Anthropology, Sociology & Women’s Studies
Reprinted from the Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, Summer  2001 (with changes in orthography to HTML standards).
Copyright 2001 by the Middle East Studies Association of North America

Women in Islam: An Anthology from the Qur’an and Hadiths, edited and translated by Nicholas Awde. 224 pages, index. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 2000. $55.00 (Cloth) ISBN 0-312-21523-1

Until recently, the role of women in Islamic society has received little attention from scholars in Middle Eastern studies. In those cases where scholars have included them, the roles attributed to women were cast within the framework of a given volume’s general thesis. In other words, they are rarely paid exclusive attention. In Women in Islam, Awde has provided scholars with a useful foundation for understanding Islamic perceptions of women.

The author’s topical choices serve the field well. They include hygiene, divorce, widowhood and death, the Day of Judgement, heaven and hell, justice and the Law, modesty and clothing, marriage, prayer, religion, sex, unlawful sex and chastity, status and rights, travel, inheritance, family and care, property, possessions and wealth, social conduct, and mothers and children. Each of these topical sections cover key issues in Islamic law, custom, and practice in brief, yet detailed, accounts. Where needed, these topics are further subdivided. Within each account, Awde includes the crucial passages from the Qur’an and the relevant sections from the hadith. In Appendix One, Awde includes still other references from the Qur’an pertaining to the social issues noted above. In addition, Awde defines women and their place within the society. In the section “The Family of the Prophet,” the editor identifies the women to whom the hadith refer. Appendix Two, “Women in the Qur’an,” provides the same service in great detail.

Other features of this volume render it useful. A comprehensive index offers the reader specific references to key people, topics, and customs. The author’s “Further Reading” section recommends a few important primary and reference sources for the reader’s consideration. His “Index to Qur’anic Selections” reveals specific passages pertaining to this subject. His endnotes provide still more references and valuable insights.

Women in Islam has two weaknesses. Awde might have provided a longer list of secondary accounts in his “Further Reading” section. The work would also benefit from an introductory essay summarizing the topics covered. Despite these issues, Awde has provided Islamic scholars of all levels a great starting point for the study of women in the Islamic world. His choice of discussion topics in addition to the supporting selections from the Qur’an and hadith are admirable. He also identifies the important female figures in these texts from various points in Islamic history. In compiling this work, the editor has given us another valuable source for general Islamic history and for the history of Islamic women, whether for teaching in the classroom or for further research endeavors into these developing fields.

David J. Duncan
Wichita State University


Political Cartoons in the Middle East, edited by Fatma Müge Göçek. 154 pages, notes, bibliography, illustrations. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1998. $16.95 (Paper) ISBN 1-55876-157-8

In Political Cartoons in the Middle East, Göçek has assembled a provocative group of essays on the role of political cartoons as mediators of change and vehicles of cultural and political critique. Following an introductory essay by Göçek in which the editor situates the rise of political cartoons in the Middle East within the context of Western influence in the region and as a hybrid product of interaction between European and Middle Eastern cultures, four essays address the various historical circumstances under which political cartoons have both reflected political conditions and critiqued them. Each of the essays addresses such critical topics as the role of the press in disseminating ideas and critiques in Middle Eastern societies; style, content, and context of cartoons; the various ways in which the content of cartoons addresses both local and global issues; official versus popular responses to crises; and censorship.

Palmira Brummett’s “New Women and Old Nag: Images of Women in the Ottoman Cartoon Space,” is an excellent examination of the role of gender in shaping and critiquing nationalist ideologies during the Young Turk Revolution. Brummett argues that the imagery of ‘old’ and ‘new’ females used by cartoonists suggests the paradoxes of empire, and the ambiguities of transition from one form of government to another. Such ambiguities are also taken up by Shiva Balaghi in her “Political Culture in the Iranian Revolution of 1906 and the Cartoons of Kashkul,” in which she uses cartoons to illustrate the instability and uncertainty felt by reformers as they attempted to build a constitutional monarchy in Iran.

