As a woman she avoided questioning it and was ordered to keep it out of her thoughts. She continuously argues that the mind of a female is held back by her…
“Tehran Calling” reveals issues with gender and sexuality in the Islamic society of Tehran, Iran through the contrast between Sarah and Parvin. Sarah’s character unfolds throughout the story through her actions. Sarah’s arrival in Tehran was during Ashura, a holy week, filled with passion and religion everywhere—a world so different than the corporate life she led in America. Sarah had always been unsure…
The ethnography of Meddle East by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea in the story of “Guests of the Sheik” remind me my own town in my home country. Being from Medial East most of the cultural norms and Islamic roles in the story looked quite familiar with the cultural norms and Islamic roles back in my country. Lived all the way down on the other side of the ocean, I personal experienced most of the life experience of Fernea, which she mentioned in her story “Guests of the Sheik”. Elizabeth Warnock Fernea tried to impartially share her eye witnesses experience from the Islamic Shiite village of El Nahra with her focus on the women life in town. After reading her great work about one of the Islamic village in Meddle East named El Nahra.…
While her ideas of females ruling over their marriages crosses the line of equality, it does make a statement regarding women’s…
Guests of the Sheik is an ethnography written from the perspective of a women trying to adapt to life in a small Iraqi village. Fernea writes not only about the changes she had to make in order to fit into the culture that surrounded her, but she exposes stereotypes about the women of El Nahra that aren’t true by comparing these women to western women in a culturally relativistic manner. One of the main points that Fernea addresses in Guests of the Sheik is gender roles in El Nahra, Iraq. Concerning the gender roles of the women in El Nahra, women derive their power, satisfaction, authority, and security through customs of dress, specifically gold, through lineage/children, particularly sons, and through work such as housework and how useful…
Amal, a Muslim teenager, begins to doubt her decision-making skills, after being socially oppressed for wearing the hijab. After being refused a part-time job for wearing the hijab, Amal says, “mom, maybe I shouldn’t have worn it… Maybe I was stupid… Where am I going to go now?” (320). Having decided to wear the hijab at the age of sixteen, Amal is experiencing a lot of discrimination and prejudice targeted towards her ethnicity, but more specifically, her hijab.…
I disagree with her idea that all men should be treated as…
A village was destroyed and several people died. We passed the village about a week later. There was nothing left of it. They said an Amiriki doctor was killed in the bombing. ”(Staples 268) This caused Nusrat to realize and truly understand what her parents have been through since she had converted to Islam.…
“Some people tiptoe around certain topics,” said 20-year-old USF junior Shabia Syed. “I like that she just makes it funny, like, it’s not a big deal. If you want to ask, ask because it’s about your intentions.” Syed is very involved in the Muslim Students Association at USF and attended the event on their behalf. The USF Humanities Institute wanted to bring a thought-provoking speaker who could help start a discussion.…
Ali- Karamali talks about important issues in Islam which involve how women rights were discriminated against men and the different values of marriage, hijab, divorce, and religion practices. In this paper we will be focusing on the past history in Islamic, tradition, and women rights that Ali-Karamali puts a lot of effort into explaining. Also It was very interesting reading this book because I can get a sense of a different perspective of life compared to life here in the United States. It is very shocking to see how in Islam women did not have much say into making decisions for herself but instead males had a final say with the rights of women. What personally interested me the most is to learn about a different cultures values because many people are quick to judge a person without actually knowing where they actually come…
Muslim American Women Muslim women in America are constantly reminded of their intersectionality on a daily basis. They are marginalized due to their gender, religion, ethnicity, and in addition, Africa-American, Muslim women are also subjected to racism. These Muslim African-Americans are often torn between “relating to their religious brothers and sisters or to their ethnic peers” (Ahmed). Muslim women must also deal with the public’s perception, which often views them as extremists (Mogahed). This erroneous perspective is propagated by the media’s coverage of terrorism and the Muslim religion (Halimah).…
In Politics of Piety, Saba Mahmood does an amazing job at portraying the women’s mosque movement in Egypt in a new, less reductionistic light as opposed to the conventional approaches used by many scholars of feminism and theorists of agency. While Mahmood’s book revolves around these popular piety movements of the 90s, this book is much more than just an ethnographic inquiry; it is a scathing critique of secular liberal feminism, which has at times been exploited to serve imperial projects and to promulgate Western ideas at the expense of local, non-liberal ones. Ultimately, for this essay I will explore Mahmood’s critique, the application of her non-theory of agency, and her ethnographic presentation. First, without a doubt, this book is…
In this monograph, Saba Mahmood follows the lives of participants of a female mosque movement. Her informants attend weekly prayers and religious lessons at local mosques in a conscious effort at religious furtherance. The mosque movement emerged in recent decades as part of the larger Islamic Revival that has flourished in the Muslim world. In this setting, the Islamic Revival is articulated in opposition to imported Western values and Egyptian secular state. It is noteworthy that Islamic sentiment has grown in modern times.…
Attending a mosque on a Friday is eye opening to any person, no matter what religion anybody practices. At first, when I walked in, I noticed the mosque was different from any other church I’ve entered, but at the same time similar. The set-up of the mosque was unique. There weren’t any chairs or religious figures, it was one immense empty room with the whole mosque painted in a distinctive pattern from wall to wall. On the other hand, it is similar to any other church.…
This single act is symbolic of the possibilities within Islam." Asra Nomani, author of a widely-selling book on women in Islam, Standing Alone in Mecca, is another Muslim woman who is working to improve what she believes are women's rights in Islam. She began by trying to break a gender barrier by filing a discrimination complaint against the mosque founded by her father 23 years ago for asking women to enter by a side door. Last year Nomani, 39, her mother and niece entered the mosque through the front door and began praying…