Leading Saudi psychologist: 'Modern research has confirmed that receiving contradictory messages at the same time will lead to personality imbalances in a growing child. Such conflicts might also lead to mental disturbances, such as depression, a tendency to break away from social customs and norms, and harming oneself.
Salaam writes: The requirement for children to cover both face and head is so deviant that I couldn't even find a picture of a child so dressed on the Internet (except Michael Jackson's children). When rules are established that are obviously arbitrary and random it is likely to discredit the system that sets those rules in the eyes of the child, thereby undermining Islam.
KHAMIS MUSHAYT: When an eight- or ten-year-old girl is told that she should cover her entire body from head to toe - as an adult woman is supposed to do - then immediately the child's mother asks why.
This is exactly what is happening in the southern province of Asir where school regulations stipulate that pre-pubescent girls should dress in such a way that no part of their body, including head and face, is visible.
A child who dares to violate the new dress code faces severe punishment, including a public scolding and deductions from her marks.
This has put parents in a real dilemma. On the one hand, this new dress code is being imposed; on the other, they find it difficult to convince their young daughters that it is necessary for them to be completely veiled.
In addition, the parents have not been able to convince school authorities that little girls are not required to dress as adult women. Though Islam has strict dress regulations for women, they are only applied after girls reach puberty.
Umm Abrar, whose daughter is in Grade 4 at a primary school, went out shopping for a small abaya that would meet the school specifications. The scarf in her school should be worn in such a way that neither her face nor her hair is visible, allowing only her eyes to be seen.
"Until last year, the head scarf for little girls did not mean covering heads and faces. Only girls who had reached puberty needed to cover their faces. But this year the school ordered all girls to cover both heads and faces," Umm Abrar said. "Contrary to social customs and religious regulations, school authorities demand that little girls be completely covered. Girls submit to the regulations only under threat of punishment and therefore when they are outside school grounds they remove the covering," she added.
Umm Abrar finally bought an abaya matching the specifications set out in the school regulations so that her daughter would be spared punishment in school.
Another girl in Grade 6 of a primary school said: "The school regulations make me use two kinds of abayas: One that covers me entirely is for school and the other that shows my face is for family and social occasions."
Umm Abrar also feared that coercing girls to conceal their childhood behind black abayas and live like adults would be damaging to young minds. "Children are children and they should be treated so and not as adults," she said.
The teachers, she added, preached what they did not practice; they demanded that the girls not wear brocaded abayas or abayas made with glitter or sequins when they themselves often wore exactly that.
The mothers in Asir also wonder why school authorities order girls to dress in ways that go far beyond the demands of Islam; on the other hand, schools in the Makkah province allow pre-pubescent girls to dress according to a more relaxed Islamic code. The school authorities in Asir, however, justified their stand by saying that the practice would help develop the culture of Islamic dress at a very early age in girls. A school principal, speaking on condition of anonymity, said young girls who wear full abaya and veil throughout the year are awarded prizes as encouragement to other girls.
The principal also admitted that most girls obeyed the order because they were afraid of punishment, which included the deduction of 10 marks from a total of 100 marks given for good conduct.
Another school official agreed that the practice was not an obligation from a religious perspective. Her view was that the new dress code was an effort to make girls get accustomed to the idea of wearing the complete veil in advance of the time it was actually required.
The school official added that this would prevent the more attractive girls from being harassed by men.
Khayriyah, principal of Al-Manara private school in Asir, said she has not exempted any girl from being completely veiled in the school though she knew that several parents did not approve.
According to a woman supervisor at the Education Department in Asir, the full veil is being imposed to curb girls from showing off hair cut above the ear or hair that has been highlighted with brilliant colors. She said the ministry's guidelines do not in fact specify that the abaya should be black or that it should completely cover the head. The guidelines, however, state that it should not show the body of an adult woman.
Dr. Rajab Barsali, a leading psychologist in the western region, said that the constant conflict between the social dress system and school dress code would have a negative impact on the minds of young girls. "Modern research has confirmed that receiving contradictory messages at the same time will lead to personality imbalances in a growing child," the doctor said. He added that such conflicts might also lead to mental disturbances, such as depression, a tendency to break away from social customs and norms, and harming oneself.