Ayhan Akman and Mohamed-Salah Omri address more contemporary issues in their essays, “From Cultural Schizophrenia to Modernist Binarism: Cartoons and Identities in Turkey (1930-1975),” and “‘Gulf Laughter Break’: Cartoons in Tunisia During the Gulf Conflict.” Akman uses the question of ‘modernity’ and its attendant guises as a means of illustrating how Turkish cartoonists used their medium first as a vehicle for waging “civic critique” (p. 90), and, after 1950 and the emergence of multiple-party rule in Turkey, of critiquing the body politic. Omri uses cartoons printed during the Gulf War to show how Tunisians circumvented government censorship during the War and how issues that emerged in the press during 1991 addressed both domestic and global issues. He is keen to show how Tunisians used information released by the Western media both to keep themselves informed about the War and to critique the West.

Göçek’s volume will be useful to students of Middle Eastern history of all stages. Each article offers engaging illustrations of the interplay between material culture and history, and of the relationship between Middle Eastern governments and their citizens during times of crisis and transition. One only wishes that Göçek had expanded her introduction to show how this book and other inquiries into political cartoons fit into the changing Middle Eastern historiography. Larger conclusions about why this collection is an important contribution to that historiography would not only make for a more substantial introduction, but also would make the collection more pertinent to new generations of students.

Lisa Pollard
The University of North Carolina, Wilmington


Vignettes: The Women of Bahrain, by Shaziae Pirzada and Anjali Puri. 312 pages, map, glossary. Bahrain: Dar Akhbar Al Khaleej Press, 1998. $24.00 (Cloth).

Pirzada and Puri are two expatriates from Pakistan and India who regularly contribute to Arab Gulf newspapers and magazines. They wrote this attractive book out of gratitude for the hospitality they have received in Bahrain over more than a decade. The result is an excellent introduction to the talented Bahraini women who have distinguished themselves since the 1930s in education, charitable organizations, and social work. In more recent decades, their activities have expanded to include the arts, business and administration, banking, catering, interior decorating, fashion, museology, health care, medicine, dentistry, and law. The majority of the women interviewed come from old, prominent merchant families, although Pirzada and Puri provide several examples of professional women from modest family origins. The authors admit they were less successful at interviewing rural women, especially older women, because of language problems and the lack of opportunities to meet on an informal basis.

The first half of Vignettes consists of short narratives in which women sketch their family background, education, career, and interests. The writers skillfully juxtapose interviews with women of different generations to highlight the changing ways in which Bahraini women have contributed to public life in the last fifty years. Many of the older women belong to the first generation to receive a modern education, often with private tutors. Among the interviewees were also the first women to travel and to wear western clothes. At first these women used informal gatherings in the households of non-ruling families, including the social visits made after women give birth, for education and social work. In the 1950s, they founded the Bahrain Young Ladies Association, the first of many women’s clubs and charitable organizations.

Many of the younger women interviewed are university graduates and many pursued studies outside Bahrain, which did not have university-level education of its own until the 1970s. After finishing studies, they set up businesses in their own homes or became teachers. Today, many work in a wide variety of professions and businesses and receive regular salaries. Younger women discussed who in their family encouraged them in their choice of career, how they balance family obligations and employment, workplace relations with men, and dressing to appear both professional and ‘modest.’ Several women mentioned the importance of contacts (wasta) to obtain jobs and the ‘glass ceiling’ prevalent in some fields. Five of the women interviewed were not employed by choice. There are also summaries of the activities of some of Bahrain’s most important women’s societies and a short chapter conveying attitudes of Bahraini men towards women’s employment.

The authors also conducted a survey of more than one hundred Bahraini women from all walks of life. The survey assessed changing attitudes towards choosing a spouse, decisionmaking, financial independence, freedom of movement, friendships, recreation, the increase in lavish hospitality, clothes, personal identity, and domestic help. Many of these topics provoke intense debate in the Arab Gulf. The biggest change in Bahrain today may well be the increasingly different and multiple ways in which Bahraini women balance ‘modernity’ with the traditions and values that remain important to them and their society.

