CLIO TALKS BACK: Maria Vérone on the “Modernization” of Islam

Maria Vérone

Several days ago, Clio came across an intriguing text about the “modernization” of Islam, written by a French woman lawyer and published by the International Council of Women. The author, Maria Vérone, a dedicated feminist, was one of the first French women to be admitted to the French bar; she had worked as a teacher and a dancer before studying law.  She presided over the Ligue Française pour le Droit des Femmes [French League for Women’s Rights] for many years. By the early 1930s she had been tapped to head the pathbreaking Women’s Consultative Committee on Nationality, appointed by the League of Nations, and she continued to be active in international legal circles, engaged with studying, comparing – and attempting to advance – the status of women in the law both in France and worldwide.

Here is what she wrote about the status of women in Islam.

“After long centuries of lethargy, Islam is awakening from its slumber. By a sort of return to primitive religion, Musulmen, as pious as they are broadminded, may now be found who declare, text in hand, that the Prophet never intended to place women in a state of servitude. The Veil, they say, is not obligatory; instruction should be given to girls as well as to boys; polygamy is permitted but not enforced; on the contrary, men are forbidden to abuse their rights. The Egyptian (Islamic) Civil Code has been framed in this spirit, recognising that woman, married or single, has full civil capacity; in this spirit, too, Musulman Tribunals have recently given certain judgments, suing a man for damages towards his ex-wife, whom he repudiated soon after the marriage, she having been compelled to leave the occupation which she followed as a single woman.

“In Iran, in Syria, in Irak, in Palestine, all the Musulmen inhabiting these parts of Asia have seen the rise of Feminist Associations; Congresses have been held in the more important cities, where the Delegates appeared unveiled before high authorities, where programmes of new demands have been drawn up, and certain reforms are already on the way to accomplishment. In Europe, the young King of Albania, believing that the emancipation of women is not a sign of revolution or of irreligion, has begun by forbidding the use of the Veil, as a start, greater changes may follow. In Northern Africa, pecuniary difficulties, stronger than the most ancient custom, are doing away with polygamy. Men, if not because of sentiment, at least in their own interest, marry only one woman, and this completely changes the moral position of the family; should an era of prosperity follow, it may be that a generation brought up in utterly different surroundings than those of its ancestors, may not desire to return to ancient customs.  So, by good will or perforce, the world is changing."

Do you know, Clio asks, when these words were written and published?  Can anybody guess?

Would any of you imagine that it dates from 1937 – well over 75 years ago?

Source: Maria Verone, “The Evolution of the Family throughout the World,” International Council of Women: Bulletin, 16:3 (November 1937),18-19.

In Conversation with Lalla Essaydi

Les Femmes du Maroc: Grande Odalisque 2

Q: You were born in Morocco but you are living in the US. How much and in which ways do these opposite cultures mark your works? 
A: As an artist now living in the West, I have become aware of another space, besides the house of my girlhood, an interior space, one of "converging territories." I will always carry that house within me, but my current life has added other dimensions. There is the very different space I inhabit in the West, a space of independence and mobility. It is from there that I can return to the landscape of my childhood in Morocco, and consider these spaces with detachment and new understanding. When I look at these spaces now, I see the two cultures that have shaped me and which are distorted when looked at through the "Orientalist" lens of the West.

Q: “The Orient has helped to define the Europe (or the West)” argued E. Said in his seminal work Orientalism[1], What do you think of this quote in regard to your life?
A: As a Moroccan-born artist who lives in New York and Marrakesh as well as traveling frequently in the Arab world, I have become deeply aware of how the cultures of the so-called Orient and Occident view one another. I have become increasingly aware, in particular, of the impact of Western gaze on Arab culture. Edward Said famously described the dominant Western take on Arab culture in his (ground-breaking) book, Orientalism. Although Orientalism most often suggests a 19^th-century European vision of the East, as a set of assumptions it lives on today: both in the regard of the West and in the way Arab societies continue to internalize and respond to that regard. Because in its early form Orientalism was a literal “vision,” finding expression in the work of Western painters who traveled to the “exotic” East in search of cultures more colorful than their own, I have used it as a point of departure in much of my own work—painting and photography both. The imagery I found in Orientalist painting has resonated with me in tricky ways and ultimately helped me situate my own experience in a powerful visual language. I thought this complex of ideas we call Orientalism, as reflected in my work and the Western painting that inspired it, might serve to ground my remarks.

