Women, Sexuality, and Social Change in the Middle East and the Maghreb

In the present era of globalization, women’s bodies and sexuality are increasingly becoming arenas of intense conflict around the world. Conservative and religious right wing political forces are fiercely trying to maintain or reinforce traditional mechanisms of control over women’s sexuality and even to create new ones. Four UN conferences held in the 1990s – the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, the 1995 Beijing Conference, the 1999 five-year review of ICPD (ICPD+5), and the 2000 five-year review of the Beijing Conference (Beijing+5) – witnessed an unprecedented cooperation between the Catholic and Muslim religious groups to oppose and restrict women’s right to control their bodies and sexuality.


Introduction
In this age of globalization, women's bodies and sexuality are increasingly becoming arenas of intense conflict. Conservative and religious right political forces are fiercely trying to maintain or reinforce traditional mechanisms of control over women's sexuality and even create new ones. Four UN conferences held in the 1990s -the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, the 1995 Beijing Conference, the 1999 five-year review of the ICPD (ICPD+5), and the 2000 fiveyear review of the Beijing Conference (Beijing+5) -witnessed the Catholic and Muslim religious right engaging in unprecedented cooperation to oppose and restrict women's right to control their bodies and sexuality.
At the same time, in the last decade, women around the globe have joined forces to counter these moves from the conservative and religious right and have engaged in an international struggle against violations of their sexual and reproductive rights -a struggle transcending national borders as well as real or constructed North-South and East-West dichotomies. A visible sign of the success of this struggle is the significant change in the way international agencies use language. As the global women's movement has become stronger and the "rights" approach has gained credibility, reproductive rights" discourse has increasingly replaced reproductive "health" and "sexual health" and become a focus of SOCIAL RESEARCH, Vol. 69, No. 3 (Fall 2002)   In making this argument I will fir on the contradictory construction Qur'an and the early fiqh texts ( jurisprudence), which are at the ro then explore some of the historical have had an impact on women's sex particular, I will consider the contr tion on women's sexual lives; the nationalist ideologies of nineteenth and twentieth centuries and their efforts to create new mechanisms to control women's sexuality; and the rise of the Islamic religious right, which has placed the construction of an "Islamic" sexual identity of women at the top of its agenda.
Sexuality in the Qur'an and the Early Fiqh Texts: The Initial Roots of Controversy Several researchers have pointed to the contradiction between the notion of gender equality in the Qur'an and the patriarchal misinterpretation of it by male religious authorities in the early and medieval canonical texts traditionally accepted as establishing Islam's normative practices (Mernissi, 1987;Sabbah, 1984;An-Naim, 1990;Ahmed, 1991Ahmed, , 1992Hassan, n.d.;Wadud, 1999;Mir-Hosseini, 2001). As in other monotheistic religions, the classical fiqh texts -that is, texts of early Islamic legal jurisprudenceignored gender equality as it was presented in the Qur'an and introduced interpretations in line with the prevailing patriarchal social order. Thus, one can find several logical contradictions in the classical fiqh texts since they reflect two dissenting voices: an egalitarian voice inspired by revelation (wahy ), and a patriarchal voice incorporating the social order and the social, cultural, and political pragmatisms of the time and place where Islam was trying to ensure its survival (Mir-Hosseini, 2001). An analysis of discourses based on the Qur'an and the early literature of Islamic legal jurisprudence leads to contradictory conclusions about the construction of women's sexuality in Islam. Mir-Hosseini (2001), for example, asserts that this contradiction is most evident in the rules that classical jurists devised for regulating the formation and the termination of the marriage contract -a product of tension in which the voice of the patriarchal social order outweighs the egalitarian voice of the revelation (wahy ). Her analysis of the classical fiqh texts on marriage shows These theories stood in sharp contradiction to the Qur'an, which holds that the relationship of men and women is one of equality, mutuality, and