Christine Eickelman
Dartmouth College


Women, Work and Islamism: Ideology and Resistance in Iran, by Maryam Poya. 186 pages, bibliography, index. London, UK: Zed Books, 1999. $19.95 (Paper) ISBN 1-85649-682-1

Research on women and work in Iran is rare, but growing. Mirani’s 1983 article was perhaps the first to use national census and international data to determine the social and economic positions of women in the period 1965 to 1978.[1] In a 1988 article, I compared women’s employment patterns before and after the revolution, showing the adverse effects of Islamist ideology on working-class women in particular, but also pointing out the continuity of professional employment for women in the civil service and women’s apparent determination to seek education and jobs.[2] Since then, debates have taken place among scholars such as Haleh Afshar, Haideh Moghissi, Fatemeh Moghadam, and myself, as to the extent of Iranian women’s employment loss in the period after the revolution, changes in occupational distribution, the effects of ideology versus economic determinants, and whether improvements are possible within the Islamic Republic.

In this context, Poya’s Women, Work and Islamism is a most welcome addition. Although not directly addressing the debates on women’s employment, it does take up the question of change in the Islamic Republic, and offers a sophisticated and balanced assessment. Poya has produced an impressive and highly original study that combines primary data collection through in-depth interviews with working women in Iran with relevant statistical sources and secondary materials. The study is theoretically framed by Marxist-feminist analysis and development studies, and is informed by a historical perspective. This approach draws the reader’s attention to the relationship between economic structure, ideological environment, and women’s employment, to changes over time, and to the salience of gender in economic and labor-market processes.

Poya’s discussion of the impact of the Iran-Iraq War and the longer-term effects of occupational sex-segregation are among her original and insightful contributions. As her interviews show, the mobilization of men at the war front, and the requirements of gender segregation, resulted in an increased need for teachers and nurses. Poya’s engaging and instructive interviews also show the importance of the urban informal sector for women who either could not obtain gainful employment or who needed to augment their low salaries with additional income. According to Poya, women even took part in the underground economy, whereby they bought rationed food cheaply and sold it on the black market. Also fascinating is Poya’s discussion of her experiences with the workers’ councils (shora), and in particular with women factory workers, during the early days of the revolution. Poya concludes that ideology notwithstanding, the Islamic state “was unable to abolish women’s labour” (p. 158) due to the imperatives of socio-economic factors, such as the war and the economic needs of households. In turn, women’s labor force participation politicized them.

I can raise only minor criticisms of the book. Although Poya includes an extended discussion of her field research, aspects of her methodology remain unclear. How were the questionnaires distributed, and how was the sample selected? Were the interviews taped or transcribed from notes? Did she encounter any resistance to these methods of data collection? There is little by way of an analysis of political economy in the Islamic Republic. Poya suggests that the Islamic Republic’s return to the world capitalist system favored women’s employment, but in general, hers is a state-centered analysis. Poya’s introduction and overview would have benefited from a literature review on women’s employment in Iran, and from a discussion of the debates that have taken place regarding the impact on women’s work of ideology, the state, and economic policies in the Islamic Republic. As far as I know, Poya is the first to have written on women in the workers’ councils, but I would have liked to see some statistics on women's participation to complement the rich interview data.

Nonetheless, Women, Work, and Islamism is a gem, highly recommended for researchers and for classroom use at the graduate level, in courses on development and women’s studies.

Val Moghadam
Illinois State University

[1] Kaveh Mirani, “Social and Economic Change in the Role of Women, 1956-1978,” in Guity Neshat, ed., Women and Revolution in Iran (Westview, 1983), pp. 69-86.

[2] Val Moghadam, “Women, Work and Ideology in the Islamic Republic,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 20.2 (May 1988): 221-43.