Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women

Geraldine Brooks, before she became a novelist, was a journalist, assigned to the Middle East in the late 1980s to early 1990s (this book was published in 1995). Her husband Tony Horowitz accompanied her, fashioned himself as a freelance journalist, and immediately jumped into adventures: tracking smugglers with the camel corps in Egypt, crewing on a supply boat in the Persian Gulf. She was forbidden. Eventually, she realized that the one thing she could do that he could not was talk to women. This book is anecdotes from those years, encounters and observations and conversations, wherever she happened to be. The result is scattered and impressionistic, informative in a general sense because of the variety within a region that we tend to show more lump together. She begins with the veil. "At first, I had naively assumed that hijab would at least free women from the tyranny of the beauty industry." she writes, but this is not the case, because a distinction is made between public and private, and, as one woman tells her, "Islam encourages us to be beautiful for our husbands." She watches an Eritrean doctor perform a gruesome operation to repair consequences of genital mutilation, a cultural practice that was there before Christianity and Islam, and was tolerated by both; a key to eradication is education, so women can read the Koran and see that it commands no such thing. She accompanies a western educated Saudi friend to visit his uncle, a Wahhabi imam who meets with the men of his village every Friday after prayers. He has never before spoken to a woman outside his family. How can he counsel the women then? "They put their problems to him through their husbands, of course." says her friend. "But what if their husband is their problem?" she asks. This possibility had not occurred to either man. She wrangles and invitation to the Islamic Women's Games, where a father is allowed to see his daughter run in competition for the first time, thanks to "the world's first track suit-hijab". She learns to belly dance in Egypt, and in protest of fundamentalist calls for a ban on this ancient tradition, searches for "a venue modest enough to match my talents", where the manager accepts her into the show for an evening. These are revealing glimpses, with no single simple conclusion. Some women renounce their former lives and take on the veil. Some women negotiate space for themselves within the constraints. Some women press for political and social changes. Now several weeks after reading, I do not retain any especially profound or pronounced memories, but I am appreciative of the reminder to look below the surface.

(read 16 Aug 2011) show less

I was completely captivated by this book. A fascinating glimpse into Muslim women's lives that is devastating in its implications vis-à-vis the status of women in the Middle East. Although written over 15 years ago, I suspect it remains as valid an account as ever of the repressions faced by women wherever Islamic fundamentalism has taken root. While cognizant throughout her journeys that her outsider status (privileged, white, American, and a convert to Judaism) imposes limits on what she can witness as well as envisage, author and prize-winning foreign correspondent Geraldine Brooks nevertheless manages to provide a penetrating analysis of the status of women under Islam. As a journalist, her strength is obviously her reportage, show more which manages to succinctly capture the essence of lived lives, whether those of presidential wives or guerrilla fighters. But she also pulls no punches in stating the obvious. While forces such as colonialism and pre-Islamic cultural traditions likely contributed to current misogynistic attitudes and practices in Muslim countries, she does not hesitate to say that the Islamic faith itself is complicit. It is worth quoting at length from her concluding chapter:

In the end, what [progressive Muslim scholars] are proposing is as artificial an exercise as that proposed by the Marxists who used to argue that socialism in its pure form should not be maligned and rejected because of the deficiencies of "actually existing socialism." At some point every religion, especially one that purports to encompass a complete way of life and system of government, has to be called to account for the kind of life it offers the people in the lands where it predominates.

It becomes insufficient to look at Islam on paper, or Islam in history, and dwell on the inarguable improvements it brought to women’s lives in the seventh century. Today, the much more urgent and relevant task is to examine the way the faith has proved such fertile ground for almost every antiwomen custom it encountered in its great march out of Arabia. When it found veils and seclusion in Persia, it absorbed them; when it found genital mutilations in Egypt, it absorbed them; when it found societies in which women had never had a voice in public affairs, its own traditions of lively women’s participation withered.

Once I began working on this book, I looked everywhere for examples of women trying to reclaim Islam’s positive messages, trying to carry forward into the twentieth century the reformist zeal with which Muhammad had remade the lives of many women in the first Muslim community at Medina. It turned out to be a frustrating search. In most places the direction of the debate seemed to be exactly the reverse. Palestinian, Egyptian, Algerian and Afghani women were seeing a curtain come down on decades of women’s liberation as Islamic leaders in their countries turned to the most exclusionary and inequitable interpretations. For those women who struggled against the tide, the results were a discouraging trio of marginalization, harassment and exile.

Read this book in conjunction with Haideh Moghissi’s Feminism and Islamic Fundamentalism: The Limits of Postmodern Analysis for a powerful condemnation of religious, political and academic myopia. show less

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Brooks spent seven years in the Middle East for the Wall Street Journal, covering 20 countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Jordan, against a backdrop of the Gulf War. As a woman, Brooks is able to go behind the veil to experience firsthand the life of Islamic women, and as a westerner, she is able to speak with the men who oppress them.

But it's not as simple as that. The further Brooks delves into the world of Islam and where women fit in, the more stereotypes are defied. There are the women who do what they can for women's rights, like Jordan's Queen Noor, but there are also those who welcome opression, like Brooks' Egyptian assistant, who, after many years of concerning show more herself with fashion and her career, makes the decision to veil before her marriage, and grows more and more devout.