cordiality. In the Qur'an, Eve is not a delayed product of Adam's rib, as in the Christian and Jewish traditions; instead, the two were born from a single soul: "O mankind! Be careful of your duty to your Lord, who created you from a single soul and from it created its mate and from them twain hath spread abroad a multitude of men and women" (Surah 4: 1).1 It was not just Eve, but both Adam and Eve, who let the Devil convince them to eat the forbidden fruit.2 Islam has recognized that both women and men have sex drives and the right to sexual fulfillment and has also acknowledged that women, like men, experience orgasms. The Islamic view of love and sexuality -in which pleasure and responsibility are coexistent -removes any guilt from the sexes (Bouhdiba, 1998). Marital intercourse does not need the justification of reproduction and is based on the right to sexual fulfillment; contraception is permitted and abortion tolerated (Musallam, 1989). Women's ejaculation was recognized in the hadiths, the traditional body and texts of knowledge and memories about the Prophet's life, his custom and his words, where female sexuality is regarded as active, like male sexuality (Ahmed, 1989). Mernissi (1987), in her classic work, Beyond the Veil, analyzes the double theory of sexual dynamics in the medieval canonical texts and historical interpretations of Islam. According to Mernissi, while the "explicit theory" of female sexuality depicts women as passive subjects who seek pleasure in surrender and subjugation, the "implicit" theory as reflected in Imam Ghazali's interpretation of the Qur'an "casts woman as the hunter and the man as the pas- Yet, several of the customary practices aimed at controlling women's sexuality, like honor crimes, stoning for adultery, or female genital cutting, cannot be justified by appeal to the Qur'an. The Qur'an forbids adultery,4 like the other two main monotheistic religions, Judaism and Christianity, and foresees heavy punishment (100 lashes) for both women and men guilty of adultery or fornication.5 It requires, however, four witnesses to the act.6 Otherwise, if a woman denies the accusation, then it is her word that must be accepted rather than that of her husband.7 Thus, according to the Qur'an, the punishment for adultery, meant both for women and men, can only be carried out if conviction is based on the testimony of a minimum of four witnesses.
In addition, although it foresees a stern punishment of 100 lashes, it is not stoning or execution -contrary to the customary practices of honor crimes or stoning as carried out in some Muslim countries. Stoning as a punishment in cases of adultery has only recently been introduced as an "Isla religious right in Iran, Pakistan, and Likewise, the Qur'an does not men cision. Female genital cutting (FGC) marily found in Africa and those co culture. Although the practice wa African communities, and although some Christian, Jewish and Muslim the advent of Islam, "it is often str because some African Muslim comm son for performing it, and because related FGM to Islam" (Toubia, 2000: 421). In the Middle East, FGC is common in Egypt and Sudan; in the majority of Muslim communities, the practice was unheard of until it became a topic of media attention through the advocacy efforts of women's groups.
Islam has set consent of both the woman and the man as a precondition of marriage. In the main classical schools of legal jurisprudence of Islam (Hanafi or Shïa law, for example), a girl who has attained majority age is free to contract marriage without the consent of her father or any other relative and cannot be forced into a marriage by her male relatives (Carroll, 2000). Accordingly, the practice of "forced marriages" in Muslim societies constitutes a clear violation of the basic premise of marriage as specified in the Qur'an.
The diversity of Muslim societies shows that Islam does not have a static or monolithic tradition. Islam has absorbed not only the practices and traditions of the two other monotheistic religions -Judaism and Christianity -from the region of its birth, but also other pre-Islamic practices and traditions from the geographic location in which it strove to survive and gain power as a cultural and political system. Thus, it is very difficult to define what is intrinsic to Islam in shaping sexual behavior. The issue becomes even more complicated when we attempt to analyze its interaction with various socioeconomic and political systems. In the follow- ing, I will explore some of these factors, which affect the no governing and practices of women's sexuality in the Middle E and Maghreb.
