Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women [Paperback]

 

 

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Using her six-year experience in the Middle East, Geraldine Brooks wrote her first book entitled "Nine Parts of Desire," which was published in 1995. The author spent sex years researching the status and the role of women in several Middle East countries such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq. The book is broken into thirteen chapters, which describes the journey and the observation of the author in the Middle East countries. She writes about the history of Muhammad and his wives, the purpose for the veil and hijab, the Islamic marriages, the women in military, politics, business, and entertainment, and the author's experience with Queen Noor in Jordan.

In part, this book explores the women's social status as defined by the Islamic culture and the words of the prophet Muhammad. Since Muhammad's death, the Islamic culture has been defining women according to their Koran, which became part of Islamic law (p. 190). The Muslim traditions and customs, such as hidden faces, hairs, or exposed skin of women, seems to came from the book of Koran that expresses Muhammad's accounts with his wives and his revelations. The Islamic laws seem to require women to wear hijab, cloth covering all of their skin expect for hands and eyes, and restricted social interaction between men and women who are not related by blood. In this book, Brooks mentions that the prophet, Muhammad, had a revelation from Allah that required women to be put in seclusion and to wear hijab when in public to avoid the sight of men who might feel temptation or desire to them for their own (p. 4-5, 20-1, 83). The Koran's accounts of Muhammad and his wives seem to show examples of why women needed to be covered and how this gives men ideas of being pure-hearted.

Throughout this book, one can comprehend why the repression against women became intensified in the Islamic societies in the 1970s to the 1990s through the defined social status of women in Islamic culture, Muhammad's interpretation of women's status, the rise of the fundamentalism and its mission, and their reasons for repressing women. With her extensive experience interviewing Muslim women in the Middle East, Brooks has written a fascinating book which expresses an unique perspective about the lives and tradition of Muslim women of the Islamic culture.

A nice change from reading fiction. It is however, disturbing in parts and not always for the "faint of heart". So informative and also so scary! The author works hard at maintaining some objectivity, but I still found myself getting angry around the obscene "control" men in Muslim countries exercise over women, in the name of religion. In so many cases the women accept and embrace their role so easily, (in the name of "Islam"), that it makes us all stand back and take a look at how we may be "brainwashed" into accepting the "unacceptable", in our own societies. At the same time it instills a "rage" against the way men use any religion or philosophy to impinge on our rights as women and avoid taking any responsibility for their own lives by making women responsible for them.

As far as a comprehensive look on women living under Islam I have found no better. From the most restrictive (Saudi Arabia) to the most liberal (Egypt) one is presented with a fascinating glimpse of what it must be like to be female and to live in a Middle Eastern world. In Chapter 7 A Queen the author even writes of how an American woman (the former Lisa Halaby now Queen Noor) marries the King of Jordan, converts to Islam then having to face her own challenges adjusting to a slow-to-accept Islamic society. The author also writes of other American women married to Middle Eastern men and living in their respective countries subject to the same type of restrictions other Islamic women have had to face.

Already in the Preface of the book I was shocked to learn that the wearing of the Islamic hijab (the veiled attire) for one of the author's colleague's signified "acceptance of a legal code that valued her testimony at half the worth of a man's, an inheritance system that allowed her half the legacy of her brother, a future domestic life in which her husband could beat her if she disobeyed him, make her share her attentions with three more wives, divorce her at whim and get absolute custody of her children." I could not imagine any intelligent, well educated American (or Canadian) woman born and raised in a democratic society ever learning to tolerate such injustice. Betty Mahmoody who later wrote her book Not Without My Daughter certainly lived to experience her nightmare "of an American wife who agrees to visit her husband's family in Tehran only to find herself trapped there by Iranian laws that forbid women to leave the country without their husband's permission." Mahmoody's book does indeed "give an unremittingly bleak picture of life in Iran, describing wife beatings, filthy houses and vermin-infested food."

In contrast the author writes in Chapter 5 of a certain Janet from Kansas City who "gradually found herself coming to love many aspects of her life in Iran. She found that Iranians lavished affection on the few Americans who stayed. Some Iranians had warm memories of American teachers or technicians who had helped the country while even those who saw Americans only as rapacious exploiters felt that Janet, by staying, had aligned herself with Iran. Instead of being greeted with hostility, she found herself welcomed everywhere--pushed to the front of food lines, given the best meat and helped in every possible way." Yet at the end of this same chapter the story of Margaret, another American born Islamic wife, is highlighted. Her husband accustomed to going on long business trips to America had, instead of taking her for a visit to her parents, chose to leave her behind to do the chores for his mother and sister: " 'My mom's not too pleased' she said. 'She calls up and says, 'You waiting on his relatives again? ' She knows they're working me to death. She wants me to come home.'" Yet, when asked by the author why she had not taken up her mother's advice and go home for a while Margaret "straightened her hunched shoulders and kneaded the small of her back with a clenched fist. 'I can't' she said "My husband doesn't want me to." It was up to him to sign the papers that would allow her to leave the country." How truly sad a scenario!

Some Islamic countries, however, seemed to have a more open mind when it came to military service. In Chapter 6 Jihad Is For Women Too the author wrote of how the Emirates' president Sheik Zayed's wife, Sheika Fatima, offered the radical solution of recruiting women to deal with the manpower shortage. Hessa al-Khaledi, a friend of the sheika's, and the first woman civil engineer in that country was delegated to solve the problems of recruiting the Emirates' first women soldiers and "reconciling the religous establishment to their existence." A major problem came up with who would train these women. The Emirates only qualified instructors were men and that was unthinkable. "The answer was obvious to anyone who had watched the U.S. military descend on nearby Saudi Arabia. There, U.S. Army women were flying troop transports, maintaining missile batteries, trucking munitions to the front lines, The Emirates asked the U.S. Army if it could spare a few of its senior speciailists whose average length of service was fourteen years. Their commander, Major Janis Karpinski, was already serving in Saudi Arabia." Major Kapinksi, who years later was promoted to Brigadier General Karpinski wrote of this in her book One Woman's Army: The Commanding General of Abu Ghraib Tells Her Story.

