Infidel

For my next independent reading book, I chose to go a little off the beaten path from what everyone else in the class has been doing. Following the recommendation of my older sister, I decided to ready Infidel, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. This book is an autobiography about a young Islamic woman and her struggles in many different Middle Eastern and African countries.

Hirsi Ali was born into a traditional tribal family in Somalia. Her father was one of the organizing members of an anti-government group and he wasn't there for a large portion of Ayaan's life because he was in put into a political prison. Ayaan therefore grew up in a household run by her constantly grandmother and her constantly on-edge mother. She also has an older brother and a younger sister, both of whom had plenty of problems with their personal identities while growing up.

After a few years, her family chooses to move to Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is a completely different world because it is very much more conservative than Somalia: women are not allowed to leave the house unaccompanied by a male and they must always be covered from head to toe. A couple of years later, her father managed to escape from jail and he tells his wife and family that he wants to move to Kenya.

Ayaan's mother is not happy at all about this because Kenya is much more free-thinking, not to mention the fact that a great majority of Kenyans are Christians. This is the country where Ayaan begins to develop into the strong woman she is today.

This is a story about a woman's triumph over the things that have held her back all of her life - her religion, her culture, and her family. Even though she was abused physically, mentally, and emotionally as a child, she still managed to grow up to be a strong, independent woman who wouldn't allow her culture to hold her back. Her strength allows stands as a symbol for all women, no matter what their religion or ethnicity.

secularism in turkey

After browsing around on Wikipedia and other websites, I found out quite a bit of information about Turkey (and read quite a bit that I already knew). One of the more interesting things I found was an article on Wikipedia about the issue of secularism in Turkey.

An overwhelming majority of the Turkish population is Islamic (something like 99%) but the nation has no official religion. Therefore, Turkey is a secular state which prohibits the integration of religion in politics. Nevertheless, there have been many accusations throughout the past century that the Turkish government has been following an Islamic agenda. Several political parties have even been shut down after being suspected of fundamentalist activities. Most recently, the Virtue Party was shut down in 2001 by the Turkish Constitutional Court for Islamic activities and attempts to "redefine the secular nature of the republic".

The constitutional rule that prohibits discrimination on religious grounds is taken very seriously in Turkey, according to this Wikipedia article. One thing that really struck me was the fact that it is considered illegal for men or women to wear religious headcoverings and theo-political symbolic garments in government buildings, schools, and universities. I think that this is a pretty strong statement in the name of secularism, because even in the U.S. we allow people to wear their religious head coverings wherever and whenever you want. Ironically though, the Identity document cards of Turkish citizens must include the specification of the card holder's religion. This is obviously a symbol that the Turkish government is not entirely secular.

Dreams of Trespass

Upon completion of Fatima Mernissi's memoir Dreams of Trespass, I have a totally new understanding of what it would be like to grow up in a harem. If you look back at my previous post, you can see that I obviously had a misconstrued idea of what a harem was in the first place. Mernissi's novel also opened my eyes to other things as well, such as a very different Middle Eastern lifestyle than we have been reading about, more specifically Woman at Point Zero.

Woman at Point Zero portrays a battered woman struggling day after day until she finally reaches a breaking point. Dreams of Trespass is much less heavy, to the point of even using some light humor. This book tells of the life of a girl growing up in Morocco in a harem. When she talks about her childhood, she tells of a life that was at times difficult, but for the most part, it seems that she had a good childhood. While she did have a lot more freedom than Firdaus did in Woman at Point Zero, Mernissi was constantly questioning the people around her. She wanted to know why the women were confined to the home while they men were allowed to go about town as they pleased. In fact, Mernissi questioned her family so often that they had to tell her to stop asking questions. Firdaus never had this kind of freedom.

I think one of the reasons why this book portrayed women as having a lot more freedom than we women we have read about thus far is because Mernissi had a few strong role models in her life. Mernissi's mother was definitely the strongest woman (or maybe even the strongest person altogether) that I have read about in this class. Even though she was confined to the home, she was constantly standing up to her husband. She complained several times about being confined to a Harem and how she hated living with so many people together. Mernissi's mother would also talk about how she longed to live alone with only her husband and children; most of the Middle Eastern women we have read about so far in this class wouldn't dare voice these types of opinions to men.

Mernissi's grandmother, Yasmina, is also a very strong woman. One of my favorite scenes in the book occured near the beginning. Mernissi was describing her grandmother's life in her harem (which was somewhat different than Mernissi's: her grandfather lived with his nine wives). Yasmina said that she was sad because she really did not like sharing her husband with eight other women, especially because she did not like one of the wives, Lalla Thor. In an act of rebellion, she named her duck Thor, and Lalla Thor, not surprisingly, was upset. When her husband went to talk to her about changing the duck's name, Yasmina simply said that if she didn't like it, he should get rid of her. She had no problem whatsoever standing up to her husband (even if it was in vain).

Fatima Mernissi had a much easier life than some of the other women we have read about in this class, and I think the main reason for this is the group of strong women that she grew up surrounded by. In Woman at Point Zero, Firdaus's mother died when she was very young and she had no other mother-figures in her life to set an example for her. I think that we learn how to behave and we learn what is right from wrong from watching, and if we dont' have anyone strong in our life to set an example for us, we will end up living a very difficult life.

dreams of tresspass

I will admit that i have not finished reading my book yet, so I decided to blog about what we're supposed to write about for Wednesday; and then I'll switch.