Gender Inequality and Sexuality in the Middle East and the Maghr The past two centuries witnessed radical political, econom and social changes in the Middle East and the Maghreb. Since nineteenth century, there have been modern legal, econom and social reforms concerning the position of women, a women have increasingly participated in political movements debates. The era of postcolonial state formation in the late n teenth and early twentieth centuries was accompanied by the of a feminist consciousness in, for example, Egypt, the Otto Empire, and Iran.8 The Middle East shows a great degree of diversity in the fo mulation of legal codes and their application to women's ever day lives, which is also the case in the rest of the Muslim wor The extent of the legal reforms redefining gender relations va greatly between countries. While in Turkey, for example, m ernization included the adoption of Western legal codes aimed at complete secularization,9 most Gulf countries preser their interpretation of Islamic legal jurisprudence as the fun mental law in all juridical areas. It is striking that most other cou tries in the region abandoned Islamic jurisprudence but retai an "Islamic" interpretation of the "personal status law," w includes mainly the laws on family (that is, the private sphere the status of women) , but with certain reforms, as in Egypt or I during the shah's reign. The reforms in Turkey were the mo comprehensive, followed by the reforms in Tunisia, and refor in Marxist Yemen, Syria, and Iraq (Moghadam, 1993;Espos 1998;Keddie, 1991).   -Lughod, 1998;Hatem, 1997;Haddad, 1998). The impac reforms has been divergent for women, depending on their c race, or ethnicity. In general, those who benefited from the m ernization movement were mainly women from the urban mi and upper classes or dominant race. At the same time, moder ization could also mean a restriction or loss of traditional modes of power for women of other classes or for minority women.
Mervat Hatem (1997) illustrates a good example of the contradictory effects of modernization on women's sexual lives in her research on the professionalization of health in nineteenth-century Egypt. The school of Hakimahs, which was established in the early nineteenth century and was the first modern state school for women in Egypt, aimed at replacing local midwifery practices with modern female professionals. While the local Egyptian midwives (dayas) performed circumcisions on girls, thus implementing patriarchal control of women's sexuality, they also provided women with folk-based means to control their reproductive capacities, such as supplying them with information on fertility and providing quick and effective abortions. Although the establishment of the Hakimahs school established an opportunity for middle class women to become professionals, it also led to a loss of power for traditional midwives, contributed to the extinction of women's indigenous knowledge, and to a state policy of criminalizing abortion. Moreover, the new midwives from the middle class were given the task of policing working class midwives (daya s) and their middle and working class clients. Sonbol's (1997) analysis of rape laws in Egypt shows how modern legal reforms could have a negative impact on women's lives. In Egypt at the end of the nineteenth century, new legal codes handling rape were imported from F tralization efforts involved in nation-s ization and rationalization of the penal codes led to the application of uniform laws and brought criminal procedures under the authority of the state. However, the new laws superimposed a system that did nothing to discourage rape yet, simultaneously, introduced new forms of discrimination based on gender and class. Financial compensation for rape became very hard to obtain and justice turned into a commodity that could be accessed only by women who could afford to hire lawyers and pay legal expenses.
An example of the negative impact of modern legal reforms on women's lives and sexuality is reflected in the lives of Kurdish women in Turkey. Our research, based on a representative sample of 599 women living in eastern Turkey, the majority of whom were Kurdish, has shown that several customary practices, such as early and forced marriages, polygyny, and honor crimes, continue to shape the lives of women living in the region, despite legal reforms in Turkey prohibiting them since the 1920s. While a minority of Kurdish women who have had access to education could benefit from the legal reforms, those who had never been to school and spoke no Turkish (19.4 percent) had little or no possibility of applying to legal institutions in cases of violations of their rights within the family. This was because Turkish is the official language in all governmental organizations, including judicial ones (Ilkkaracan and Women for Women's Human Rights, 1998 participate more fully in social and political life, as they rupted traditional gender roles and relations. On the oth hand, they redefined women's role as mothers and bearers of nation and its newly constructed legacy (Kandiyoti, 1996Mehdid, 1996Pettman, 1996;Saigol, 2000). This led to th emergence of new strategies to control women, and especi their sexuality, which was meant to serve the reproduction a maintenance of the newly constructed "national identity" "uniqueness" of community.