This book was certainly eye-opening ( it desperately needs an afterword regarding the Middle East today, given all that has happened in the last ten years), and introduced me to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, and the way texts like the Koran have been misued to set women's rights back centuries.

An illuminating read, and definitely recommend for anyone who would like a greater understanding of the role women play in a part of the world that is so frequently misrepresented in order to create a culture of fear and paranoia. show less

This is brilliant. A western woman's view of Islamic women's lot. In her journalistic career, Geraldine Brooks met and spoke to many women in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Jordan, Egypt. The book is her reflections on Islamic women generally through the lens of those particular encounters. It is very readable and she is more directly informed than I or any other man could ever be.

It seems she comes to the conclusion that much of the matter has to do with the actual practice of Islam which has, over time, absorbed from cultures it encountered such practices as veiling and seclusion, genital mutilation, and the absence of women from public affairs.

She therefore often uses the terms extremism and fundamentalism to imply there is show more a purer Islam that would not support this sort of behaviour. And yet she notes how few examples of real equality or freedom there are for women in Islamic cultures, and how women seeking greater freedoms must walk a very dangerous and difficult line while many women become promoters of their own restrictions. Brooks knows that the dilemmas of Koranic authorisations of wife beating and apostate executions which vie with the prophet's own great admiration for women, the traditions of their military involvement, and such surprises as Khomeini's happy home life are not easily resolved.

Speaking as a westerner, she knows that women's rights are not to be determined by cultural or local stances but are human and universal, yet she also sees that western leadership often remains ignorant of the difficulties for Islamic women within their borders and does not sufficiently protect them from the horrors of honour killing or clitoridectomy.

One over-riding impression remains with me - that the company of so many women she has encountered in the course of her travels and research has enriched her personally. In the midst of her discoveries and conclusions, her frustrations and confusions, the abiding and fundamental story is a human one, and any way forward is along this path. show less

This is an excellent, thought-provoking book. Written before 9/11/01, it is a documentation of the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism that has since been such a concern, but primarily an examination of the place of women in Islamic culture - a somewhat paradoxical and often complex place.

I learned a great deal from this book, about Islam, the Middle East and its history, and the state of women in that part of the world. I have often said that I think of Islam as "younger" religion that is about where Christianity was in the Middle Ages. Certainly, Christianity could be accused of many of the injustices against women that are documented in this book as well as the intolerance of other faiths, but I like to think most Christians have show more progressed past some of that. It is easy for Westerners to say that Muslim culture is backward and flawed, but I think it's dangerous to think we are very much better; Islam has some appealing characteristics and some progressive followers.

Each section in this book addresses a different aspect of women's lives, from marriage and family to education, work, the arts, and sports. Brooks tells the stories of women from countries throughout the Middle East and also Africa and Asia. I enjoyed "meeting" the various women in this book and seeing the variety in their experiences of Islam.

I also learned more about the controversial (at least in my part of the world) faith of Islam. There are many parallels between Islam and Christianity, including both having a charismatic founder and each having both a sacred "source" text and supplemental interpretive texts (the Koran and hadith for Islam, the Gospels and Paul for Christianity). Some of the differences that I find pivotal are the fact that Muhammad was a warrior while Jesus was decidedly not, and that Muhammad left a record of his behavior as a husband and father while we have no such record related to Jesus (though I have often wished we Christians did have his example to follow in those areas).

This book increased my already high regard for Geraldine Brooks, who is a wonderful writer and inquisitive and daring reporter. While it is clear that she doesn't agree with all of the practice of Islam, she generally maintains an objectivity about her subject and manages to find the beauty and positive features of her subject as well.

I highly recommend this book! show less

(Bookcrossing, 09 October 2011)

A very worthwhile book that takes a deep and personal look at the hidden and often surprising world of Islamic women from different countries and regimes. The parts examining the basis of some of the rules and regulations in everyday life when the Koran and Hadiths were put together are very interesting. But however valuable it is as a historical document, it has become just that, in my opinion, as it was published in 1995 and worked very much in terms of a coverage of current issues, so it is rather outdated now. A shame, as a lot of effort clearly went into it. One can't help but wonder what became of the women featured in this book.

I listened to this is audiobook format.

Brooks traveled as a journalist covering various uprisings and wars throughout the middle east before she became a novelist. This book (her first) is a result of many conversations and interviews in the Muslim world from late 1980s-early 1990s. It focuses on the evolution and complexity of a wide range of women's issues: genital mutilation, honor killings, employment, rights to drive, modesty dress, voting, elections to political office, participation in sports, etc. It includes vignettes from many countries and they are not all the same. It was a little disorganized, hard to keep track of which country what happened in, but the combination of history lessons and personal stories was educational show more and impactful. This book is definitely worth reading, and you can pick and choose chapters or just take in a bit of it. There's no real overarching plot that needs to be followed. I also felt she had a pretty balanced view of the issues and made clear distinctions between what she heard and saw and what she thought about it. Not exactly unbiased but she left room for the reader to draw conclusions different from her own. show less