punishing governments through its aid programs.
Instead of supporting the courageous feminist and human rights nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) in the Middle East, the U.S. aid program helps finance the
defense industry in America. This type of aid only serves to promote a culture
of corruption in the recipient countries and keeps unelected officials in power.
In recent years, Washington has been giving some money to civic associations,
but the amounts are minuscule when compared to U.S. military aid, or to the
needs of Middle Eastern NGOs.

Many private philanthropic organizations in the West have shifted their largess
to aid civic associations. NGOs now proliferate throughout the Arab world, and
these organizations suffer not only from political repression but also from lack
of resources. Feminist organizations in particular have to navigate between the
hostility of the state and the hostility of Islamic fundamentalists in society.
These organizations, and female-led groups promoting economic development among
women, would benefit from U.S. economic aid. Yet even when some groups (like the
feminist organization led by Nawal Saadawi in Egypt) receive private American
aid, their rank-and-file members object. Wary of American motives and foreign
policy, such groups often detest and suspect American funding.


TOWARD A NEW FOREIGN POLICY

Key Recommendations

 * The U.S. needs to end its double standard relative to human rights violations
   in the Middle East.
 * Washington must end its traditional disregard for the plight of Middle
   Eastern women and incorporate the interests and welfare of women into its
   foreign aid programs.

Washington’s rhetoric on human rights is not taken seriously by people in the
Middle East, and rightly so. Although the U.S. scrutinizes the human rights
records of governments it dislikes (like Iran and Libya), it ignores similar
abuses in “friendly” countries like Saudi Arabia, which perhaps has—along with
the Taliban government of Afghanistan—the worst record on women’s rights in the
world. Saudi Arabia exemplifies the essential flaws and errors of U.S. foreign
policy in the Middle East: how can Washington claim that it opposes dictators
and oppressors in the region (like Qadhafi and Saddam Hussein) while it
continues its longstanding policy of supporting the illegitimate rule of the
Saudi royal family? Furthermore, U.S. policy on human rights has never been
troubled by America’s very close and “strategic” relations with the state of
Israel, which has consistently violated the human rights of Arabs living under
its rule, and has showered neighboring Arab countries with unsolicited bombs.
Many of the victims of Israeli oppression and bombing have been women.
Furthermore, the record of the Israeli state toward Israeli women has been
inadequate, to put it mildly.

A new, credible foreign policy would take into consideration the human rights
abuses of all governments in the Middle East, regardless of whether the abusers
were friendly or hostile to U.S. interests and regardless of the religion,
gender, and ethnicity of the victims. Christian and Jewish victims of oppression
in the Middle East receive far more coverage in the U.S. press and in the
attention span of U.S. officials than do Muslim victims of oppression. Such
favoritism leaves Middle Eastern women out of the scope of American foreign
policy radar altogether.

Women’s issues must rank more prominently on the agenda of U.S. foreign and
human rights policy. Washington currently claims to include human rights issues
in its diplomatic dealings with foreign countries, although evidence to the
contrary exists. But we have yet to hear about significant U.S. interest in the
plight of Saudi women, whose subjugation cannot be justified even by Islamic
jurisprudence. The U.S. objects, for example, to the sheltering of Usamah Bin
Ladin by the Taliban government more than it objects to the oppression of women
by that government. In fact, it was the way that U.S. foreign policy handled the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that enabled the fundamentalist misogynist
victors in Afghanistan to roll back the strides of progress and success by
Afghani women under the previous secular (communist) governments.

Washington should send a message to Middle Eastern governments that U.S. aid and
diplomatic support will be tied to progress on women’s rights. Currently, the
U.S. government interferes in the minutiae of Arab politics, deciding, for
example, whether the League of Arab States should hold a summit or not, and
determining what words Yasir Arafat should use in his speeches. Yet, when
pressed on the plight of women in Saudi Arabia, Washington pleads
“noninterference in the internal affairs of Arab countries.” How can one buy
that argument, when U.S. planes fly freely over the skies of Iraq and when U.S.
troops are overtly or covertly stationed on Arab soil?

The U.S. government must also match its rhetoric with its actions. Instead of
funneling millions of dollars into corrupt state institutions that only benefit
ruling elites and their cronies, U.S. aid should be aimed at enriching civic
society, many of whose elements are led by Middle Eastern women. Washington can
help, not in the emancipation of Middle Eastern women—they can do just fine in
their own self-liberation—but in providing women’s organizations in the Middle
East with much-needed resources and materials, and in removing some of the
blocks from the path of liberation. Unfortunately the unpopularity of the U.S.
government has rendered such help controversial at times, as was the case of the
feminist group led by Nawal Saadawi in Egypt.

Washington must help foster strong civic groups in the Middle East instead of
pursuing the unending spiral of militarization that continues despite the ending
of the cold war. Instead, the U.S. government still heavily arms both Israel and
Arab Persian Gulf regimes, despite its claims to be halting the Middle East arms
race.

Finally, it is important that the U.S. government avoid the pitfalls of past
colonial experiences: the struggle for gender equality in the Middle East should
not be equated with Islam bashing. Islam is not uniquely guilty of gender
inequality, and any attempt to perpetuate the negative stereotypes of Arabs and
Islam in the West will only discredit the efforts of Middle Eastern feminists,
who are often dismissed as stooges of Western powers. The struggle for gender
equality in the Middle East is a Middle Eastern struggle, but the U.S.
government, through its wealth and influence, can play a favorable and
supportive role that could enhance understanding and harmony between Arabs and
Americans.


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As'ad AbuKhalilAs'ad AbuKhalil is an associate professor of political science at
California State University, Stanislaus, and a research fellow at the Center for
Middle Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

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