And so I start- with a review of a book that is guaranteed to create discussion and debate. Nothing does that as effectively as religion. I thought I posted this one last night, but I couldn’t find it this morning.
Nine Parts of Desire. Geraldine Brooks 1995 244 pages.
No this is not a porn book, although it is about gender roles in Islamic societies. Geraldine Brooks is an Australian/American journalist, writer and investigator who spent several years in the Middle East investigating ‘the hidden lives of Islamic women’ the subtitle of this book. She seems to have a unique ability for a western secular person to befriend and become a confidante of Muslim women in Egypt, Eritrea, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Iraq, Iran and The United Arab Emirates. She gains access to humble subservient women as well as those in the upper echelons of society. Her knowledge of the history of Islam and Muhammad and his wives is impressive.
The title comes from a saying attributed to Ali Ibn Abu Taleb, on of Muhammed’s sons-in-law. “Almighty God created sexual desire in ten parts; then he gave nine parts to women and one part to men.” This quip might be humorous if it was not so ludicrously incompaatible with basic biology, and it had not been used over twelve centuries to repress women, and deny them basic human rights, including the right to any sexual pleasure (after forced painful genital mutilation). And if women are by nature nine times as desirous of sexual pleasures as men, why is polygamy in Islam only for men? The husbands thereby are provided more opportunities for varied sexual pleasures while the wives must submit in silence.
This book powerfully documents the denial of basic rights to women that is inherent in the Islamic faith, at least as currently practiced, not just in sexual matters, but in every aspect of their lives. But it also documents the paradoxical vociferous defence of Islam by those same oppressed women. They hide behind the hijab, cannot even speak to an unrelated male lest their voices be too seductive, cannot leave home without a male relative, and have no say in the choice of a husband. This seems to me to be a system-wide example of the Stockholm Syndrome.
This picture is very depressing, although Brooks sees some rays of hope. It is surprising to me that she see this in her Shi’ite Iranian friends than in Egyptians and Jordanians She became a close friend of Queen Noor (now Dowager Queen) of Jordan, whose vocal advocacy for women’s rights is unusual in Islamic states. But the queen’s credentials as a spokeswoman for Islamic women are suspect, as she was an upper class Christian American civil engineer before converting to marry King Hussein. It seems clear that progress for Islamic women must involve the wives of the ruling class of men. And some trends are worrying such as the Saudi development of all- female universities specifically designed to avoid the need to expose Saudi women to western institutions -and men., and the sadistic actions of the religious police of The Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, that even Saudi royals cannot control completely.
The expectation of a worldwide borderless Islamic state that will solve all the world’s problems, a belief expressed by some of the men Brooks interviewed, is fortunately unrealistic. The interminable wars between different factions of is Islam are hardly to be lauded, but at least make this misguided dream unlikely.
Returning to the sexual theme, the Iranian practice of Sigheh (available to all men but only widowed women) deserves separate comment. Obtaining a permit for this temporary marriage with specified duration and terms like a western prenuptial agreement is apparently easy, and is specially designed to satisfy the sexual desires of both men and women in a manner acceptable to society. Theoretically, it can be couple (sorry for the pun) with polygamy. Although throughly condemned by western Judeo-Christian societies, is it fundamentally different than the Hollywood norm of serial overlapping monogamy?
A personal hung-up. The author converted from some wishy-washy Christianity to Juadaism to marry her husband, as did Marilyn Munroe to wed Arthut Miller. Queen Noor converted from some flavour of Christianity to Islam to marry King Hussein. Many friends and relatives have changed their religious tastes to accommodate the restrictive dictates of various religions about marriage. I can understand converting, or at least faking it, if the alternative is death, as it often was in past centuries. But if religion means anything it should be imparting universal truths. I have difficulty understanding how those universal truths change depending on the hormonal and neurotransmitter responses of one human being to another.
In spite of an Afterword written after 9/11, this book is somewhat dated. A newer and even bleaker assessment of Islamic culture is found in Nomad, a book I will review next week. Then, I promise, I will move to something lighter.
The Passionate Reader 