Gender and Violence in the Middle East (review)

Gender and Violence in the Middle East contains 16 chapters divided into four sections. The first section covers the modalities of violence including domestic violence, female genital mutilation, honor killing, religion and violence, and gender alienation. The second section focuses on power, violence, gender, and resistance. The third section analyzes the impact of female power and agency, and the role of the mother and mother-in-law in family and social relations. The last chapter examines the relationship between patriarchy and authoritarianism in family structures and state politics. It analyzes the social and political contracts and the systems of loyalty and rewards embedded within them. The book concludes with various prospects for gender reconciliation.

David Ghanim provides an analysis of the above themes from a theoretical perspective. He relies on already-published studies and reports to support the arguments made in the book. Although the book draws on a number of examples from different parts of the region, it lacks a sociopolitical and economic analysis of each country. For example, the author draws on a study by Ruggi of so called honor killings in Palestine without providing enough analysis of the particular laws, social practices, and political context in which they operate (p. 44). Even within the same country, there are differences among women based on generation, class, education, ethnicity, religion, and rural/urban divides. In addition, the author draws on Norma Khouri's book, Honor Lost, regarding "honor" crimes in Jordan, which was discredited in 2004 as being a hoax.¹

Although the author differentiates between Islam as politics and Islam as religion (p. 53), the book contains statements like, "Being the champion of patriarchy, Islam naturally discourages resistance to patriarchal dominance and increases the intensity of domestic violence in society overall" (p. 56). Such statements present Islam as monolithic and uniform. In addition, the book lacks a thorough analysis of Islamic feminism and its role in providing alternative interpretations to religious text and practice. Finally, the book could have benefited from further analysis of the connection between religion and culture, and the changing meaning and practice of modernity before and after independence in various countries in the region.

The book provides a thorough analysis of the connection between violence, power, and particular constructions of masculinity. It also analyzes power as a venue of conformity with the state system. The author goes further to explain how there is a personal element in structural violence and vice versa (chapter 7). Yet, the author's critique of state-building in the Middle East lacks attention to women's agency. Claiming that, "Informal female power is the product of women's segregation and seclusion from public life as well as loveless, dull, and dysfunctional marriages" (p. 103), does not give credit to their agency and quest for change. The author asserts that, "Women take advantage of contradictions and weaknesses within the system in order to subvert, but not necessarily challenge, the system that undermines them" (p. 129).

Ghanim focuses on women, and not only men, as potential perpetrators of violence. He also analyzes the power of the mother-in-law in family structures and relations. According to him, "patriarchy has a built-in mechanism for tolerating limited, fragmented female power" (p. 108). He acknowledges that "while patriarchal ideology is ultimately responsible for miserable gender relations between the sexes and the difficulties that arise from it, it is the mother-in-law who is blamed by society, rather than patriarchy itself, despite the fact that she is only acting within the confines of the patriarchal structure" (p. 161). Ghanim goes further to say that "obedience in the state sector, like women's obedience in the domestic domain, leads to rigid hierarchy and bureaucratic systems that lack avenues for creativity or initiative" (p. 194). Yet, do these rigid hierarchical and bureaucratic systems function in the same way in the private and public spheres?

The author concludes the book by describing exclusionary politics as politics of violence (p. 199...