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A review by qudsiramiz
Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women by Geraldine Brooks
3.0
I have read at least 10 books about the history of Islam and have never come across the fact that Ayesha took arms against the Caliph himself, or that Fatima never approved of one of the Caliphs. Both are arguably the most prominent women in Islam. Surprisingly, Mom (a well read woman in Islamic history) didn't know either.
I guess we (the Islamic scholars) tend to write the history forgetting any instance which may stain the otherwise pristine sheet of Islam. Unfortunately though, the history shows it has it's own share of blots.
For most of the book the writer mentions the status of women in various Islamic countries. How pitiful they all are, and what a dismal life they all are living. Though mostly true, one can feel certain bias in reporting. Or may be it was just me. She got the bull's eye though while explaining why the status of women is what it is. Yes it is the hypocritical society of ours and the fact that men dominates.
Almost everything that is wrong with Islam is wonderfully summarized in the concluding chapter of the book, "It becomes insufficient to look at Islam on paper, or Islam in history, and dwell on the inarguable improvements it brought to women's lives in seventh century. Today, the much more urgent and relevant task is to examine the way the faith has proved such fertile ground for almost every antiwomen custom it encountered in its great march out of Arabia. When it found veil and seclusion in Persia, it absorbed them; when it found genital mutilations in Egypt, it absorbed them; when it found societies in which women had never had a voice in public affairs, its own traditions of lively women's participation withered."
Yes, this is the problem. A large part of Islamic world can no longer differentiate between the customs adopted because of geographical expansion and those that were actually asked in Islam. Same goes for the non-Islamic world. They too need to study and understand that everything that a Muslim does is not necessarily what Quran has asked. It might have been born out of the land he grew up in.
I guess we (the Islamic scholars) tend to write the history forgetting any instance which may stain the otherwise pristine sheet of Islam. Unfortunately though, the history shows it has it's own share of blots.
For most of the book the writer mentions the status of women in various Islamic countries. How pitiful they all are, and what a dismal life they all are living. Though mostly true, one can feel certain bias in reporting. Or may be it was just me. She got the bull's eye though while explaining why the status of women is what it is. Yes it is the hypocritical society of ours and the fact that men dominates.
Almost everything that is wrong with Islam is wonderfully summarized in the concluding chapter of the book, "It becomes insufficient to look at Islam on paper, or Islam in history, and dwell on the inarguable improvements it brought to women's lives in seventh century. Today, the much more urgent and relevant task is to examine the way the faith has proved such fertile ground for almost every antiwomen custom it encountered in its great march out of Arabia. When it found veil and seclusion in Persia, it absorbed them; when it found genital mutilations in Egypt, it absorbed them; when it found societies in which women had never had a voice in public affairs, its own traditions of lively women's participation withered."
Yes, this is the problem. A large part of Islamic world can no longer differentiate between the customs adopted because of geographical expansion and those that were actually asked in Islam. Same goes for the non-Islamic world. They too need to study and understand that everything that a Muslim does is not necessarily what Quran has asked. It might have been born out of the land he grew up in.