Abdul Mohsen Al-Obaikan, adviser at the Ministry of Justice, said a girl should cover her face and stop displaying her face at 10 because that is the age when her body begins to become attractive.
When the couple married eight months ago, their Islamic marriage contract stipulated that Ms Ahmad, a hearing and speech pathologist in training at King Faisal Specialist Hospital, was permitted to work outside the home.
Emad Qanaq, left, adjusts the veil of his wife Ayat Ahmad, at the garden of their home in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Hassan Ammar / AP
Ayat Ahmad warned her husband before they wed that there was something he had to accept, something she could not give up.
"I told him from day one, 'Emad, I want to work," she recalled. "And before working, I want to finish my studying, and take my Master's degree and even my PhD, inshallah'.
"This is my dream and I have to continue it until the end'."
Luckily, Ms Ahmad, 22, had met her soulmate.
"Personally speaking," said Emad Qanaq, 24, an assistant food and beverage manager at the Four Seasons Hotel in Riyadh, "I would never imagine myself coming back home and finding my wife just sitting there, waiting for me, just being a housewife like what used to be in Saudi.
"I want her to be to more than that. I want her to reach her potential in life. I want her to grow up in her career."
When the couple married eight months ago, their Islamic marriage contract stipulated that Ms Ahmad, a hearing and speech pathologist in training at King Faisal Specialist Hospital, was permitted to work outside the home.
Increasingly, marriage contracts of young couples have a similar provision, a signal of shifting Saudi attitudes towards what is widely recognised as a revolutionary development in any society: women joining the workforce.
It is especially revolutionary for Saudi Arabia because of its unique place among nations, ranked lowest out of 128 - in terms of female "labour force participation" - by the 2007 World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report. Saudi officials say women make up only four per cent of the country's workforce.
To be sure, the idea of women working is far from being universally applauded, even among young people, who make up around 70 per cent of Saudi Arabia's 22.6 million citizens. A strong cultural bias against women having any public role or interacting with unrelated men keeps many women out of the job market. A significant number of twentysomething men do not want their wives to work. And not all women in their 20s want a career outside the home.
But it is also true that acceptance of women in the workforce - something the government is encouraging - is gaining ground among the kingdom's younger generation.
Aligarh, Nov 8 : Vice-President Mohammad Hamid Ansari's wife Salma Ansari today highlighted the need of education, especially among the Muslim girls, and asked their parents to send them to school.
''There is still a dearth of education among the girls belonging to the Muslim community,'' Ms Ansari said at the Aligarh Muslim University here on the occasion of the birth anniversary of its founder Sir Syyed Ahmad.
''Either the parents don't pay attention towards them, or they don't want their daughters to be literate,'' she noted, advising the parents to change their thinking as no religion could progress without education.
She said it was also not necessary that one should acquire learning from only convent school. ''Getting education from any institute works, but the person should be well aware of his or her culture'' Ms Ansari added.
Topics ranged from the emotional and educational needs of new Muslims, to child-raising, to the impact of nutrition and exercise on the body's ability to perform worship.
Dr. Esam Alkhawaga says he feels more secure and free practicing Islam in Dayton, Ohio, than he did in his native Egypt. He immigrated in 1994, choosing what he called "the beauty of American culture."
Yet Muslims have taken an emotional beating in this country since Sept. 11, 2001, most recently in the bombardment of aspersions meant by an otherwise innocuous statement: "He's a Muslim."
At the first women's conference of the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh yesterday, Dr. Alkhawaga, a psychiatrist, said the rhetoric is "very troubling." In fact, he proposed that the integration of pure Islam with American culture at its best would make "a perfect marriage."
When Muslims in every other national culture define differently how Islam looks and feels -- from Egypt to Jordan to India -- "What's wrong with American-Islam?" he asked.
At the daylong conference in Oakland, educators, health professionals, Islamic scholars and Westerners who have converted to Islam held forth in discussions and speeches on topics that ranged from the emotional and educational needs of new Muslims, to child-raising, to the impact of nutrition and exercise on the body's ability to perform worship.
The audience of mostly women sat on one side of the aisle from the men and the boys, all in stockinged feet, most of the women in headscarves.
Both colonialists and modern nationalists infused the image of the 'Muslim woman' as a reflection of nationalist ideology-whether modern or Islamic.