When I began reading Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood, by Fatima Mernissi, I was instantly intrigued as to what, exactly, a Harem was. The first thing I thought of when I read the title was of the typical Harems we read about, the ones with a sultan and hundreds of concubines all there to please him. However, once I began, I immediately realized that this book was not in line with the kind of thing we typically associate the word harem with. Many people just think, harem: a bunch of women a sultan (or something) uses for sex – a personal brothel if you will. But this is quite different. This harem, though it does have many women in it, they are not all there to be used for sex. In fact, the Harem that the author lives in is just one large house with one big family in it. However, Mernissi does speak of her grandmother, who is one of nine of her husband's wives.

Not surprisingly, most women do not like being confined to a Harem and having to share their husband with other women. Towards the beginning of the book, the author overhears her grandmother complain about being "suck in a harem" and she asks her what that meant.

Sometimes, she said that to be stuck in a harem simply meant that a woman had lost her freedom of movement. Other times, she said that a harem meant misfortune becasue a woman ahd to share her husband with many others. (Mernissi 34)

After this excerpt, the author makes an extensive footnote about harems, defining the different types and describing the difference between them. According to this footnote, there are domestic and imperial harems, and the imperial are the ones we most typically associate with the word 'harem.' However, this book only deals with the imperial harem.

women in modern egypt

Since reading Saadawi's Woman at Point Zero, my fellow group members and I were compelled to research more about modern Egyptian women to see if they really are as used and abused as the Firdaus was in the novel. After merely Googling the term "modern Egyptian women," I found this site by BBC News which has links to little blurbs about eight different young Egyptian women. These women are from all sorts of different backgrounds, ranging from the well-educated, city-girls to the poor country-girls.

This website basically offered information about 2 different types of girls: the educated and the uneducated. Three of the eight girls are either in college or will be attending it shortly. From reading their profiles, I can tell that these young women come from families with money. I can also tell that these women's lives were most likely the complete opposite of Firdaus's life.

In their little blurbs, these young women expressed many different things, but grief and resentment towards a difficult life were not one of them. Fatimah wrote about her thankfulness towards her mother for always being there for her and her siblings. Sarah wishes that the streets of Cairo were less crowded and Rana wants to change the school system. These are not the remarks of girls who are struggling to live day to day like Firdaus was.

The other five girls, however, seem to have led lives much more similar to Firdaus's. All of them have dropped out of school (usually before even reaching secondary school) in order to help support their poor families. Several of the girls work extremely long shifts in factories and have been doing so since they were as young as six years old.

Reda, a very poor 16-year-old reminded me the most of Firdaus. She was very poor and had to work hard to support her father, a deaf-mute. She admits to having considered running away. The only reason she hasn't, it seems, is that she doesn't know where to go.

Woman at Point Zero.

For my independent reading book, I chose Nawal El Saadawi's Woman at Point Zero. This book represented to me an image of a strong woman who has had to deal with life in a world where she is constantly being pushed down. I think that if Firdaus, the main character, had had different living conditions, she could have grown up to be a successful, celebrated woman in whatever career she had chosen. However, since she had the misfortune of being brought up in an extremely conservative and patriarchal Egyptian society, Firdaus goes through many disturbing events, including becoming a prostitute. This, of course, doesn't happen until AFTER she has lost both of her parents, sent to boarding school, forced to married a deformed old man who beats her, and raped repeatedly by a "friend" and his comrades.

The story starts out with narration by the author herself. It tells the true story of Firdaus, a real woman whom she met in prison a while ago while she was doing psychiatric work. Saadawi had heard of Firdaus and she wanted to hear her story. Firdaus was in jail for having killed a man, and was to be given the death penalty the following day. She had barely spoken a word since being admitted to the prison but Saadawi is determined to the story from her, and eventually she is able to talk to her.

The second chapter (which takes up the bulk of the book) is told from Firdaus's point of view. It is basically her life story, from when she was a very young child to the act that put her in jail, going through the horrors she had to suffer growing up in rural Egypt. Many of these events were extremely disturbing, and after reading them, I did not find it hard to believe that she would be filled with enough rage to kill someone.

suicide bombers vs freedom fighters

I know this is a little bit late, but I'm now doing my post about the YouTube site we were asked to look for and discuss. I chose to look up some more information about suicide bombers in the Middle East (or as some people look at them, Freedom Fighters).

The clip I chose to watch was about a female Palestinian who had somehow become a suicide bomber. Of course, the people who do the bombing rarely look at the situation as committing suicide, they think of themselves as martyrs. What they are doing is for something bigger than themselves, they are Freedom Fighters, hoping to better the world.

In some strange twist of fate, this woman did not end up killing herself or anyone else. She was not successful in her attempt to blow up her Israeli doctor. In my opinion, these suicide bombers are more of a victim than the people they are attempting to blow up. This woman was obviously in some sort of a mental disarray and was not fully aware of the task she took on when she decided to strap a bomb to her body.

She must have been told by someone at some point that strapping a bomb to her chest and killing not only herself, but several other innocent people, would somehow make her a martyr. She therefore went into it thinking of herself as a "Freedom Fighter." However, after giving the idea some thought, it seems that she realized what an extreme task she had taken on and decided that she had made a mistake. At some point, this woman realized that she was not a Freedom Fighter, she was a suicide bomber. Unfortunately, by that point, she was committed and there was no turning back.

Ironically, something went wrong with the wiring of the bomb and it didn't fire. Now this woman is in jail, waiting for her trial, which will probably be unfair. She is now trapped in a jail cell, begging to be let go before she is given the death penalty. She knows she made a mistake, but at this point, there is nothing she can do but face the fate of a failed suicide bomber.