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Essay on role of women in islam
The role of women in Islam. Christianity, Islam, and the West
The role of women in Muslim society
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“I could tell Rashida was smiling, because her eyes crinkled up. She pressed her cheek to mine. We are Shia girls.” (p.97) This is a defining line, which closes out the section “Shia Girls” from Kathleen Jamie’s 2002 book Among Muslims: Every Day Life on the Frontiers of Pakistan. To dive into why this line is so defining right away, would be overwhelming. First, some background information. Jamie (b.1962) is a writer from Edinburgh, Scotland. She attended Edinburgh University where she studied philosophy and began writing. Jamie traveled to the northern areas of Pakistan for the purpose of experience and to be able to write a piece of travel writing -------- which she titled The Golden Peak (1993). Ten years after her first visit, the writer returned to Pakistan as she had always hoped to do, but upon her return found a drastically different Pakistan. She summarizes her newfound experiences that she has, in her book Among Muslims: Every Day Life on the Frontiers of Pakistan. Here she reproduces the people and situations she’s encountered while evaluating all of the things around her. …show more content…
She begins with the text from a letter she received from Rashida, a Shi’ite woman she met and became quite close with the last time she went to northern Pakistan. In the letter, Rashida was asking Jamie to come live with her in Gilgit, her small town in Pakistan, for the rest of their lives. Although Rashida made sure to explain to Jamie that she would have to give up her Western lifestyle and begin living the life of a Shia girl. The term “Shia girl” is a very important idea in Jamie’s writing. For Jamie it does not only mean a girl who is Shi’ite, but rather an all inclusive term of the lifestyle of a Shi’ite girl living in
I’ve been reading Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly. For our first book meeting I was absent, but our group decided on reading through Chapter 4, which was about 64 pages. The book follows three main characters; Herta, a German doctor; Caroline, an ex-Broadway actress; and Kasia, a Catholic teenager living in Poland. Each chapter switches the perspective to one of these characters and tells part of their story. The structure of this book really helps me keep reading because every chapter is different. If you are bored with the chapter you are on, you know the next chapter will be breath of fresh air. It’s hard to fully capture the personality from only one or two chapters, but I’m not in love with all of the characters. Caroline, who works as
Major newspapers around the world wrote about Masih’s story, even though it was often demoted towards the end of the newspaper. It was not long before both the media and the public disregarded it. A little less than seven thousand miles away from Pakistan, however, another 12-year-old boy in Thornhill, Canada devoted Masih’s story to memory, an undertaking that signified the beginning ...
Laura Deeb’s An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi’i Lebanon seeks to rectify post-9/11 notions of political Islam as anti-modern and incongruous with Western formulations of secular modernity. Specifically, Deeb is writing in opposition to a Weberian characterization of modern secular Western societies as the development of bureaucracies through social rationalization and disenchantment. Within this Weberian framework Deeb asserts that Shia communities are in-part modern because of the development of beuorocratic institutions to govern and regulate religious practice. However, Deeb makes a stronger argument oriented towards dislodging the assumptions "that Islamism is static and monolithic, and that
The significance of representing such a history is that it may open William Beckford’s narrative of the Arab Muslim woman to a new analysis and judgment. It may, as well, help in “allowing us to see them [Arab Muslim women] not as "culminations" of a natural truth, but "merely the current episodes in a series of subjugations" (Foucault 1977, 148)” (mohja), and to differentiate between them as represented in Western texts whose feet never touch earth, and the real –flesh and blood–ones whose “feet touch earth in Hamah or Rawalpindi or Rabat.”( MOHJA)
Tucker, Judith E., and University Georgetown. Arab Women: Old Boundaries, New Frontiers .Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 4 Nov. 2013.
Joseph Campbell describes the hero’s journey as a quest where the “hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man” (Campbell 7). The heroine’s quest, according to Valerie Estelle Frankel includes “battling through pain and intolerance, through the thorns of adversity, through death and beyond to rescue loved ones” (Frankel 11). Contrary to the hero’s journey, the heroine’s journey focuses on the “culture on the idealization of the masculine” while the hero’s journey focuses on the adventures. In the inspiring autobiography, I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban, Malala Yousafzai represents a heroine because she goes through the stages of the heroine’s journey as she refuses to be silenced and risks death to confront the Taliban on behalf of the young Pakistani girls that are deprived of education. The stages of the journey include the ordinary world, the call to adventure, the supernatural aid, the crossing of the first threshold, the road of trials, the ordeal, death and rebirth, and the return with the elixir.
