Read online article listed as The Price of Honor by Jan Goodwin.
Our image of Middle Eastern Muslim women is that of being covered from head to toe, with no legal rights and facing tremendous violence and abuse. And, to a very large extent this image — at least in the Middle East — is too often sadly accurate. Yet according to Jan Goodwin, a noted journalist who lived in Pakistan for many years and writes extensively about women’s issues in the Middle East, this is not how Muslim believers were to treat women. Rather, she states in her prologue that “Muslim women are the wind sock showing which way the wind is blowing in the Islamic world (p.28).” If there is turmoil in the Middle East — political, economic, or social — then women will be victimized despite Islamic scripture that dictates otherwise. You are reading one chapter (the actual title of the chapter is “Muslims, the First Feminists”) from Goodwin’s book, The Price of Honor: Muslim Women Lift the Veil of Silence on the Islamic World, a book she put together after several years of travel throughout the Middle East and following extensive interviews with women’s groups, scholars of the Qur’an, and political analysts.
A handful of issues have changed since this book was written. Saudi Arabian women can now drive (as of just a few years ago); women in Kuwait can now vote, although there are currently no women serving in the Kuwait legislature. However, despite these few improvements, life for women in the Middle East remains difficult.
Prompt:
Many Islamic scholars argue that Mohammed was a strong feminist who improved the conditions of women in the Middle East. Yet the image we have today of Muslim women is far different from that dictated by Mohammed in the Qur’an (also spelled Koran). Compare and contrast what Mohammed did for and said about women in the 7th century to the restricted lives of most women in the Middle East today.