In Turkey, for example, the foundation of a secular nation-st and the "modern" Turkish Republic set revolutionary change gender roles as a priority in order to destroy the links to Ottoman Empire and to strike at the foundations of relig In Algeria, despite the wide and women in the war of liberation between 1954 and 1962, their role "as implicitly projected by revolutionaries, was conceived of purely at the level of the symbolic, as others of the Nation, reproducers of its militants as well as guardians of its cultural memory and ancestral values" (Mehdid, 1996: 80). Just one year after independence, an attempt was made to pass a new repressive family law, which drew women into widespread protests and demonstrations (Mahl, 1995). However, women's bodies and sexuality became increasingly an arena on which the violent struggle between the religious right and the state was played out. The repressive law, which legalized polygyny and denied women right to the marriage contract and to initiate divorce, was fin promulgated in 1984 by the one-party state in an attempted r onciliation with traditionalists. Mehdid argues that the unde ing concern of the repressive Family Law was the contro "female sexuality and the safeguarding of patriarchy" (1996: 1 In the 1990s, Islamists like the Armed Islamic Group (GI Muslim world as well, the reality and threat of political Islam or 'Islamic fundamentalism,' has been epitomized by the Islamic republic of Iran (Esposito, 1998: xviii).
Aware of the power of the imagery of hijab as a demonstration of its influence and authority, the Islamic religious right has sought to prescribe or violently enforce extreme forms of veiling that were specific to certain communities (for instance the chador or burqa ) ; veiling is intended to be a universal uniform for Muslim women, not only in the region but throughout the world, even in places where they were previously unheard of, such as Uzbekistan, Kashmir, or Senegal. Extinct cultural practices that are disadvantageous to women have been re-appraised as "Islamic," such as in the case of muVa, temporary marriage, Iran (Haeri, 1992). The temporary marriage, one of the vario forms of marriage practiced in pre-Islamic Arabia, was incor rated into the Islamic legal school of Shi 'a jurisprudence in I after the arrival of Islam. Yet, after the Iranian president, A subsequent prosecution from the aggressor to the victim by putting the emphasis on proving or disproving consent instead of on forceful coercion or violation. Afiya Sherbano Zia argues that in dealing with sex crimes, the collusion between men, police, and courts results in an institutionalization of violence against women and the re-victimization of women who experience this violence (Zia, 1994).
In the last two decades, the rise of the Islamic religious right has caused women in countries such as Iran, Algeria, and South Yemen to suffer the loss of previously gained legal rights, especially within the family. In 1979, two weeks after the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty through the Islamic revolution in Iran, the Family Protection Act of 1967 -which restrained men's legal right to polygamous marriage by requiring either the court's or the first wife's permission, enforced a woman's right to divorce with mutual consent, and improved women's chances of retaining the custody of their children or at least visiting rights -was scrapped as un-Islamic (Hoodfar, 1996). Women were dismissed and barred from the judiciary and higher education (Najmabadi, 1998). In Algeria, in July 1984, the government adopted a repressive family Iraq coalition after Iraq's invasion factions in Yemen were usurped b tributed to the rise of the Islamic re the case in war, the losers were wom gressive family laws of the south we women in southern Yemen loose the since 1974, but the women of Nort the incorporation of the greater enshrined in the southern codes, (Boxberger, 1998;al-Basha, 2001). sexuality in the region. Although premarital sex is still stron prohibited in many countries, there is evidence, for example f Morocco, Lebanon, Tunisia, and Turkey, that it increasingly fo part of the experience of young people and that this change created a social conflict between the patriarchal control women's sexuality and the socioeconomic changes taking plac the region (Obermeyer, 2000;Khair Badawi, 2001;Belhadj, 20 Mernissi, 1982;Cindoglu, 1997). Female genital cutting, wh clearly has nothing to do with Islam, is now outlawed as a resu the efforts of women's advocacy groups in Egypt 20 In recent years, activism against honor crimes in Palestine, J dan, Pakistan, Egypt, and Turkey has grown, and women's N have succeeded in putting the issue onto the agenda of nation and international bodies (Albadeel Coalition, 2000;Yirmisbesoglu, 2000;Rouhana, 2001;Tadros, 2002, International Women's Health Coalition, 2000Clarke, 2001). A popular Friday night television program in Lebanon, Al-Chater Yehki (Let the Brave Speak Out), topped the ratings with its live debates on sexuality, with issues ranging from masturbation to incest or homosexuality (Foster, 2000). women, however, must forgo alimony and are required to repay their