In Search of Islamic Feminism: One Woman's Global Journey

Abstract

The title of Elizabeth Fernea's book suggests the openness and personal nature of the research she documents so humbly and humanly that superficial readers might miss its true originality and value. It contains information not yet widely available in this country that should be useful for professionals in many fields from women's studies to law, business, and public policy. A professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, Ferea has written a number of books about Muslim women and the Arab world. Marriage to a cultural anthropologist led her over 40 years ago to live in Iraq, to bear and bring up three children in Egypt, and later to make several highly regarded documentaries on the lives of Arab women. For this book she returns as a respected friend and scholar to visit the homes of friends and acquaintances from Uzbekistan to Israel, talking to women throughout the Middle East who care as much about the condition of women as she does. As a committed feminist, she sometimes has questions about whether or not their dedication is really to feminism as she understands it, but she is singularly open to their definitions, explanations and conflicts in the two-year journey she records here. This is both participant observation at its most basic, and exotic reading for Americans, as Ferea, a sympathetic and seasoned observer, enters the private homes and intimate discussions of active, thoughtful women who are seldom heard from in Western circles. This is research on the ground, not in the library. We come to know characters, what they do, and what they wear-from dishdashes (men) and abbayahs (women) to elegant suits and blouses-and almost too much of what they all eat-from the osh in Uzbekistan, the couscous and spiced pumpkin with Leila in Morocco, the dolma and spinach pies in Kuwait, to the breakfast ingredients at Akile's Turkish home: apricots, olives, walnuts, yellow raisins, cucumbers, tomatoes, fresh bread and homemade yogurt. We accompany the author on her trips to schools, banquets, women's meetings, on private interviews, and are constantly immersed in lively conversations. It is only at the end that we realize how much we have learned about the different histories, customs, laws and religions of the nine countries that Fernea visits in