Nuseiba blogger: Sometimes I wonder if the label 'feminist' is worth even using because too often it serves more of a hindrance than progress. This is perhaps because it is conflated with feminism's role in the colonial period, where it was used to legitimise the project of the colonial power.
Un-bylined blogger at Nuseiba writes: The third International Congress on Islamic feminism is underway in Barcelona. Muslim women from around the world have gathered to discuss the pressing issue of women in Islam and the Muslim world. Events like these and the debate which ensues - both from women and men-can often be heated and emotional. Just the very mention of Islamic feminism seems to arouse criticism. Too often there is a tendency to discredit women's activism in the Muslim community simply because these women choose to label themselves as 'Islamic feminists'.
Rather than getting into the various currents of Islamic feminism-which many of its critics tend to forget, I'd rather discuss the antagonistic and emotional reaction by many critics in the Muslim community. Why there is so much hysteria around the issue of women in Islamic discourse. Sometimes I wonder if the label 'feminist' is worth even using because too often it serves more of a hindrance than progress. This is perhaps because it is conflated with feminism's role in the colonial period, and where it was used to legitimise the project of the colonial power. Further, it is also because it has been associated with the mimetic modernizing projects by bourgeois nationalists in countries like Egypt, Tunisia, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan etc.
On the contrary, the reality being, neither the colonialist nor the nationalist ever genuinely pursued the 'emancipation' of women. Merely, the issue of women, in particular their body, were used as a battleground for conflicting ideologies. For instance in Tunisia, the Tunisian woman was 'modern' (unveiled) in the physical sense, but expected to maintain the traditional role as the 'mother of the nation' who produces modern Tunisian citizens. That was her primary role. My point here being both colonialists and modern nationalists never sought to emancipate women (assuming here many needed it in the first place) but instead infused the image of the 'Muslim woman' as a reflection of nationalist ideology-whether modern or Islamic.
This historical background provides a clearer insight into why there has been such hysteria behind issues of women in the Muslim world. In modern history, she has been relegated into a position of producing culture and the nation. That is why in Iran, the image of the chador-wearing Iranian woman is emphasized to the degree that it does, because it has both a political nationalist and religious meaning of resistance: She symbolizes the Iranian revolution and the defiance of Iran. Or in the opposite case, the unveiled Turkish woman is the symbol of Attaturk's efforts to bring Turkey out of ignorance and stagnation.
Considering the historical tradition, it's not surprising that the word 'feminism' arouses such opposition and emotions. The situation of Muslim women today is far more harrowing as a result of these experiences. The fanatical discourses around her have made it very difficult for any Muslim woman (or mEn for that matter) to point out injustices to even discuss the rights given to us in our very religion. It's a time of crisis for the Muslim community if downloading the rights of women in Islam is threatened with a death sentence or imprisonment- which recently occurred in Afghanistan. Moreover, this is all justified under the feeble effort to 'preserve' some sort of a constructed authenticity which has mummified our discourse to the point where voices have been smothered because we're led to believe everything is a threat. These include the voices of Islamic feminists.
Cycads writes: Malaysian women of different cultures and ethinicities welcome visitors from abroad in their colourful traditional costumes. They all smile benignly, and they all look beautiful. This is the 'Malaysia, truly Asia' tourism campaign. But wait - the lady in the sari (second from left) does not look Indian at all; she's very light-skinned unlike the many Malaysians of South-Indian descent and does not have recognisably Subcontinental features. Why is she being represented as an ethnic Indian when it is only her dress that is doing the representing? Perhaps what's underlying this campaign is not about celebrating racial diversity after all. Perhaps this is an image that celebrates a kind of bland homogeneity that is expected of the Perfect Malaysian womanhood.
In a Perfect Malaysia, women's bodies are defined by a deeply entrenched patriarchal-political and religious discourse. Such definitions of womanhood emanates from a continuous control over the female body either legally or culturally, predating the conception of Malaysia. In colonial Malaya, the Women and Girls' Protection Ordinance (WGPO) was first formulated to protect immigrant prostitutes from venereal disease and abuse that came with the trade. Today the WGPO, now called the Women and Girls' Protection Act (WGPA), has evolved to 'protect' all women and girls of Malaysia by providing rehabilitation of those caught being involved in 'immoral' activities. In practice, the act has been actively enforced on women who frequent karaoke lounges and bars, while their male companions are left untouched.