husbands any dowry (Human Rights Watch, 2001;Zuhur, 2002;UNDP, 2002). In Jordan, amendments to the marital status law in 2001 permit women to file for divorce, have raised the legal age of marriage to 18 (it was previously 15 for women and 16 for men), and have introduced legislative amendments to Article 340 of the penal code, which now stipulates that perpetrators of socalled honor crimes are no longer exempt from the death penalty ("Jordanian Women," 2001"). The last two decades have also witnessed the emergence of a reformist discourse that argues for equality in Islam on all fronts. This reformist discourse seeks to analyze "women's sexuality as defined by social circumstances, not by nature and divine will" (Mir-Hosseini, 2001: 12). As such, it removes the issue of sexuality or women's status from the domain of fiqh rulings to social practices and norms, which are neither sacred nor immutable but This article has examined three of the historical and sociopolitical factors that have had an impact on women's sexuality in the region today; modernization efforts in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; nationalist ideologies that accompanied the foundation of the nation-states; and the rise of the Islamic religious right. Analysis shows that modernization efforts had a divergent impact on women's sexual lives depending on their class, race, or ethnicity. While many women from the urban middle and upper classes or a dominant race generally benefited from the legal, educational, and economic reforms, modernization often meant However, the changing social values in the region and the increasing activity of women's groups in the last decade have begun to act as powerful agents of change that have led to new attitudes toward sexuality, especially among young people, and to new progressive legal and social reforms. These have established the basis of new rights regarding women's sexuality and their status in the family in, for example, Turkey, Egypt, and Jordan. The last two decades also witnessed the emergence of a reformist discourse that argues for equality in Islam on all fronts. This reformist discourse seeks to analyze "women's sexuality as defined by social circumstances, not by nature and divine will" (Mir-Hosseini, 2001: 12). As such, it removes the issue of sexuality or women's status from the domain of fiqh rulings to social practices and norms. This approach builds a bridge between the old fixed fronts in their struggles of power over the construction of women's sexuality as constructed in the last century. Another fac- tor that also promises change in the sexual domain is the incr ing participation of women in the traditionally male-domina production of religious knowledge. Notes *A11 references to the Qur'an in this article use the translation by Pickthall (1953). 2"And We said: O Adam! Dwell thou and thy wife in the Garden and eat ye freely (of the fruits) thereof where ye will; but come not nigh this tree lest ye* become wrongdoers. But Satan caused them to deflect therefrom and expelled them from the (happy) state in which they were; and We said: Fall down**, one of you a foe onto the other! There shall be for you on earth a habitation and provision for a time. " (Surah 2:35-36). (*Here, the command is in the dual, as addressed to Adam and his wife; **here, the command is in the plural, as addressed to Adam's race.) 3For an analysis of the discussion about the story of Zuleikha and Yusuf in the Islamic tradition, and the need for and possibilities of alternative feminist readings of the story, see Merguerian and Najmabadi (1997).
4"And come not near unto adultery. Lo! It is an abomination and an evil way" (Surah 17:32). 5"The adulterer and the adultress, scourge ye each one of them (with) a hundred stripes. And let not pity for the twain withhold you from obedience to Allah, if ye believe in Allah and the Last Day. And let a party of believers witness their punishment." (Surah 24:2) 6"And those who accuse honourable women but bring not four witnesses, scourge them (with) eighty stripes and never (afterward) accept their testimony -They indeed are evildoers." (Surah 24:4) 7"As for those who accuse their wives but have no witnesses except themselves; let the testimony of one of them be four testimonies (swearing by Allah that he is of those who speak the truth; And yet a fifth, invoking the curse of Allah on him if he is of those who lie. And it shall avert the punishment from her if she bear witness before Allah four times that the thing he saith is indeed false, And a fifth (time) that the wrath of Allah be upon her if he speakth truth. . . . Why did they not produce four witnesses? Since they produce not witnesses, they verily are liars in the sight of Allah" (Surah 24: 6,7,8,9,13 10For a discussion of the virginity tests in Turkey from a human rights perspective, see Human Rights Watch (1994) and Serai (2000).
nFor a more detailed summary of the meeting on "Women, Sexuality, and Social Change in the Middle East and the Mediterranean," see Ilkkaracan (2002).
12For a more comprehensive analysis and description of the reform o the Turkish Civil Code, see Women for Women's Human Rights-New Ways (2002).