Women, Islam, and Resistance in the Arab World by Maria Holt & Haifaa Jawad (review)

The human rights paradigm has become a central part of the discourse in the Middle East, despite the fact that what constitutes women’s rights remains much in dispute. A growing number of Muslim women consider human rights an empowering tool given the emancipatory potential for the global force of the information revolution in the digital age. Yet, the fact remains that human rights are not above politics and reflect both local and global power dynamics at work. Apart from such realities, the rights of women and minorities remain secondary issues throughout much of the Muslim world. Because of social stigmas, sexual assault and domestic violence go unreported in the Arab world. Despite the official state commitment to equality, women continue to face widespread discrimination.

In the aftermath of the groundswell of popular and democratic protest movements that swept through the Middle East beginning in December of 2010, women have been largely excluded in transitional governments. Where elections were held, women won relatively few seats. In Tunisia, where the initial uprisings erupted, the introduction of a quota system to ensure the representation of women in decision-making positions has been slow.¹ Our theoretical preoccupation with the patriarchy and how to subvert the patriarchy has blinded us to the complex reality of the Arab societies and how gender stereotyping by many in the West has distorted the picture. This misperception calls for fresh urgency in our need to better understand how communal solidarity is expressed in the face of threats from the outside. Women, Islam, and Resistance in the Arab World challenges the way we think about “feminism” in the Arab world by providing a credible and legitimate framework to see a different side of this debate. Maria Holt and Haifaa Jawad build their argument around the notion that “it is impossible to consider women’s activism in the Arab world without some reference to feminism as a motivation or a methodology.”² They call into question the broad categorization of women’s rights, noting that it is incorrect to classify women as “a coherent group across contexts, regardless of class or ethnicity.”³

Emphasizing the idea that challenging the colonial narrative is still a key battle for confronting new manifestations of colonialism, Holt and Jawad argue that it is vitally important to understand the problematic relationship of women to the modern nation-state and its construction of subjectivity. To do so, they note, we need to focus on two distinct areas: (1) the debate on “modernity” in the Arab world; and (2) the gendered aspects of nation building.⁴

While examining the issue of women in Islamic history, Holt and Jawad refer to men’s exclusive right to use violence. In this context, they argue that women are generally regarded as being in need of male “protection” against the violence of other men. These attitudes appear to be at odds with views expressed by several groups of politically active women: Shi’ite women in Lebanon, Iraqi women, and Jordanian women who are active members of the Jordanian Islamic National Front. These women do not consider themselves to be helpless victims of male power politics. Rather, they attribute violence solely to the enemy outside, which every member of their communities are obliged to fight.⁵ These women, however, are confronted with their societies’ contradictions. Although they have generally been excluded from formal politics in the Arab world, they have been allowed, indeed actively encouraged, to participate in national liberation struggles.⁶

Holt and Jawad examine the involvement of women in “Islamic resistance movement(s)” in the three cases of Palestine, Lebanon, and Iraq, demonstrating noticeable implications for future democratic development in the Arab world. In the context of the US invasion of Iraq, the authors examine Islam as a source of spiritual sustenance and psychological empowerment. They mention the ways in which Islam has been used as a coping strategy.^7...