Lakisha Michelle Simmons’s Crescent City Girls: The Lives of Young Black Women in Segregated New Orleans focuses on African American women in New Orleans, Louisiana during the Jim Crow era; from 1930 to 1954. She argues the adaptation and expectations of middle class black girls, their respectability and purity, and many violent encounters, which entailed sexual harassment, interracial sexual invasion, and realities of Jim Crow terrorism. Simmons introduces her book about black girls ages nine to twenty, in New Orleans while Jim Crow is legal and active by telling a story about African American male, Willie McGee, who was accused of raping a white woman allegedly in Laurel, and six years later put to death by the electric chair in Mississippi
...xists in the lives of Pashtun women, their songs live on to communicate a spirit of beauty amidst their helpless plight. Through careful analysis of her songs, we are able to see behind the veil and reach the rich heart of the Afghan woman. There is a joy in her songs that illustrates the perseverance of the human spirit. No matter how demoralized one’s life may be, there is a spirit within us all to survive; a spirit that cannot be crushed even in the bloodiest of wars or the most hostile of oppressions. It is this universal desire the endure and find quench the thirst for human happiness that connects us all the Pashtun women and their beautiful songs. (1915 words)
Brooks, G. (1995). Islamic marriage. Nine parts of desire: The hidden world of Islamic women. London: Hamish Hamilton.
In a culture where stereotypes are so common and thrown left and right, it’s not uncommon to hear someone say “That guy looks suspicious” or “You’re such a FOB.” However, we must be careful when it comes to these remarks or stereotypes because we must remember that what we are doing is simply feeding more into a closed minded society and contributing to the derogating of a mixed society. In all three novels, Throne of the Crescent Moon, Anatomy of a Disappearance, and Lebanese Blonde, all three male Arab characters have shown that they go against this grain of the stereotypical Arab male gender/ culture. Whether it’s Doctor Adoulla Makhslood, the ghul hunter in the city of Dhamsawaat, who’s simply trying to rewind after a hard days of work and enjoy his tea; Or Nuri el-Alfi, the young boy with an odd fascination for a woman who becomes his step-mom with a father who can only be described as mysterious; Or Samir Tammouz, the reluctant individual who never quite seemed to fully grasp what he was getting himself into till it was too late. These three Arab male characters in all three novels are distinct in their own way and that’s what separates them from the mainstream stereotypes of the Arab male gender/ culture.
The purpose of this discourse is to first, examine and delineate the manner in which Arab women novelists portray or ‘write’ men; and second, to discuss the most relevant reasons why the women write them as they do. This will be accomplished by focusing mainly on three novels written by women from Jordan and Palestine with settings form Beirut to London.
Lila Abu-Lughod’s article titled, “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?” takes a closer look at the problematic ethnocentric approach many have when trying to gain an understanding of another culture that may be foreign to that individual. In this analytical paper, Lughod looks at women in Islam, specifically the treatment of women and how it might be utilized as a justification for invading into a country and liberating its people. The country Lughod refers to in her article is Afghanistan, and Lughod points out the misunderstanding from the people to the Bush administration like First Lady Laura Bush who believed that intervention was necessary to free women from the captivity of their own homes. It is important to consider the role that different lenses play into all of this, especially when one’s lenses are being shaped by the media. Depictions of covered women secluded from society leave a permanent image in the minds of many, who would then later support the idea of liberation. This paper will discuss that the practice of using propaganda when referring to the lifestyle in the Middle East is not exclusive to the U.S; rather it has been utilized throughout history. Additionally, we will take a closer look on the importance of symbols, such as veils in this case; help to further emphasize the cause to liberate. Finally, we will analyze Lughod’s plea towards cultural relativism and away from liberal imperialism.
Salman Ahmed Rushdie is an eminent postcolonial diasporic writer of Indian origin. He was born in a Muslim family in 1947, the year India became free from the clutches of the colonial rule. The novelist and essayist of international repute, Rushdie, started his writing with the fictional work Grimus (1975). His second novel Midnights’ Children (1981) won the Booker’s Prize. The text focuses on the simultaneous independence and partition of the two nations. He came into thick of controversies because of his novel, The Satanic Verses. (1988). The Muslims considered the novel to be blasphemous. The publication of the novel led to a wide range of demonstrations and protests worldwide. The publication of the text became dearer for him as the Muslim religious leader of Iran issued a fatwa. The fatwa meant that the man who takes away the life of Rushdie would get one billion dollars as a reward. As such, he continues to live under threat to his life till today. Rushdie’s fame as a novelist is immense. More than seven hundred journal articles and numerous book chapters have been published on it. In the text Shame, Rushdie gives his account of societal and political life in Pakistan. He is satirical of the social conditions in the country which are the resultant of undemocratic, dictatorial and unlawful political practices of the leaders of Pakistan. The present paper attempts to analyze the issue of marginalization of women in the patriarchal society of Pakistan. Rushdie tries to highlight the denial of rights to the Pakistani masses, especially the women, by the rulers. Rushdie portrays the gloomy picture of the Pakistani society in which the women have to face acute sufferings and oppression and suppression has become the talk of the...
According to Kessler and McKenna, gender is a socially constructed phenomenon that exists in society because of commonly shared characteristics and beliefs found amongst members of society. My paper aims to analyze and assess the hijras in Pakistan as a role and gender identity using Nanda and Jami as portrayed in the movie Bol.
Hamid’s fiction deals with varied issues: from infidelity to drug trade in the subcontinent and, in the light of contemporary developments, about Islamic identity in a globalised world. His first novel, Moth Smoke (2000) won a Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award in 2000. His other novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Decibel Award and the South Bank Award for Literature. This book serves as a testament to his elegant style as he deftly captures the straining relationship between America and Pakistan.