After leaving Morocco, I´m not nearly as enthralled with Islam as I once was. Well, that´s not true. I still love the religion and learning about it. But it has started to lose that mystical appeal, as I saw the way it played out in an entire country´s every day lives. Hearing the call to pray was amazing, as were the random pictures in hotel rooms and other places indicating in which direction lay Mecca. However, the real state of women cannot be ignored. I have long been a staunch defender of the hijab and their modest dress, horrified when European countries banned it from public display, because I so fundamentally believe in their individual right to choose. But I have realized in Morocco that most Muslim women do not actually have the power to make those choices.
I rambled around the hotel window-shopping our last evening in Meknes– the first time I had felt well enough/ had time to venture out without the official group. I went with one of the guys in our group, and felt completely comfortable -- this was the most modern and European part of town. But after a few hundred feet I noticed something was drastically different. There were NO women. None!! Every now and then I saw one or two teenage girls with their friends, or perhaps one lady darting into a shoe store...but the guy-to-girl ratio was at LEAST 50:1 on the streets. In the previous two days, in the huge tour groups, various teenage boys at cat-called at us as we walked through the markets, uttering some very crude (and probably the only ones they know) phrases in English. Those had been easy to ignore, and rather entertaining. But here on the street I became acutely aware that the eyes of all of the men were on me, and my freshly-washed blond hair blowing in the wind.
The most scary thing to me about how much attention I got, even while being escorted by a tall, almost football-player sized man, was the fact that I wasn´t even trying. My clothes were wrinkled, just jeans and a t-shirt, and I of course hadn´t bothered to bring any makeup with me. I don´t even want to imagine what the reaction would have been like if I had been wearing one of my knock-out dressy outfits.
Still, as Ian and I walked, we passed restaurant after restaurant, cafe after cafe, where dozens of men sat against the walls and at tables, talking...without a woman in sight. Morocco is relatively modern and liberal as far as women´s rights are concerned compared to most Middle Eastern countries...(I met female members of the Moroccan parliament when they came to visit Senator Lugar last spring) ...but it was obvious that it is culturally unacceptable for women to socialize in public. There is simply no equivalent of a girl´s-night-out, or even an informal “hey, let´s go get ice cream and chat” in Morocco. Some of the American girls told me at dinner they had gone to one of the nice clubs in town the night before, only to discover that the ONLY Moroccan women who went to clubs were blatant prostitutes. They left almost immediately due to the unwanted attention.
I´m no radical feminist. I don´t ascribe to the modern secularist notions of feminist “freedom” meaning powerful career women who can ignore families and act as libertine as they please. Rather, I hope to have the priviledge of staying home with my children while they´re young, and I have high moral standards which I follow strictly.
But it is a completely foreign concept, there, that a girl could be as indepedent, educated, and ambitious as I. I can pursue any degree I want, spend months on my own in foreign countries, compete for high-salaried jobs upon graduation, and drive hours by myself in my car to visit girlfriends, where we go to restauraunts and cafes by ourselves and chatter into the evening. Even as I wait for “Mr. Right” to show up in my life, I have a plan outside of it...and ultimately I can flirt and date and make my own choice about who I marry.
If Morocco can´t even manage that much, I´m terrified to learn just how bad the situation is in even more deprived countries. For as much as I´ve read novels about modernism in Muslim countries, or as much as I may want to theoretically argue with Reza Aslan that Islam´s theological origins actually are quite egalitarian towards women, that the Qu´ran can readily be interpreted as such and reconciled to the Western World, and that any abuses are actually just unorthodox chauvinistic cultural corruptions...
...The fact is, those unorthodox chauvinistic cultural corruptions currently dominate the Muslim world.
I used to daydreams about how awesome it would be if I could have grown up in the Middle East, and used all of my talents and intellect to run for office and reform their governments. I am now faced with the reality that the person I am quite likely could not exist in that world—at least, not without major repercussions. I suppose that´s why it´s called “reform”, because it´s difficult to effect, but still...the Muslim Reformation, particuarly regaring the liberalization of women´s rights, needs to unfold soon.
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I think the points you make are quite accurate about the situation in many Middle Eastern countries. It is very true that women do not often have the freedom and equality enjoyed by those in the West. I just recently finished the Modern Middle Eastern History course taught by the well-known Washington analyst Professor Juan Cole. From his lectures he did point out that women are often left out of major positions in society. But that is not to say that women have not played a significant role in various major events throughout the recent history of the Arab world. Huda Sha'rawi for example played a pivotal part in Egypt's history during the Egyptian National Movement. She was born elite and had a large amount of power in terms of land. Yet, she chose to speak out against the inequalities and injustices found in Egyptian society at large. She quite a public figure, everyone knew who she was when she and her followers went marching on the streets of Cairo. In Egypt, you can till this day find a lot of women out on the streets and many hold positions power.
Many of the Arab women who have gotten famous in the West have done so only because their views match the already biased views of the West. These women right solely about the oppression and lack of rights, which though true in some places, cannot be used as a sign that the entire Middle East is corrupt and injust in its practices. According to three or four books I read, Pakistan is considered a part of the Middle East (there is a difference between Arab World and Middle East as I am sure you know). I have lived and visited Pakistan and you will find a completely different situation compared to the one you described in Morocco. I know you said Morocco is said to be a more liberal country, and to an extent that is true, but I still would not consider that as a representative source to base your opinion on the rest of the Middle East. As an African nation, which demographically speaking, is split between Arabs and Berbers, you can a large mesh of African culture and Arab culture. Having also taking an African religion and history course this last semester, I can tell you that the manner in which you described the city fits with the descriptions of almost every African nation besides South Africa and Egypt.
Also, Turkey, a 99% Muslim country, allows for women to have relatively European-like standards in terms of freedom and equality for women. Women are heads of companies and there is a woman in the 20 member parliament. In Pakistan, also a 95% Muslim country, women can be found on the streets in almost all parts of the country and can obtain success in a ton of work fields. (Benazir Bhutto as case and point).
Women, even in the heavily conservative Iran, have managed to get elected to Parliament and have passed a few laws for woman's rights. The leaders may want to stick to strict conservative Muslim rule, by a large part of the general population view it otherwise and try to get more rights for women. In Palestine, women often are the most effective fighters for protecting and seeking rights for the people as a whole. In the beginning of the 1950s, women led the campaign to fight for Palestinians rights and provided massive support for the PLO.
I do agree that many countries in Northern Africa, like Morocco, places like Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran may not provide proper rights for women and that is wrong. Yet, characterizing all of the Muslim world or even all of the Arab World as following this is not correct simply do to the fact that majority of the Muslim world does not reside in the MidEast. Islam dictates complementary roles for women, which may not necessarily be equal, yet there is some historical backing to this. Even with Islamic foundations in place, Pakistan, India, China, Indonesia, and Malaysia have enormous populations of Muslims and their treatment towards women is completely different from the conditions you described in Morocco.
I will talk to two of my friends who have also studied in Morocco to see how they felt about this situation, but it was an interesting fact to bring up and I would have to agree that is is quite strange to find such a low number of women being out and about in this major African Muslim nation. I am not too surprised that you would find it so weird to be ogled at as an American white female wandering about. But, you would receive almost the same treatment in other African countries that are not a majority Muslims, so I would find it to be much more cultural influence, not Islamic influence as a cause.
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