Q: It is evident that some of your works are a clear allegory to Orientalism, a feminine reinterpretation and a modern point of view – if only for the medium used – of masterpieces such as Ingres (The big odalisque) and Gerome (The guard of the Harem). Are you trying to reconstruct (and/or change) the past through contemporary image? 
A: Orientalism, as I mentioned at the outset of this inverview, has long been a source of fascination for me. My background in art is in painting, and it is as a painter that I began my investigation into Orientalism. My study led me to a much deeper understanding of the painting space so beautifully addressed by Orientalist painters in thrall to Arab décor. For its terrific prominence in these paintings, this décor made me keenly aware of the importance of interior space in Arab/Islamic culture. And finally of course, I became aware of the patterns of cultural domination and predatory sexual fantasy encoded in Orientalist painting.

Orientalism provide a kind of foil for my own work, which sets out to invoke, interrogate, and complicate the Orientalist tradition. In so doing, I hope to make possible, within the projected space of Orientalist painting, a new space, an openness to a new kind of understanding.

Harem #4b

Q: How did – and how does – in your opinion, Orientalism affect Western perception of Islam and the Arab Culture?
A: Interestingly, it is not only the West that has been prevented from seeing Arab culture accurately. How people in the Arab world see themselves has also been affected by the distorting lens of Orientalism. There’s some evidence that the Orientalist perspective has had an impact on the actual lives of men and women, and especially that the rules for Arab women became much stricter as a result of Western influence. When the West portrays Eastern women as sexual victims and Eastern men as depraved, the effect is to emasculate Eastern men, and to challenge the traditional values of honor and family. So Arab men feel the need to t be even more protective of Arab women, preventing them from becoming targets of fantasy by veiling them. The veil protects them from the gaze of Orientalism. While we’ll probably never know whether the return to the veil and the rules that accompany it is a response to Western influence or merely coincidental, it’s hard to believe there’s no relationship.

But by invoking the Orientalist tradition in a way that makes the viewer aware of its inherent assumptions, I hope not to provoke some kind of “blame game” but rather to liberate viewers – Arab and Western alike – from the grip of these assumptions. Furthermore, I am not a sociologist, I am an artist, working from a particular vantage point, and as such hope to give full expression to a uniqueness that I hope will resonate with the uniqueness of each viewer.

Clio Talks Back: Finding Fran

Once upon a time (in the 1950s) there were two friends in Los Angeles, California, named Lois and Fran. Both super-achievers, they were inseparable in high school, but once graduated, they attended different universities (both in California), and eventually lost touch with one another. Lois discovered feminism and became a pioneer in the new field of women’s history. She is now a history professor at the University of Southern California.

The artistic and intense Fran took a more spiritual route. With her first husband, Hans, she ultimately sought refuge in a commune called Lama in the Sangre de Cristo mountains of New Mexico. Seeking spiritual peace, she left her husband, and built a new union with the founder of the Lama community (Stephen, later Nuridin). Ultimately she converted to Islam, took the name Noura, embracing a new life as a Muslim woman, wife, and mother. Fran covered herself and embarked on an adventurous but simpler lifestyle, living (after New Mexico) in Chamonix, then Mecca, and ultimately settling in Alexandria, Egypt.

How could these two young women have followed such different paths. This was the question that led Lois to decide to find Fran (Noura), and, ultimately, to write a book about their converging - and diverging - lives and ideas about religion and life. Lois’s book, Finding Fran: History and Memory in the Lives of Two Women, appeared in 1999.

