Research Paper

2.1.5 Cultural Perspectives: nostalgic literature and ethnography

Feminists around the world have had different causes and goals, depending on time and culture of course. Arab feminism has an impressive history, but is not very well known and understood in the western countries. not well understood and known in the west. Women became educated even it was necessary to learn just a few new things about hygiene, and household. This was the primary step to make them know, then to make them get envolved and finally to transmit what they achieved to the next generations. Women have been encouraged to educate others and to rely on their brains. Afaf Marsot underlines in an published article to one hand the managerial capabilities of pre-modern woman, on the other hand demonstrates situations influenced by new practices of women with superior education.

The author of Arab Women in the Middle Ages, Shirley Guthrie, illustrates facts about women from medieval periods, challenging stereotypes that exist today and the influence of Islam to modern time. There are still many women victims of undesirable weddings and unhappy marriages, while Guthrie underlines the possibility of affluent women to negotiate “katbi-l kitab”, which is the marriage contract, to ask monogamy for her future husband, or to initiate divorce. These advantages are not available for lower-class women, they live the traditional-egalitarian style, working in the happiest case near her husband. Today life seems to be more oppressive for women that live in rural areas, they are victims of violence, physical and psychological.

The Prophet Muhammad is proof for women`s equality, as we know he carried and washed alone his clothes, served meals to Aisha, his youngest wife, t...

... middle of paper ...

...sistance to western domination.

Orientalism by Edward Said, clarified the historical pattern of misrepresentation of the Middle East, and veiling has become for many a touchstone for women`s issue, although social pressure cannot always be ruled out. Many young women changed their way of dressing, from the traditional model, and choose a new form of Islamic dress, with a long robe and a head scarf often worn without turban. By wearing this type of clothes, many women proclaim their seriousness and avoid the tensions produced by the rapid erosion of sexual segregation. Fatima Mernissi situates the discussion of hijab as a signifier of social representation of Muslim womanhood , or an authenticised religious-cultural expression. Jasmine Zine asserts that the hijab clad Muslim woman`s body has been appropriated as a fearsome image of global terrorism and oppression.