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The Heart's Direction: The Changing Images and Reality of Saudi Women
| Article
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19759 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
3 / 1991 |
3,943 Words |
| Author
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Miriam Cooke
Miriam Cooke teaches Arabic language and literature at Duke
University. Her most recent book, Opening the Gates: A Hundred
Years of Arab Feminist Writing, was coedited with Margot
Badran and published by Virago and Indiana in 1990. |
In the wake of Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, the American public became dramatically aware of the Saudi Arabian world its troops were being sent to defend. In early September, the Universal Press Syndicate distributed a page of stereotypical Arabic vocabulary, sayings, and recipes that even the News-Times of Morehead City-Beaufort, North Carolina, picked up.
And the men and women detailed to the Saudi front were provided with a hastily compiled booklet of instructions, the do's and don'ts of Saudi campaigning.
The military administration had been obliged not to neglect the human aspect of the desert. How would Saudi men and women respond to the onslaught of American military personnel, particularly to tough women soldiers driving juggernauts or laboring in the heat of the midday sun? The media assured the American public that the encounter could have unforeseen consequences. Saudi women, who do not even have the right to drive, would be empowered by the sight of--and doubtless would wish to emulate--their Western sisters. When news of Saudi women's emergency access to employment was released--and when fifty unveiled women staged a demonstration by driving family cars through the streets of Riyadh in November 1990--the American media crowed: Even if nothing else was won in this war, a trail had been blazed for the emancipation of those silent, secluded, shrouded women. But what is consistently, even willfully, omitted from such coverage is a discussion of Saudi--as well as other Arab Muslim women's own agency.
In a real sense, the stereotypical American image of Muslim women--anonymous black shapes gliding along high walls, sensuous odalisques reclining against the harem's soft pillows--was shaped not in America but in Europe. It was a crass image that differentiated women from men chiefly in relationship to lust. Despite the extraordinary variety of Islamic peoples, customs, traditions, and lands, Europeans and, subsequently, Americans have insisted on perceiving Muslims everywhere as one and the same. Although Britain, France, and Holland had for centuries been in contact with Islamic peoples and Muslim cultures, their objectives had been narrowly pragmatic. Government administrators paid scholars to study these new cultures as part of the colonial process. While resident in the Muslim world, these scholars studied classical Muslim languages, especially Arabic, and they translated major Islamic documents into European languages (the Koran was rendered into German as early as the sixteenth century). Some also commented extensively on the societies with which they came into contact; for example, the
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