In later life Lois had located Fran. The two met several times, in New Mexico and again in Egypt. Fran explained to Lois that her mother had conditioned her for domesticity, but she discovered that she needed to live her own life, to make her own choices – to escape that overpowering, albeit benevolent maternal presence. “I lived my mother’s life until I was thirty; then I wanted to live my own life,” she explained (p. 95).

Noura’s quest was fundamentally spiritual, a search for “inner freedom,” for what Lois termed “liberation thorugh surrender.” She quotes Noura as saying: “What may appear from outside Islam as a set of strictures, even a trap, a series of limitations, appears from inside to be an infinite expanding geometry, a crystalline structure of great beauty which not only insures safety and orders chaos, but allows the soul freedom to soar” (p. 193).

Noura learned to chant “La illaha illa Llah” (There is no God but God), which, in her words, “is the basis of Islam”. . . “You must acknowledge this and say, I surrender. That is what separates a Muslim from a non-Muslim, because Islam means surrender” (p. 197) She converted to Islam in 1975 in Jerusalem, the city in which the three great world - Judalism, Christianity, and Islam - converge. She was deeply moved by the traditional culture of the Muslim Palestinians, among whom she lived. And she embraced the Sufi approach to Islam.

Living in Makkah (Mecca) in Saudi Arabia for several years in the late 1970s, Noura was similarly impressed with the community of women, who came from all over the world on the ritual pilgrimage. She and her now-husband decided to establish an Islamic study center in New Mexico. This initiative never developed in the manner they had hoped. Settling in Alexandria, Egypt, where Sufism was more accepted than in Saudi Arabia, Noura and her family at last ceased their journeys.

Noura (Fran) and Lois held long conversations during their meetings in the 1990s. They debated and disagreed about women’s (and men’s) covering themselves completely, as a means of de-emphasizing sexuality. But they found common ground when evaluating the scope of women’s liberty in a society based on strict sexual segregation and parallel spheres. For example, in Islamic societies, married women could own property and establish businesses, a privilege for which wives in Western societies long campaigned before achieving it. Both Noura and Lois agreed on “equal education for women, equal access to the professions, and equal pay for equal work” (p. 213).

Noura pointed out to Lois that under Islam, “married women have the right to their own income; they can start a business with it; they can put it into the bank or buy jewelry with it; they can do anything they want with it. Women are guaranteed the right to inherit under Qur’anic law, and if the portion decreed for sons is larger than that for daughters, it’s because sons are required to care for the unmarried women of their families, and daughters aren’t required to support themselves. Under Islam, married women keep their maiden names; children alone take fathers’ names” (p. 214).

Women under Islam enjoy great authority, Noura asserted. “The power of the ‘mother’ dominates the home. Muslim children are taught to honor their mother first of all. Muslims will give their paychecks to their parents and forego marriage in order to support them; they will do anything for their mothers. When you marry, you serve your mother-in-law; as you age and your children grow up and marry, you are the one who is served. Even urban professional women regard their famiies as the center of their lives. They live with husbands or families; single men and women living alone are considered anomalous, even dangerous” (p. 214). Noura’s observations on the power of mothers are especially poignant, coming from a woman who sought to escape the powerful influence of her own mother.

As the conversations of Noura and Lois continued, they discussed many more aspects of Islam and the differences between Western cultures and Muslim cultures. “By Qur’anic prescription,” Noura pointed out, women and men are equal before Allah; no mythology exists about Eve bringing evil into the world. In contrast to Christian dogma, sexual pleasure is considered integral to marriage. In Arabic the word Allah has neither a masculine nor a feminine connotation” (p. 214).

Clio invites you to read Finding Fran. The parallel yet dissimilar lives of Lois and Fran, and their evaluations are relevant today for understanding the commonalities – and differences – of great religious traditions, and how these can inform ways of living and individual spiritual journeys.