In a Not So Perfect Malaysia, conflicting forces - religio-politics vs modernising capitalism - conspire in their construction of Malaysian womanhood and sexuality. Such constructions inspire male writers, film-makers and the general male imagination to create the ideal Malay woman that somehow resist these conflicting influences. Similar to the way Malaysian patriarchal religio-politics use the female body to achieve their ideological goals, the ideal Malay woman: dressed in traditional Malay dress, demure, soft-spoken, and annoyingly polite, becomes the site for the preservation of Malay culture. What makes the sexualisation of the Malay woman culturally unique is that she is conceptualised around the earthy essentialism of the kampung (village), hence the fetishisation of kampung women dressed in only a sarong, or 'berkemban'.
This image also evokes a kind of Malay femininity before the advent of modernisation and its Western concepts of sex and beauty, and even before the arrival of Islamic revivalism in the 1970's that dominated the lives of Malaysians. Women writers and auteurs on the other hand, tend to address the issue of female emancipation with less focus on sexuality. Unlike the explicit sexuality and themes of female desire in Indonesia's 'sastra wangi', the thinking Malay woman engages with other elements that define modern female emancipation: career choices, emotional relationships with friends and family, and the freedom to choose a potential romantic partner-cum-future spouse.
Because sex is something so difficult to discuss about in Malaysia due to enduring taboos and irrational fears of moral disorder, it is banished to the confines of fetishes, silence, and shame. Worse still when women are made to fear and feel 'stupid' about their sexuality.
Salaam writes: What follows are the reported comments of Norani Othman, a scholar-activist from Malaysia. I'm guessing that when she draws the contrast between Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian cultures right before referring to patriarchal detractors, she is referring to Gulf Arab cultural imperialists trying to represent themselves as the vessels of the One True Islam with the help of petro-dollars. Read Maldivian Muslim blogger F in the second part of this blog post on how Gulf Arab imperialism has worked to change the culture of women of the Maldives.
I don't think it is any more difficult to be an Islamic feminist than a non-Muslim, or secular feminist.
Feminists in general have to face up to political and cultural obstacles, to achieve our objectives of women's rights. Even Western feminists have had a similar history - having to engage with certain religious beliefs not conducive to gender equality.
Perhaps the only distinctive difference peculiar to Muslim feminists is that we are caught in the cross-currents of modernisation and a changing society, due to a modern economy on the one hand and the global resurgence of political Islam on the other.
Political Islam wants to impose a world view about the gender order that is not consistent with the realities and the lived experiences of Muslim men and women in contemporary society.
There is a difference between South East Asian Muslim countries and the ones in the Middle East - culturally we are less patriarchal, we can always respond to our detractors by pointing out we don't have the cultural practices that they do.
Our detractors would hurl empty accusations at us - calling us Western, secular or anti-Islamic.
Our arguments are rooted within Islam - we want renewal and transformation within the Islamic framework. They don't like that.
We have a holistic approach, seeking gender equality within the Islamic framework, supported by constitutional guarantees. We see that these are not inconsistent with the message of the Koran, particularly during its formative stages. We have to understand the history and cultural context and extract the principle that will be applicable in modern times.
The fatwa potentially creates a public health problem for everyone in Muslim communities, not just women.
The National Fatwa Council of Malaysia has decreed that tomboy behavior is against Islam. Here's Wikipedia on Tomboys:
"Throughout their history, tomboys have had to contend with the stigma of presumed lesbianism or the accusation of wanting to be male. Both assumptions were categorically refuted by twentieth-century psychology, which established the normality of the tomboy experience among girls of all identities. However, for some, the tomboy stage is the first manifestation of a gender-fluid life journey".
Historically, tomboys have been defined by "boyish" behavior (like more physically active, technological, and scientific interests) and wearing boys' clothing.
The fatwa potentially creates a public health problem for everyone in Muslim communities, not just women. Men need to be educated to see the link between this kind stupidity and the quality of their own lives.
There are very real links between physical activity and mental health. A mother in a family that has headaches and body pain from lack of activity will (as anyone who has ever lived with chronic pain knows) likely manifest that pain in her interactions with others. Studies show that any predisposition to mental illness will likely be worsened by lack of physical activity.