This is all well in good up until you read Chapter 10 Politics, With and Without a Vote. Out of everything I read in this book the story of what happened to a group of university educated, high achieving women from what Saudis call "good families" was the MOST shocking. The author described how in November 1990 forty-seven women, driven by their chauffeurs, met on the parking lot of the Al Tamimi supermarket in downtown Riyadh. There, dismissing their drivers, about a quarter of them slid into the drivers' seats of their cars, the rest taking their places as passengers. A few blocks later members of the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice stopped the cars at the intersections ordering the women out of the drivers' seats. Soon regular police arrived, the women were yelled at that they had committed a religious crime and the police drove the women's cars to police headquarters with the woman in the back. The author goes on: "While the women were held at the police station, Prince Salman summoned a group of prominent religious and legal experts to discuss what they had done. The legal scholars concluded that no civil violation had occurred, since the women all had international drivers' licenses recognized by Saudi law. The religious representatives found that no moral issues were at stake, since the women were veiled and the Koran says nothing that could be construed as forbidding an act such as driving. The women were released." One would think that when the women who had taken part in the demonstration returned to work the next day at the university they "would have been greeted as heroines by their all-women students. Instead, some found their office doors daubed with graffiti, criticizing them as un-Islamic. Others found their classes boycotted by large numbers of conservative students. Soon denunciations spewed from the mosques. Leaflets flooded the streets...Predictably the womens' phones began ringing off the hook with abusive calls. If their husbands answered, they were told to divorce their whorish wives, or berated for being unable to control them." This was NOT the WORST part of this however. These women ended up being BETRAYED by the ruling family who instead of standing by them on Islamic grounds, proclaiming that what the EXTREMISTS were doing was entirely contrary to the Koran, caved to THEIR pressure: "Prince Salman's committee's findings were quickly buried. Instead, the government suspended the women from their jobs and confiscated their passports." To add insult to injury a week after the demonstration: "Prince Naif bin Abdul Aziz, the interior minister, joined the slanderers. At a meeting in Mecca he denounced the demonstrations as a "stupid act" and said some of the women involved were raised outside Saudi Arabia and "not brought up in an Islamic home." He then read out a new fatwa, or ruling with the force of law, from Saudi Arabia's leading sheik Abdul Aziz bin Baz stating that women driving contradicted 'Islamic traditions followed by Saudi citizens'. If driving hadn't been illegal before, it was now. "

Although some sixteen years old now, this is still an OUTSTANDING book about life for Islamic women in their respective countries. As a Lithuanian-American who was encouraged to seek as much higher education as I could, never treated as property by either my father OR my husband I feel extremely fortunate to be living in the United States free of such restrictions. (I would equally feel fortunate to be living in Canada where most of my maternal relatives reside).The Islamic faith does appear to have some real problems in its interpretation and application of the teachings of the Koran. I had previously read Irshad Manji's book Trouble with Islam Todaywhich describes this in great detail. I would highly recommend Manji's book in addition to this book.

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4.0 out of 5 stars A great book on Women in Islam
A very interesting read for anyone interested in the cause of women in Islam. Some might find it biased - the author makes her opinion very clear and her view is not... Read more

Published on July 16 2004

5.0 out of 5 stars The Experience of Our Sisters
This is an exquisitely written book. Brooks has great talent for pulling the reader into the mind of the people she tells about, and especially, I found as a man, pulling you... Read more

Published on July 8 2004 by Jedidiah Palosaari

1.0 out of 5 stars Another book that misleads and adds to hate not understandin
Brooks officiates herself as an authority on the Arab world and on Islam. Her knowledge is that of a journalist, not a scholar. Read more

Published on July 4 2004 by Nida S. Davis

5.0 out of 5 stars A candid and shocking look into an Arabics woman's world.
I read this book in only a few days, because with everything going on in the world today, I felt I had to educate myself, to the best of my ability, about what is happening in... Read more

Published on Jun 30 2004 by louisehogberg

1.0 out of 5 stars This is such a farce!!!
I am a Muslim women - a convert, from Catholicism, converted right after Sept. 11th,2001 so for about 3 years - and I have been on 'both sides of the fence' (being a Muslim woman,... Read more

Published on May 10 2004 by muja_and_the_city

5.0 out of 5 stars Really Improved My Opinion of Ayatollah Khomeni and Iran
I'm an American woman who has lived overseas in Morocco for twelve years. My friends and I are reading this book for our monthly bookclub selection. Read more

Published on April 12 2004 by Imperial Topaz

5.0 out of 5 stars Why Saudi Arabia?
Other reviewers have lamented that Brooks focused on the Middle East in general and on Saudi Arabia in particular to the detriment of providing insight into Muslim societies... Read more

Published on Mar 29 2004

1.0 out of 5 stars Looking for a thought-provoking read? No? Ok, then read this
This book reads like a novel because that's basically what it is. Brooks tries her best to be a scholar, but she simply can't overcome her journalistic tendencies. Read more

Published on Mar 15 2004

5.0 out of 5 stars This book made me cry
I read this book at the suggestion of my sister, and after the attack on the United States by fundamentalist Muslim terrorists (the book was written several years before the... Read more

Published on Feb 9 2004

2.0 out of 5 stars Informative, but very biased.
I have major problems with this book. The author obviously went in with the pinion that women were being mistreated in the Islamic world, a perception she "supports"... Read more

Published on Jan 2 2004 by E. Walton

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