New roles for Muslims
Course examines changing attitudes
toward gender in modern Islamic societies
By Caroline Moseley
Gender, Desire and the Body: The Islamic Tradition is the
title of a course being offered this semester by the
Department of Religion and the Program in the Study of Women
and Gender.
It "examines the changing construction and representation
of gender roles, of the body and of sexuality in modern
Islamic societies," says Associate Professor of Religion
Shaun Marmon.
The course, which uses novels (in translation) and films
as well as studies in anthropology, history and religion,
has drawn about 25 students, "from different and essentially
diverse backgrounds," according to participant Stratis
Minakakis '02.
900 million Muslims worldwide
Although Islamic doctrine maintains that all human beings
were originally Muslim, Marmon says, Islam began with the
Prophet Muhammad (c. 570-632) in the Hujaz, in what is now
Saudi Arabia. Today Islam is the majority religion in most
of the Middle East and North Africa, Indonesia, Pakistan,
Bangladesh and Malaysia, as well as in much of sub-Saharan
Africa. Large Muslim minorities exist in India, China and
the territories of the former Soviet Union. In the United
States Islam is a rapidly growing religion. Current
estimates put the number of Muslims worldwide at more than
900 million.
Islam, like Christianity, is interpreted and practiced in
different ways by different sects and communities, Marmon
points out.
"Since many students who take the course have no
background in Islam, a basic introduction is important," she
says. Hence, the course begins with Frederick Denny's
Islam and the Muslim Community (1998), which covers
basic Islamic doctrine and ritual and also takes into
account varieties of practice. At the same time, "Students
begin reading more gender-oriented works on Islam, as well
as short articles and fiction pieces that focus on the often
contested roles of women in Muslim societies."
Most perfect revelation
Then, says Marmon, "We have a session on the Qur'an." The
Qur'an (often spelled "Koran" in English) is the sacred
scripture that Muslims believe was revealed to Muhammad by
Allah (God), via the Angel Gabriel, between 610 and
Muhammad's death. "Pious Muslims," she says, "believe the
Qur'an has always existed, because it existed in Heaven.
They believe that the Jewish and Christian revelations were
from God as well, but became corrupted over time, and the
last and most perfect revelation is in the Qur'an."
Muslim tradition maintains that Muhammad was illiterate;
he repeated his revelations, which were memorized and
written down by followers. "The word qur'an means
'recitation,'" Marmon says, "and professional Qur'anic
recitation has evolved into a highly skilled and complex
discipline. From the perspective of the pious, listening to
Qur'anic recitation is one of the most powerful ways to
experience the word of God. Many secular people and
non-Muslims also find the artistry of professional
recitation to be profoundly moving."
In addition to studying selections from the Qur'an,
students listen to recorded recitations, collected by
Michael Sells in the CD that accompanies his book,
Approaching the Qur'an: The Early Revelations (1999).
Most reciters are male, Marmon says, but one of the
recordings is by Hajja Maria Ulfa, "a world-famous reciter
from Indonesia, one of the few areas of the Muslim world
where women recite the Qur'an in public before mixed
audiences of men and women."
Popular forms of piety
The course examines Sufism, a mystical form of Islamic
piety, which is "a very important part of women's practices
in some countries. We also look at the visiting of the tombs
and shrines of holy figures and other so-called 'popular'
forms of piety, like the zar, an exclusively women's
religious gathering for chant, dance and trance that is
frowned upon by many religious leaders but is quite popular,
especially among working class women and those from rural
backgrounds in Cairo."
Women often do not participate in more formal and
communal religious activities such as prayers in mosques. In
Egypt, the country in which Marmon has done most of her own
research, "Friday prayers are attended mostly by men. The
women who do attend must sit behind the men, appropriately
covered. Coming together for Friday noon prayer is an
obligation for men, but not for women."
However, she notes, "One outcome of the rise of Islamic
fundamentalism is that women who are members of Islamist
groups are demanding more access to the mosque and to
instruction in traditional Islamic learning."
Positives and negatives
In a look at an African American and black separatist
interpretation of Islam in the United States, the class
reads Little X: Growing Up in the Nation of Islam
(1997), by Sonsyrea Tate.
"We see the gender and family relationships in the first
Nation of Islam, under the leadership of the late Imam
Elijah Muhammad, through the eyes of a little girl," says
Marmon. Though the author left the Nation of Islam, the book
is not an exposé but rather "gives a balanced picture
of the positives and negatives of growing up a female child
of color within the community established by Elijah
Muhammad."
Marmon notes that after Elijah Muhammad's death in 1975,
his son and successor, Imam W.D. Muhammad, dramatically
reformed the Nation of Islam (now called the Muslim American
Society) and moved his community into a more inclusive
mainstream Islam. "What we think of as the Nation of Islam
today is the smaller breakaway organization of Louis
Farrakhan."
According to Marmon, many Muslim thinkers see religion as
ideally antithetical to nationalism, "but inevitably, as we
do live in an era of nation-states, nationalism and Islam
are often combined. The Islamic republic of Iran is a clear
example."
Legacy of colonialism
A number of novels centering on the relationship between
gender roles and the legacy of colonialism in Muslim
countries examine "the complexity of women's lives on a
local and national level in countries or regions that
experienced, or continue to experience, a struggle for
national independence," Marmon notes. Assia Djebar's
Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade (1985) weaves
together the history of Algerian responses to French
conquest and colonialism, the author's own autobiography,
and semi-fictionalized narratives of women's lives during
and after the Algerian revolution.
Final readings in the course are on the discussions
surrounding such issues as women's status, marriage, divorce
and sexuality in contemporary Iran. Students will read
Islam and Gender: The Religious Debate in Contemporary
Iran (1999) by social anthropologist Ziba Mir-Hosseini,
who surveyed contemporary Iranian religious writings on
gender and conducted interviews with Iranian Ayatollahs and
other religious scholars. Students will also see Divorce
Iranian Style, a film by Ziba Mir-Hosseini that follows
actual divorce cases in modern Iran.
Students keep a journal of their own commentaries on the
readings, on discussion and on gender issues"both in Islamic
societies and in their own," says Marmon, "as a form of
crosscultural awareness."
Journals include images taken from magazines, newspapers,
"anything in the media," says Marmon, "whether about women,
men or the Middle East in general. I ask the students to
look for ads that use Orientalist tropessuch as when an ad
plays on an Arabian Nights theme. It gets them to think
about stereotypes."
More global perspective
One reason Minakakis is taking this course, he says, is
that "Islamic culture is often misrepresented in the West by
media and other factors that mold mass opinion." In the
course, "We can have a more global perspective."
Another student in the class, Keija Parssinen '03, grew
up in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. "Despite my background there, I
know very little about Muslim culture," she says, and she
wanted to know more of women's status in the region,
including "the facts and contradictions that exist in the
Middle East today."
Marmon acknowledges that "The course can't cover
everything. Gender in the Islamic tradition is a very big
topic, and there are many countries we are not able to look
atPakistan and Afghanistan, for example."
Her goal is for students "to reject cultural stereotypes
of Muslims. I want them to think about gender issues in a
range of cultures, because gender is a category that infuses
everything." And, she notes, "In any discussion of gender,
concerns of social justice are very present."
Marmon, who graduated from the University of Texas,
Austin, taught at the University of Rhode Island and earned
her PhD at Princeton in 1990 before joining the faculty in
1992. Most recently, she edited and contributed to a
collection of essays, Slavery in the Islamic Middle
East (1999).
Shaun Marmon (c) leads class. (Photo by Denise
Applewhite)
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