This is a fatwa against the well-being of all Malaysian Muslims, men and women alike. (and by the bad example, potentially one that can adversely affect the entire Ummah).
Salaam writes: I've known many girls and women growing up who could be described as "tomboys" and who were not and did not become lesbians. I've also heard people broadly describe women who enjoy participating in sports as "tomboys." This fatwa could have a worrying impact on women's health. Physical activity is important for mental health, which affects the entire family.
KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters Life!) - Malaysia's top Islamic council has decreed that tomboyish behavior and lesbian sex are forbidden in Islam, a newspaper said on Friday.
The National Fatwa Council issued the edict following what it said a spate of cases involving young women behaving like men and indulging in lesbian sex, the Malay language Berita Harian daily said.
"There are teenage girls who prefer the male lifestyle including dressing up in men's clothes," it quoted council chairman Abdul Shukor Husin as saying. "More worryingly, they have started to engage in sexual activities."
He gave no other details.
Mainly Muslim Malaysia frowns on oral and gay sex, describing them as against the order of nature. Under the civil law, offenders -- both males or females -- can be jailed for up to 20 years, caned or fined.
Just over half of Malaysia's 27 million people are Malay Muslims, practicing the moderate brand of Islam.
Judges trivialize and dismiss the noble values of justice and tolerance to make such a ruling. This may be the next thing someone asks you about in a dawah conversation.
KABUL, Afghanistan - An Afghan appeals court overturned a death sentence Tuesday for a journalism student accused of blasphemy for asking questions in class about women's rights under Islam. But the judges still sentenced him to 20 years in prison.
The case against 24-year-old Parwez Kambakhsh, whose brother has angered Afghan warlords with his own writing, has come to symbolize Afghanistan's slide toward an ultraconservative view on religious and individual freedoms.
"I don't accept the court's decision," Kambakhsh told The Associated Press as he was leaving the courtroom. "It is an unfair decision."
The case can be appealed to the Supreme Court, the highest court in Afghanistan.
Unfair trial? John Dempsey, a U.S. lawyer working for six years to reform the Afghan justice system, said Kambakhsh has yet to get a fair trial.
"Procedurally, he did not have many of his rights respected," said Dempsey, who attended the trial. "He was detained far longer than he should have been legally held. The defense lawyer was not even allowed to meet the witnesses until a night before the trial."
Kambakhsh was studying journalism at Balkh University in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif and writing for local newspapers when he was arrested in October 2007.
Besides the accusation that Kambakhsh disrupted class with his questions, prosecutors also said he illegally distributed an article he printed off the Internet that asks why Islam does not modernize to give women equal rights. He also allegedly wrote his own comments on the paper.
In January, a lower court sentenced him to death in a trial critics have called flawed in part because Kambakhsh had no lawyer representing him. Muslim clerics welcomed that court's decision and public demonstrations were held against the journalism student because of perceptions he had violated the tenets of Islam.
Islamic history will be made in the heart of Oxford today when a woman Muslim scholar leads Friday prayers and delivers the khutba, or sermon, for the first time in Britain.
Professor Amina Wadud, visiting scholar at the Starr King School of the Ministry, Berkeley, California, received death threats after she led a service in New York three years ago. That event was held at an Anglican church after mosques refused to host it.
At 1pm today on Oxford's Banbury Road, Ms Wadud will deliver a sermon at the start of a conference on Islam and feminism at the University's Wolfson College. Organised by the Muslim Educational Centre Oxford (Meco), the event has attracted fierce criticism from traditionalists, who claim that the Koran insists on men leading prayers.
Police will be on hand to ensure protests do not spill over into violence.
Taj Hargey, a veteran of anti-apartheid struggles in South Africa currently engaged in post-doctoral research at Wolfson College, is Meco's chairman. "Our situation is simple," Mr Hargey said. "The golden rule of the Koran is that whatever is not expressly prohibited is permitted.
"Literalists interpret the Hadith [the sayings of Prophet Muhammad] as implying a woman should never lead a community. But even within the Hadith there is a woman called Umm Waraqa whom the Prophet allowed to lead prayers in a household and to teach her neighbour. Though it recognises biological differences between men and women, the Koran absolutely specifies gender egalitarianism.