Source: Lois W. Banner, Finding Fran: History and Memory in the Lives of Two Women (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999). All quotations from the hardcover edition. A paperback edition and Kindle edition are available through Amazon books.

In Conversation with Sarah Maple

Why do you define yourself an artist? And what is the role that art has in your everyday life?
I think it is there in my everyday life because I see art in everything…especially conversations. I always pick up on things people say and use them in my work, or they inspire a piece. Everything I see everyday from TV, advertising, the internet, family and friends, all these things influence me and inform the decisions I make as an artist.

Why do you consider yourself a “Feminist?” And what is for you “Feminism?”

To me feminism is a much broader term than what it is perceived. For me it all about equality, equality between all people. It’s funny how so many people agree on these principles but so scared of the word ‘feminism’. In my work I use humour and other ways to getting across this message, like a trojan horse.

I know you use art in different ways: paintings, video, photography, and performance… What work do you most enjoy doing?
It’s hard to say because I love them all, I take joy in them all. I always saw myself primarily as a painter but photography opened up so much for me as well. I love how each media can say and do so much used in the right way.

What do you want to achieve and/or demonstrate with your art?
For me the most important thing about the art is the message, I want to make people think and I want to bring about change. I want my work to challenge what is seen as ‘the norm’. I always aim to make my viewer question the world around them. I’m not sure art has the same power that it used to, but I try my best!

I have seen in your work that ‘Islam’ is a repeated topic, I know you have a mixed religious background , but why for you is it so important to talk about it?
I haven’t made work on this theme for a few years now, it was something at the time that I felt the urge to speak about and comment on. Not only was I commenting on the world around me but on my own life experiences with I felt was a reflection on the current political climate. People often ask if I will return to this theme….as a muslim it is part of who I am so I think I will return to it at some point but not right now. I felt I’ve said what I needed to say.

What do you want to denounce in your performance “ It's just like any other job really - dedicated to world peace?”
The piece was inspired by artist Santiago Serra who had a successful show in London at the time. I found the great thing about performance is that you can have an idea about what you want to say and how you want yourself/viewers to feel, but you will only really know the impact when you are performing. In this piece we had 30 girls doing a ‘Miss World’ catwalk and then standing silently against a wall for a whole day. It looked incredible but was very hard work, 5 girls fainted. The gallery was all glass and the viewer had to look from the outside, like we were untouchable in this goldfish bowl. It was a very surreal experience, being watched in this way….definitely an experience I won’t forget!

Can women do everything?
Yes!

In Conversation with Raeda Saadeh

The Tree of Wishes - Performance 

Why do you define yourself as an artist?
Actually it is very sensitive for me when I say I am an artist, because when I look at the art history for instance Michelangelo, I question myself: who am I? Am I an artist? It is not easy for me to say I am an artist. Though, I have this feeling when people talk about my art, when I do an exhibition and others speak of me as an artist, in those moments I recognise myself as an artist.
I teach in two different universities in Palestine and in Israel, in two different languages, and the students are just starting to study and they already say “I am an artist”. So I think it is not difficult to say, “I am an artist.”

What is the role that art has in your everyday life?
I brief art. I don’t have a studio at home, but I have my sketchbook always with me everywhere I go and I am always writing my ideas. I am always talking about art, through which, with Palestine occupied, we can express our problems through art.

Do you consider yourself a “feminist”?
When I am with other artists, we always talk about feminism. For me there are so many things to talk about before talking about feminism. The right of a woman of being considered a human came before feminism in my opinion. This is the concept I am dealing with. I am talking about women that cannot study or work, because their families are really poor. I am talking about something that is normal in other parts of the world, but that here is more difficult. I am talking about being. Feminism is a further step for me to talk about.

For instance, last week I went to this place and I worked with two women of 60 and 70. They didn’t have food to eat. I guess this is a priority, rather than think about feminism. There are many things to work with right now that I cannot focus on feminism. I am more concerned about the problem of being a human.

