Category Archives: Gender and Sexuality

What (who) drives Muslim women

"Arab Spring", Anthropology/Sociology, CyberOrient, Gender and Sexuality, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Yemen


top, Leila Trabelsi in Saudi Arabia; bottom, Leila Trabelsi with Ben Ali in Tunis, pre-Jasmine Revolution

The West has long had a fascination with Muslim women, from the Oriental harem beauties of Ottoman seraglios to immigrants who wear niqab in Europe. As some critics have noted, perhaps those who laud or victimize the role of women in Islam (as though there could be “the” role), should look at the patriarchy in their own societies. The ability to go out in public with less of the body covered may be a sign of freedom in mobility, but it is not automatically symbolic of equality in economic or political terms. Ethnographic study for almost a century has illustrated the kinds of social contexts in which women and men are closer to being egalitarian, but there is no one factor (including religion) that is causal. The books and commentaries on women in Islam continue to proliferate and will into the foreseeable future. But what about the situation today within Islamic countries?

By today, I mean the totally unscientific sense of an arbitrary internet experience. In checking out several websites this morning to see what I might comment upon, several items caught my attention. First, a Yemeni website shows a photograph of Leila Trabelsi, the wife of the exiled Tunisian president Ben Ali; both are now living in Saudi Arabia (top picture, above). The picture is pregnant with interpretive possibilities. The former elegant first lady is now regaled in hijab while mouse-clicking her way through cyberspace. In that vast digital archive, she can easily come across previous pictures of herself, like the one shown below her new Saudi makeover look. So is one of these pictures of Leila more Islamic than the other? Does the veil indicate intent; does living in Saudi Arabia signify a closer relationship to Allah? Perhaps if we knew what websites she was surfing, we would have more clues. Continue reading What (who) drives Muslim women →

5,000 Years and Counting, but which way?

Bible and Holy Land, Gender and Sexuality, Obama Administration


Brigham Young and his 21 wives

It should not be surprising that North Carolina’s Republican legislators have made it a state law that marriage is only between one man and one woman, but the rationale is a bit puzzling for one of the buckles of the Bible Belt. Here is Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council claiming that “We can’t think that we can tinker with the definition of marriage and say, it’s no longer between a man and a woman which 5,000 years of human history has shown.” What Bible has Tony Perkins been reading? Let’s assume that he also wants to set back the clock to Bishop Ussher’s number game that Adam and Eve were created in 4004 BC. If Adam only married Eve, which would be news to the legendary Lilith and make it really interesting to speculate where Seth got his wife, then why not push it back another millennium. The problem is that many of the Biblical Patriarchs were not aware of the one man/one woman rule. Certainly not Abraham or Jacob. David and Solomon were only two of the Israelite kings who had rather sizeable harems.

Throughout most history, whether in the orbit of Biblical myth or not, marriage has not been exclusively between one man and one woman. Continue reading 5,000 Years and Counting, but which way? →

A Poem for Mother’s Day

Gender and Sexuality, Poetry


Art by Kahlil Gibran

by George N. El-Hage, May 13, 212

You are mother to the universe and to the stars.
The trees and the flowers are your children.
You are a symbol of eternity, for you are immortal
Like the oceans, the lakes and the rivers.
The sun and the seasons are your children.

You give all and take nothing.
You are nature in its diversity and bounty.
You are fire, the eternal flame.
You are the lava and the volcano.

You are Mary, the Blessed One, mother of the Crucified,
Yet mother to no one, for she remained a virgin.
You are mother to all humanity,
And all creations are your children. Continue reading A Poem for Mother’s Day →

The Real War on Women

"Arab Spring", Egypt, Gender and Sexuality, Journalism and Media


One of the most revered journals on the political front has taken a cue from Sports Illustrated: Foreign Policy now has a sex issue, indeed what is billed as “the sex issue.” Someone forgot to tell the editors that there is such a thing as “gender,” since there is very little bedroom-variety “sex” revealed in the articles. If a review of “Women in Politics” is about “sex,” then the journal misses out on the real sex going on, like politician John Edwards cavorting while running for President and several secret servicemen strip clubbing the night away in Columbia. And if what is going on from India to Iran is “the new politics of sex,” it looks a lot like the old. The reader might even accuse the journal of false advertising, since the seductive pose of a model clad in hijab black on the cover suggests more politically incorrect eye candy inside.

