No Shame for the Sun

Abstract

Shahla Haeri’s groundbreaking work could not have emerged at a moredesperately needed time. In the aftermath of 9/11 and the war on Iraq, thewestern media have worked feverishly to bombard the West with imagesand messages about Muslim women and Islam. Whether it is the imageof Afghanistan’s burqa-clad women or Iraq’s veiled women, the messagehas been the same: All Muslim women are speechless, powerless, andoften invisible victims of an oppressive monolithic Islam.In No Shame for the Sun: Lives of Professional Pakistani Women,Haeri presents the reader with an insightful and poignant look at the livesof six educated, middle-class and upper-middle class, professionalPakistani women. Situated against Pakistan’s changing social, political,economic, cultural, and religious landscapes, their successes, costs, andstruggles “challenge the notion of a ‘hegemonic’ and monolithic Islam thatvictimizes Muslim women” (p. xi).The book’s preface spells out its main purpose: to render visible theexperiences of professional Pakistani women within the larger goal of disruptingthe dominant western stereotypes and beliefs of Muslim women.In the introduction, Haeri situates herself by raising a series of questionsemerging from her own experiences as an Iranian-born, middle-class, educated,professional Muslim woman living and working in the UnitedStates. Namely, she questions her own invisibility resulting from the persistenceof western stereotypical images and beliefs of women in theMuslim world and then offers an overview of the theoretical and historicalrationale for their persistence ...