Liberation, De-Iiberations, and Stallings, or, Is the "Post"-here Yet?

Nada Elia

This article was completed before the United States' recent invasion of Iraq, and does not therefore discuss the Iraqi situation. Yet it is obvious that, in the aftermath of a Western invasion and occupation, even a people such as the Iraqis, with a long history of secular­ism, will revert to religious fervor, especially when they are designated as “religious oth­ers” by a fundamentalist Christian juggernaut.

What follows must not be construed as a statement of support for the institution of veiling. I do not wear the veil; I deplore and condemn the murder of unveiled women by fundamentalist zealots. Yet because of the seemingly endless demonization of Islam in the West, I seek to highlight the motivations of contemporary women who, exercising their own agency, willingly veil themselves. More than a reclamation of a villified sign, veiling today, when done voluntarily, illustrates how minuscule the space of dissent be­comes, as postcolonial nationalist fervor and anti-Western feelings are collapsed into one another.

Anxious to see Zimbabwe abandon the last vestiges of its former inclination towards socialism, the World Bank in 1992 successfully initiated the imposition of a token tuition fee in all schools of the famine-stricken African country. Nominal as the fee was, it nev­ertheless constituted a burden to the poorest families, who responded by sending only boys to classes. As a result, little girls turned to prostitution in order to secure basic food offered their male siblings at school.

The Western reinforcement of women's oppression, presented as aid to an ailing na­tion, is nothing new. This essay examines how colonial powers, over the last two centu­ries, have helped exacerbate women's circumstances in the Middle East, pushing some to a total rejection of all things Western. Specifically, I will look at these women whose lifestyle today reveals how the European powers actually cemented sexism while sup­posedly working to promote democracy.

Looking at the titles of various studies of contemporary Middle Eastern women, the novice may be misled into believing the issue of Arab women's oppression is a simple one, conveniently summed up in one word, “Islam.” But well-intentioned as some of the studies of Arab women have been, they are guilty of a major oversight: Arab women to­day are as much a part of the Muslim world as they are part of the postcolonial reality, and they have been oppressed by the predominantly-Christian West no less than by the mostly-Muslim Middle East. And just like their male compatriots, their ordeal did not

end with the ousting of the occupying forces. Hence, the image of Islam as the foremost, unmitigated factor of women’s oppression and alienation in the Middle East today must be redressed. And the West should also be credited for the harm it inflicted on the female half of the Muslim peoples stripped of their basic human and political rights for over a century.

Colonialism and dishonesty go hand in hand. The Western European imperial pow­ers have attempted to justify their exploitation of foreign lands and labor that were not theirs in terms of (mostly Christian) charity and benevolence. Those countries that do not go so far as to claim their dominion over another land constituted unmitigated altruism will nevertheless argue that they contributed to the advancement of the occupied nation, by helping to “modernize” it. That this is a blatant lie is obvious today, as the postcolo­nial world exhibits its industrial, financial, and organizational weaknesses, and back­wardness.

Britain, for example, claimed that it was colonizing the world in the name of the Three Cs: Commerce, Civilization, and Christianity. But while Commerce benefited the “queen-size” pockets, it impoverished all natives who did not service the Western institu­tions. And whereas Civilizations, old as humanity, existed in the Indian subcontinent, Af­rica, and pre-conquest North America, these were either subjected to a systematic effort at eradication, or brought to a standstill by the British forces. As for Christianity, the sys­tem of belief predicating love, charity, tolerance, humility, and total disregard of all things material, the occupiers were too far removed from it to be in any position to exer­cise rather than merely preach it.

France did not claim that its expansionism was motivated by a desire to spread the word of the Christian god. At no point during its 132-year occupation of predominantly Muslim North Africa did it actively seek to convert the subject populations to Christian­ity. Although official documents that are only now coming to light reveal that France was trying to rid its metropolitan territories of undesirables, and hoping to avoid agrarian bankruptcy by exploiting lands more fertile than the European, the reason given for the French colonization of North Africa was a desire to “civilize” (read “create new mar­kets”) the otherwise deprived (“untapped”) parts of the world. As with British imperial­ism, this mission Civilisatrice proved ultimately counterproductive, because North Africa, suspicious of all things French, held on as best it could to its pre-occupation ways, thus inevitably falling behind, at least when measured against the Western linear pattern of history and development.

Because the French in North Africa governed the colonies solely for their own bene­fit, their departure left the new nations in a shambles, presenting the national leaders with an immense challenge.

Tell the believing women to lower their eyes,

guard their private parts, and not display their charms except what is apparent outwardly, and cover their bosoms with their veils, and not to show their finery except to their husbands or their fathers or fathers-in-law (Qur'an XXIV: 31).