"The people opposing this are the Wahhabi, Deobandi; misogynistic segments of Islam. They don't believe in the innate equality of men and women."
Born in 1952 to a Methodist father and a mother of Muslim heritage in Maryland, Ms Wadud, who has written books on the Koran and memorised most of it, first delivered a Friday sermon in Cape Town, South Africa, in August 1994. Seen as a pioneering feminist, her last book, Inside The Gender Jihad: Women's Reform In Islam (2006) was partly an experiment in autobiography, and included details of the threats to her life in New York.
That sermon, delivered to about 100 men and women, led to a concerted attempt by some Muslim scholars to have her removed from the academic position she then held at Virginia Commonwealth University.
CHARLESTON, S.C. --Dr. Qanta Ahmed's journey into the heart of Islam began as a spur-of-the-moment decision to practice medicine in Saudi Arabia.
Despite misgivings about women - even doctors - being treated as invisible in the country, the 40-year-old assistant professor at the Medical University of South Carolina says she took a chance and stayed there for two years.
Reflecting on her experiences almost decade later, she sees her memoir, "In the Land of Invisible Women," as part of a needed "jihad of the pen" by articulate, moderate Muslims. Her hope is that a book written by a Muslim who grew up in the West can, in some small way, bridge the divide of understanding between the Middle East and Western culture.
"One of the central errors Westerners are constantly assaulted with is the use of this term jihad," she says in an interview at her condominium overlooking Charleston's peaceful Ashley River. "The central jihad for all of us is to constantly improve and be the best we can be and try to adhere to some very pure ideals."
She also hopes it might help dispel what she says is a misconception that Islam advocates violence.
"This is absolutely heinous and false," she says. "Islam values life above anything. We are taught in the Quran that man's right to life exceeds even God's rights on man."
Ahmed's "In the Land of Invisible Women," will be published next month by Sourcebooks Landmark.
....
In modern Islam, she says, "you see so very few articulate moderate voices coming out. Where are the movies? Where is the music? Where is the poetry? Where are the books to counteract some of this (violent) ideology?"
Salaam writes: I've previously posted about "Noor" here and here.
BEIRUT (AFP) - Despite being branded "subversive" and "anti-Islamic" by a top Saudi Muslim cleric, millions of viewers from Beirut to Algiers tune in up to three times a day to watch the Turkish-made soap opera, "Noor", dubbed into Arabic.
With his strawberry blond curls, blues eyes and engaging smile, Mohannad is setting the pulses of millions of Arab women racing in a television series critics claim is scandalising traditional Muslim values.
The series tells the story of Mohannad and his equally stunning wife Noor as they wrestle to reconcile the conflicting pressures of traditional and modern worlds.
"I love it because it is as glamorous as the foreign soap operas (American and Mexican) we sometimes watch," said Cairo resident Safaa Abdel Hadi, a self-confessed Noor addict.
"But at the same time the family in 'Noor' is Muslim and they have similar traditions and customs, so we relate to them much more," she added.
"They are a bit like us," said Lebanese Christian housewife Ibtissam Issa. "I really like their belief in tradition and their loyalty to the family."
Noor tells the story of a young mother who abandons her family home to start a new life with her baby and the story of another woman who becomes pregnant out of wedlock -- issues frowned upon in the conservative Arab world.
"We must not fool ourselves into thinking that because they are Muslim they are like us. The show reflects Western culture and problems, not our own," said 34-year-old Nadia Abdel Rahman of Egypt.
In order to protect the sensibilities of conservative Arab and Muslim viewers, the production company, Sama, which provides the voice-over, has deleted intimate scenes considered to be "inappropriate".
....
"Such series reflect how the lives of Arab people are torn between modern life and their traditions," said Lebanese sociologist Melhem Shaul, who specialises in the media.
"Somehow these shows help ease the anguish that grips us," Shaul added.
"Women who work but are oppressed by their husbands or male chauvinists who are forced to be on an equal footing with women, can identify with the characters."
For Suheir Farraj, a Palestinian film director, "Noor portrays young liberated Muslims, and viewers here seem to want to aspire to that, and that reality."
"Noor" delivers an idealized portrayal of modern married life as equal partnership - clashing with the norms of traditional Middle Eastern societies where elders often have the final word on whom a woman should marry and many are still confined to the role of wife and mother.