You use your image in all your work. Is that your way to interact personally with the world? Why? Is it a sort of re-appropriation of female figure?
The way I do my art it is always with me. I am in my art. I always put myself into it. I use my image. I am always performing. When I take a photograph for example I feel myself as if I am doing a performance. For me my artworks are my babies. I am art myself.

Do you think it is correct to label the art of Middle East artists as “Arab or Islamic” art? And, do you define yourself as “Arab” artist?
I am Muslim, I am Arab, I am from Palestine, but I don’t like being labelled especially as “Islamic artist” as I don’t feel I am showing Islamic art.

I can accept that I am a Middle Eastern artist, and I am happy and proud of it, but how could I be defined as an Arab artist? What does it mean? There are many Arab artists that never lived in an Arab country, but they do art. What to call them? How can you define their art as Arab? This identification is very sensitive.

Reclaiming the Veil in Tunisia

Editor's Note: Natalia Rankine-Galloway's post is a special feature to Her Blueprint in response to the recent outbreak of violence in Tunisia. Natalia is a mother of one, military spouse, and managing partner of Culture Baby. A global nomad, she is always traveling and frequently blogging about culture, motherhood, entrepreneurship, and her favorite destinations. You can read more at culturebabyblog.com.

As we stood side by side at the window watching crowds gather outside the US Embassy in Tunis, I asked Leila how things got so bad. She just shook her head. “This isn’t my country anymore” she said, “it used to be beautiful.” 

Tunisia is the northernmost country in Africa and lies along the Mediterranean Sea.

The violence that has gripped Tunisia in recent days was as shocking and sudden for me, a recent transplant, as it was for many Tunisians. Sporadic incidents of unrest had been reported around the country since the Jasmine Revolution of early 2011, but they had mostly involved the breaking of bottles of alcohol at tourist hotels or riots surrounding a controversial art exhibit.

Neither Leila or I knew as we parted ways that afternoon that by the next morning the Embassy would be smoldering and that the order to evacuate all but non-emergency personnel would part us. 

I began this post before the attack; my subject was to have been what the revolution meant for women in the new Tunisia. As I sit back at my computer now and revisit what I wrote, I can’t help but think of my last talk with Leila.

Leila, a working mother of two, had never worn a hijab or head scarf until after Jasmine revolution that launched the Arab Spring and deposed long-time dictator Zine el- Abidine Ben-Ali. Under the old regime, wearing even a simple hijab could invite harassment by police. Full-body coverings like the niqab were almost never seen.

It is counter intuitive to a Western observer to associate an authoritarian dictatorship in the Arab world with vehemently secular policies and an emphasis on women’s rights. But such is the legacy of Tunisia’s first president, Habib Bourguiba.

The famous Tunisian founding father, who requested the epitaph “liberator of women” be carved on his mausoleum, made the equality of the sexes among his top priorities upon Tunisia’s independence in 1956. Not solely on the issue of women’s rights, Bourguiba considered Islam writ-large an anchor around his efforts to modernize Tunisia and vigorously repressed Islamic opposition throughout his 30-year rule. When his grip on power weakened as he aged, an undercurrent of protest finally led to Ben-Ali’s takeover in 1987. 

Ben Ali was even more authoritarian than his predecessor, cracking down on any political opposition to include Muslim conservatism. At the same time, however, he instituted practical reforms like access to education and family planning; reforms that have resulted in Tunisia having some of the lowest infant mortality rates, highest percentage of female university students and highest female life expectancy of any country in the Muslim world. 

It is confusing to see a record of advancement on women’s rights set against a curtailing of basic human rights. Perhaps it was this incongruity that helped Ben Ali, who tightly controlled the country’s outward facing image, maintain his police state for so long; using the issue of women’s rights as a show pony that could be trotted out as evidence of his country’s modernity and freedoms. 