Twentieth-century Islam has interpreted numerous suras to fit contemporary life, go­ing so far as to allow for the establishment of interest-free banks and oil cartels. It is plau­sible that, were it not for foreign intervention, the sura recommending modesty would also have been adapted to allow for non-constrictive dress. After all, if “private parts” re­ferred to one's face, men too would be veiled, in compliance with the Qur'an (XXIV: 31, but also XXIII: 7), which implies that these parts are the genital organs, since a man must also only show them to his spouse:

The true believers will be successful,

Who are humble in their service,

Who shun all frivolities,

Who strive for betterment;

And those who guard their private parts

Except from their wives and maids they have married (Qur'an XXIII: 2-7).

Colonialism, however, left a lasting impression in the Arab world, and overcoming it at times meant the indiscriminate rejection of ideas associated with the former oppressor. Among the more advertised claims of the imperial project was the “emancipation” of Arab women, hence the suspicion with which the newly independent nations viewed gender equality. “Women and their role [became] a stick with which the West could beat the East,” writes Malti-Douglas (1991: 151). “When the West left, the pain-inflicting stick was discarded, rather than the causes behind its brandishing.”

But the Western powers were themselves engaging in an oppressive system, not just as imperial nations, but because of the inherent sexism in their denunciation of Arab op­pression of women. Thus they scarcely ever discussed gender issues as far as the role of Arab women in political life was concerned. Rather, they concentrated both their theo­retical work and empirical observations on women's autonomy and control in the domes­tic sphere—the kitchen and the bedroom. It is no coincidence that in occupied Algeria, schooling was mandatory for young boys, but optional and frequently unavailable for girls. But more, the French administration did not even attempt to ban polygamy, a prac­tice which could easily be rendered illegal, and which most Europeans viewed as un­equivocally oppressive for women.

Similarly, the empirical example the French authorities provided was totally phallo- centric: the administrators were men, their spouses domestic creatures. French men were also in control of all of the intellectual spheres: the academic disciplines, philosophy and science, the media, the presses and publishing houses, and the research foundations, in addition to the economic sector, the factories, the industries, and trading. The French co­lonial administration also took away from Arab women certain legal rights they had prior to their country's occupation. In particular, France did not allow land ownership by women, and many propertied Arab women had their land taken away from them to be registered in the name of their male next of kin.

In North Africa, the sexism of the European colonizer also manifested itself in chil­dren's education: schooling was compulsory for boys, with both the boy and his father going to jail for three days, and paying a heavy fine, if the young one played truant. But nothing of the sort applied to girls. Thus, by not making school mandatory for girls, the French allowed for a generation of uneducated women, in a culture where literacy for all children had been highly valued. The North Africans were holding on, as best they could, to their “independent,” i.e., pre-colonial, traditions and cultures, and keeping young girls at home was one of the few legal options now available to them. Kabyle poet Fadhma Amrouche, born in 1882, explains that educated Kabyle women were viewed with suspicion by their clansmembers, because education could be obtained only in French schools. The North Africans' reluctance to educate their children in French schools is understandable, when one considers what the children were taught. Amrouche recalls:

I was top in French history, but I hated geography—I could never remember all the Departments and Districts, whereas I can still remember in detail all the kings of France, who married whom, who succeeded whom, and all about the French revolution and the Napoleonic era. I loved French, except when I had to explain proverbs and maxims (1968/1989: 16-17).

The boys, on the other hand, could receive either secular (the official designation for French) or Qur'anic education, so long as they went to school. Ironically, the young North African girls may have been witness to French ways in their schools but, in most cases, they did not live them. Racial segregation prevailed within the schools, where the daughters of colonists had separate dormitories and dining halls. (From my own experi­ence as an Arab girl in a French-run school, I recall sitting at the same dining hall table as my European classmates, but being served different food. My friend Florence ate chicken, as I tried to avoid the weevils in my stock-flavored crushed wheat.) This segre­gation alienated the young girls, making them marginal to both their native culture and that of the colonizer. Thus Amrouche explains that, when the French closed her school, she found herself short-changed and ill-equipped, at the age of fifteen, for the life await­ing her in her native village. Her bitterness resulted in a conscious rejection of her French training and education:

From that day I tried to rid myself of the veneer of civilisation that I had acquired and not even think about it. Since the Roumis [Arabic for “foreigners”] had rejected us, I resolved to become a Kabyle again. I told my mother she must show me how to do all her work about the house, so that I could help her (1986/1989: 30). I did not want to think of my past life any more, since I had to forget that I had been educated. I was determined to do my best about this (1968/1989: 32).

Colonial occupation, thus, harmed Arab women in numerous ways. It stripped them of rights they enjoyed under Islam. It failed to provide a valid model for equality, while promoting emancipation. And it aggravated Arab men, who were eager to recover “their ways” following liberation, the long desired and fought-for departure of the foreign oc­cupier. Arab men, however, were less eager to surrender gains secured under colonial­ism, namely the land that belonged to their mothers, wives, or sisters. Even today, the Western “help” offered needy African countries favors a continuation of sexism.