Some Muslim preachers in the West Bank and Saudi Arabia have taken notice, saying the show is un-Islamic and urging the faithful to change channels. But all the same, the show may be planting seeds of change.
"I told my husband, 'learn from him (Mohannad) how he treats her, how he loves her, how he cares about her,'" said Heba Hamdan, 24, a housewife visiting the West Bank from Amman, Jordan. Married straight out of college, she said the show inspired her to go out and look for a job.
And now this from Arab News news service this week:
JEDDAH: Residents of a village in Baha region recently smashed their satellite dishes following a scathing Friday sermon in which the imam spoke against Turkish soap operas "Noor" and "Lost Years", which have in recent months kept the entire Kingdom fixed to their screens.
Following the Friday sermon, the local tribal chief in the village of Al-Hajr, 70 kms from the southwestern city of Baha, smashed his satellite dish and called on people to follow suit, Al-Eqtisadiah daily reported.
Tariq Ansari, a Madinah resident, said his local neighborhood mayor and preachers have been speaking about the Turkish soaps dubbed in Arabic. "It's a popular topic. However, I haven't given really much thought to these soaps," he said.
Meanwhile, the imam of the Imam Malik Mosque in Jeddah said he would devote a sermon to the issue and warn people against watching Turkish soaps.
....
Commenting on the aggressive reaction of some people, Yusuf said, "Being aggressive in dealing with such cases is just fruitless. This imam has not done anything positive; the people in the town would simply look for another way to watch the series."
He added that people reacted aggressively when satellite dishes were first introduced into the Kingdom. "However, that has not stopped them. On the contrary more dishes appeared on buildings," he said.
Umm Muhammad, a mother of six, said she allows her children to watch the program to ensure they do not become too attached to it. "If you prevent someone from something then the person would try harder in doing what has been forbidden," she said. Story here.
RAMALLAH, West Bank - Every evening for the past four months, a tall young man with soulful blue eyes has been stealing hearts across the Middle East, from the refugee camps of the Gaza Strip to the gated mansions of Riyadh.
But it's not just the striking good looks of Mohannad, hero of the hugely popular Turkish TV soap "Noor," that appeal to female viewers. He's romantic, attentive to his wife, Noor, supportive of her independence and ambitions as a fashion designer - in short, a rare gem for women in conservative, male-dominated surroundings.
"Noor" delivers an idealized portrayal of modern married life as equal partnership - clashing with the norms of traditional Middle Eastern societies where elders often have the final word on whom a woman should marry and many are still confined to the role of wife and mother.
Some Muslim preachers in the West Bank and Saudi Arabia have taken notice, saying the show is un-Islamic and urging the faithful to change channels. But all the same, the show may be planting seeds of change.
"I told my husband, 'learn from him (Mohannad) how he treats her, how he loves her, how he cares about her,'" said Heba Hamdan, 24, a housewife visiting the West Bank from Amman, Jordan. Married straight out of college, she said the show inspired her to go out and look for a job.
....
In Saudi Arabia, the only country with ratings, about three to four million people watch daily, out of a population of nearly 28 million, according to MBC, the Saudi-owned satellite channel that airs the show dubbed into Arabic for Middle East audiences.
In the West Bank and Gaza, streets are deserted during show time and socializing is timed around it. In Riyadh, the Saudi capital, and in Hebron, the West Bank's most conservative city, maternity wards report a rise in babies named Noor and Mohannad. A West Bank poster vendor has ditched Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein for Noor and Mohannad.
....
In the Shati refugee camp, several teenage girls huddled around an old TV set recently, trying to follow the action despite overflights by pilotless Israeli aircraft that can scramble reception.
Ala Hamami, 17, wearing a black robe and head scarf, said she looks up to Noor because she is independent.
"This series gives strength to women in the future," said Hamami, although she was set on a very traditional path - she had just gotten engaged in an arranged match.
The cultural divide between modern Turkey and traditional Gaza became apparent in a scene where Mohannad and Noor, played by Songul Oden, both end up hospitalized. The girls giggled and Hamami quickly changed channels when Mohannad entered his wife's room and lay beside her to comfort her. The display of physical contact clearly made her uncomfortable.