But the Jasmine revolution shattered that facade. It was a remarkable and peaceful revolution with global repercussions followed by a more remarkable and peaceful election almost one year ago. The Ennahda party, a moderate Islamist party that had been banned under Ben Ali since 1992 was elected to power and has been laboring to present the nation with its new constitution, due next month.

The Lives of Contemporary Afghan Women

[Editor's Note: The following post was written by Ashraf Zahedi, co-editor of Land of the Unconquerable: The Contemporary Lives of Afghan Women. Zahedi, along with contributor Amina Kator and moderator Kavita Ramdas, former CEO of the Global Fund for Women, will appear in conversation for an IMOW event next week, July 27. More information about the event can be found here.]

Photo by Sheryl Shapiro from Land of the Unconquerable: The Contemporary Lives of Afghan Women

The news from Afghanistan is not always promising. Yet despite hardships and horrors, life in Afghanistan continues. How are women faring against the odds? Sadly, gradually, it seems that many people in the West, so enthusiastic about liberating (and unveiling) Afghan women, have lost interest. The vast numbers of NGOs, so ubiquitous in the beginning, have decreased rapidly, especially in the neediest rural areas, which have become more and more dangerous for foreign aid workers. The Afghan government has little or no power outside the capital city. The Western media has reduced its presence and unless the news is sensational, reports of reconstruction and of how Afghans are coping are progressively more sporadic.

What explains this shift in the West’s socio-political and economic commitments? The short answer lies in limited understanding of Afghanistan and its complexity. Outsiders’ slanted and ahistorical views of Afghanistan and their dichotomous constructs of Afghan men as oppressors and Afghan women as oppressed have portrayed an unrealistic view of Afghan society and its gender relations. In many ways the hyped political promises and idealistic social policies have not served Afghan women well.

In Land of the Unconquerable: The Lives of Contemporary Afghan Women, Jennifer Heath and Ashraf Zahedi examine the reality of life for women today in Afghanistan. They explore what has been done for Afghan women through the efforts of governmental and non-governmental organization, and, most importantly, they consider how Afghan women themselves are rising to the immense challenges, how they envision and plan to meet the future.

Heath and Zahedi examine the complexities of Afghan women’s lives and approach the situation holistically, understanding that Afghanistan is made up of women and men whose suffering and triumphs are interwoven. Land of the Unconquerable draws on the diverse expertise of accomplished scholars, as well as humanitarian workers. These writers contextualize the structural and cultural impediments to Afghan women’s advancement -- as determined by Afghan women themselves. The book offers a large and full picture: historical background leading to insights, observations, and narratives of women’s lives in the present, and comprehensive solutions and social policy recommendations in chapters about the constitution, law, leadership and gender policy, mental and physical health, education, economics, family life and more. These writers propose potential short- and long-term solutions, requiring national and international commitments and resource allocation.

What needs to be done after ten years of engagement with Afghanistan is not withdrawal of support but its further expansion. But this time the aim should be to improve Afghan people’s lives through social measures that are driven by the Afghans themselves and not by the national or international donors. Long-term solutions should take precedence over short-term measures with no lasting impact. Today, more than ever before, Afghan women need non-Afghan support to secure their gains over the past decade and further build on them.

Bikini and the Burqua: Two Polarities of the Same Extreme

In honor of this week's International Women’s Day, it is important to recognize that international women have multitude ways of expressing themselves whether in behavior, clothing, or culture.

Dr Hawa Abdi and Daughters

America's commercial domination around the world often promotes that women should be drinking Pepsi in a bikini showing off an unattainable body while dripping in diamonds. Western media represents the free woman as someone who is confident enough to wear a bikini, allegedly so free from oppression she runs on the beach with her mermaid locks bouncing. This is contrasted with the Muslim woman presented as oppressed and beaten down, forced to wear a cloth on her head by Muslim men who terrorize not just their women but the whole stability of the western world. People who "buy" the preceding rhetoric clearly have no idea about the scope of oppression and commodified manipulation that western women are subjected to and little knowledge about the wonders of the Islamic culture as well as the power of Muslim women.