Another illustration of contemporary Western aggravation of Middle Eastern sexism is evident from the choice of nations the United States supports (invariably the more con­servative ones, where polygamy remains legal, and women cannot drive), and those it opposes (which are the ones that actively promote gender equality). Ramla Khalidi and Judith Tucker confront and aptly address Western hypocrisy, as they write that the colo­nial powers:

... argued that the oppression of women justified colonial intervention, and that the imperial project would elevate women to the standards of equality putatively present in northern Europe. The debatable sincerity and validity of these claims aside, the linking of gender issues to Western intervention and the invocation of Western standards to which all must aspire left a bitter legacy of mistrust (1992: 2).

Thus the European presence subverted the possibility of discarding the hijab, for in the minds of the colonized Arabs, a bare-faced woman was Western, or Westernized, i.e., precisely what they were seeking independence from. In A Dying Colonialism, his study of the Algerian revolution, Frantz Fanon observed:

Servants under the threat of being fired, poor women dragged from their homes, prostitutes, were brought to the public square and symbolically unveiled to the cries of “Vive L-'Algerie franeaise’¹” Before this new offensive old reactions reappeared. Spontaneously and without being told, the Algerian women who had long since dropped the veil once again donned the haik, thus affirming that it was not true that woman liberated herself at the invitation of France and of General de Gaulle (1965: 62).

Motivated by similar feelings, Muslim women in Lebanon in the 1990s started don­ning the veil in a gesture of defiance to the West. In fact, the greater the foreign influence had been felt in the daily life of the occupied peoples, the more radical was the call for a “return to the roots.” In Algeria, the French sought to obliterate the native culture. And as I write this, almost half a century after independence, Islamic fundamentalism is taking Algeria by storm. Similarly, in Iran, where the much-hated Shah, whose mere existence depended on subservience to the West, had banned the veil in 1936, Islamic fundamen­talism has secured its hold on the country, and seeks to “liberate” the rest of Muslim Asia of the visible traces of Western influence. The fact that it does so with Western weapons does not appear to bother the Muslim brethren. It is the face of the gharbzadegi, or West­ernized woman favored by the Pahlavi administration, that has come to symbolize the ef­fects of imperialism and moral corruption.

In Lebanon, where the mandate favored the Christian segment of the population, women are wearing the veil to demonstrate both their rejection of the French-inspired undemocratic constitution, and their allegiance to Iran, symbol of anti-West feelings. Shortly after independence, the Lebanese government officially relinquished matters of personal status to the country's religious authorities, in a move destined to maintain the sectarian balance of power that favored the Christian ruling elite. Today, thanks to the French-inspired constitution, Muslim women have fewer rights than their Christian women fellow-citizens. Blaming the Islamic Republic, or Ayatollah Khomeini, for the reactionary turn of events in the Middle East since the ousting of the Shah is simply not enough. Had the West not made itself so unpopular there, Islam would not be so indis­criminate in its rejection of (most) things that can be associated with it. And, historically speaking, the first unveiled women that the alienated Iranians and pauperized North Af­ricans saw in the twentieth century were European women, the consenting companions of their oppressors. The oppressed were not going to let their own wives remind them of the misery they experienced under colonialism, if they could help it at all. And they could, thanks to the Qur'an and its recommendation that women guard their “private parts.”

Yet the Arab women who wish to navigate the twenty-first century as veiled crea­tures, determined to conceal all traces of foreign influence, are anachronistically holding on to a past long gone. For as we look at both form and contents as far as our veiled sis­ters are concerned, we fail to see how they differ from their precolonial great­grandmothers. Indeed, it seems that the greater the colonial influence on their everyday lives had been, the less they will let it show, when everything and everyone else around them has changed.

Clearly, emulating the West has never helped Middle Eastern women, nor is it likely to begin doing so now. Yet allowing a hatred of the West control one's life is no less op­pressive. Instead, a totally independent look at how Muslim societies should treat all their members is needed, lest liberation turn to de-liberation. For there is no turning back, only stallings and unfortunate delays.

References

Amrouche, Fadhma. (1989). My Life Story. Translated from the French (L’histoire de ma vie. Paris: Maspero, 1968) by Dorothy S. Blair. London: Women's Press.

Fanon, Frantz. (1965). A Dying Colonialism. Translated from the French by Haakon Chevalier. New York: Grove.

Khalidi, Ramla, and Judith Tucker. (1992). Women’s Rights in the Arab World, a special MERIP (Middle East Research and Investigation project) publication. Washington, D.C.: MERIP.

Malti-Douglas, Fedwa. (1991). Woman’s Body, Woman’s Word: Gender and Discourse in Arabo-Islamic Writing. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Mernissi, Fatima. (1987). Beyond The Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Modern Muslim Society. Revised edition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. First published, Cambridge: Schenkman, 1975.