The lead article by the journalist Mona Eltahawy has launched a barrage of commentaries and counter commentaries in the academic community. Echoing the cover tag, she asks “Why do They Hate Us?” with a less than subtle subtitle of “The Real War on Women is in the Middle East.” Were this “really” the case, it might be seen as good news, since I have always been under the impression that the real war on women was more or less worldwide. How wonderful that women in Africa, Asia and Latin America no longer have to worry about real warfare. Of course, we all know the real war against women ended in Europe when the wielders of the Malleus Maleficarum burned the last witch and in the United States when women started voting in 1920. And I am sure the GOP is quite relieved to know that the war on women announced for the upcoming election is phony.

I understand the author’s frustration at the lack of progress for promoting women’s rights in the aftermath of the now rather chilly “Arab Spring.” Her experience in Tahrir of being groped and sexually assaulted is despicable. But to assume that those men stand for all Egyptian men and that all Egyptian women are hated is what one says in anger. The “real war” here is not about groping; it is a battle for minds, not bodies. The “real” enemy is a politics charged with a dogmatic rhetoric that is less about what men and women do in the bedroom than how they conform to an imposed tyranny that benefits the proverbial one percent, be they dictators or clerics. Continue reading The Real War on Women →

Anger over female circumcision in a Muslim sub-sect in India

Ethics, Gender and Sexuality, India

NY Daily News, Tuesday, April 24th 2012

Over 1,600 Bohra Muslim women in India have signed an online petition calling for an end to the practice of female circumcision in the community. The community’s insistence on “Khatna” (the excision of the clitoris) sets it apart from other Muslims in the Indian subcontinent.

Eleven years ago, Farida Bano was circumcised by an aunt on a bunk bed in her family home at the end of her 10th birthday party.

The mutilation occurred not in Africa, where the practice is most prevalent, but in India where a small Muslim sub-sect known as the Dawoodi Bohra continues to believe that the removal of the clitoris is the will of God.

“We claim to be modern and different from other Muslim sects. We are different but not modern,” Bano, a 21-year-old law graduate who is angry about what was done to her, told AFP in New Delhi. She vividly remembers the moment in the party when the aunt pounced with a razor blade and a pack of cotton wool.

The Bohra brand of Islam is followed by 1.2 million people worldwide and is a sect of Shia Islam that originated in Yemen. While the sect bars other Muslims from its mosques, it sees itself as more liberal, treating men and women equally in matters of education and marriage.

The community’s insistence on “Khatna” (the excision of the clitoris) also sets it apart from others on the subcontinent. “If other Muslims are not doing it then why are we following it?” Bano says. Continue reading Anger over female circumcision in a Muslim sub-sect in India →

Confessions of a Would be Muslim Reformer (sort of)

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Gender and Sexuality, Humor and Satire, Islam and Christianity, Islam in America, Islamophobia, Wahhabi


by Omid Safi, Religious News Service, April 1, 2012

I have been doing a lot of soul-searching, and I have reached a few important conclusions. Speaking as a moderate Muslim, I realize that my community is primitive, backwards, mired in tradition, and in need of massive help from KONY 2012 people to reform this tradition to catch up with the luminosity of secular West.

I know that there is a trouble with Islam today, and everyday. I also want to have gay-friendly mosques where people can just go have a beer after the optional prayer services, ‘cause that is what it means to be a progressive Muslim.

Because all the secret jihadists (and the FBI people who have infiltrated them) just want to impose this Shari’a thing on us, and for some reason all that beer drinking and hooking up seems to be frowned upon in that Shari’a thing.

With that, and in the name of She who is the source of All-Mercy, here are the fruits of my search. If anyone wants to put me in touch with Fox News or MEMRI, please do so, I’ll recite all these on camera—just contact my agent, and he can tell you my appearance fee. I know that we are in need of a Muslim Reformation, and I am working on my “Martin Luther of Islam” speech. I can’t quite make it up to ML’s 95 theses, but I have got a good head start below. With that, “I give you permission to think freely”:

First, speaking as a Muslim, I am so disappointed in my Muslim brother Barack Hussein Obama. He eats pork, drinks alcohol, regularly attends church service, had his daughters baptized, has yet to set foot in a mosque since becoming president, kisses AIPAC’s behind, authorizes indefinite detentions, and has seen many Muslims killed by his drone attacks and ongoing wars. Really, a pathetic Muslim if ever there was one. I mean, if I wanted a Muslim ruler that would do all the above, I would move back to the Muslim countries where most of the rulers do that kind of stuff anyway, and the food is a little better than here. Continue reading Confessions of a Would be Muslim Reformer (sort of) →