Almighty God created sexual desire in ten parts;
then he gave nine parts to women and one to men.”
So pronounced Ali, Muhammad’s son-in-law, as he
explained why women are held morally responsible as the instigators
of sexual intercourse. Consequently, over the centuries Islamic
women have been secluded, veiled, and in many cases genitally
mutilated to safeguard male virtue. Women are forbidden to
look directly at, speak to, or touch a man prior to marriage. Even
today, they are often sequestered at home or limited to strictly segregated
areas away from all male contact. Women normally pray
at home or in an enclosed antechamber of the mosque so that their
physical presence will not disturb men’s spiritual concentration.
Especially limiting today are the laws governing women’s behavior
in Saudi Arabia. Schooling for girls has never been compulsory
because fathers believe that “educating women is like allowing
the nose of the camel into the tent; eventually the beast will
edge in and take up all the room inside.” The country did not establish
its first girls’ school until 1956. The following description
of Saudi women is from Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden
World of Islamic Women, by journalist Geraldine Brooks.
GERALDINE BROOKS,
NINE PARTS OF DESIRE
Women were first admitted to university in Saudi Arabia in
1962, and all women’s colleges remain strictly segregated.
Lecture rooms come equipped with closed-circuit TVs and
telephones, so women students can listen to a male professor
and question him by phone, without having to contaminate
themselves by being seen by him. When the first dozen
women graduated from university in 1973, they were devastated
to find that their names hadn’t been printed on the
commencement program. The old tradition, that it dishonors
women to mention them, was depriving them of recognition
they believed they’d earned. The women and their
families protested, so a separate program was printed and a
segregated graduation ceremony was held for the students’
female relatives. . . .
But while opening of women’s universities widened access
to higher learning for women, it also made the educational
experience much shallower. Before 1962, many progressive
Saudi families had sent their daughters abroad for
education. They had returned to the kingdom not only with
a degree but with experience of the outside world. . . . Now
a whole generation of Saudi women have completed their
education entirely within the country. . . .
Lack of opportunity for education abroad means that
Saudi women are trapped in the confines of an education
system that still lags men’s. Subjects such as geology and petroleum
engineering—tickets to influential jobs in Saudi
Arabia’s oil economy—remain closed to women. . . . Few
women’s colleges have their own libraries, and libraries
shared with men’s schools are either entirely off limits to
women or open to them only one day per week. . . .
But women and men [take] the same degree examinations.
Professors quietly acknowledge the women’s scores
routinely outstrip the men’s. “It’s no surprise,” said one
woman professor. “Look at their lives. The boys have their
cars, they can spend the evenings cruising the streets with
their friends, sitting in cafés, buying black-market alcohol
and drinking all night. What do the girls have? Four walls
and their books. For them, education is everything.”
Source: Geraldine Brooks, Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic
Women (New York: Doubleday, 1996).
World History
