Customer Reviews

The Forbidden Modern: Civilization and Veiling (Critical Perspectives on Women and Gender)

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The "headscarf issue" is a point of perennial debate in contemporary Turkey, the symbolic focal point for a key contest between opposing views of the place for public displays of Muslim piety and questions of state control versus individual choice. In the early nineties, when the Turkish version of this work was published, it was revolutionary: one of the first real attempts by a leftist, secular Turkish scholar to come to terms with the arguments posited by the Islamists. In the years that have passed, a particularly rich literature on Turkish Islamist movements has developed and, in some respects, Gole's work has become somewhat dated. Her lengthy treatment of the symbolism of women's liberation in Ottoman and then Kemalist reform (in her words, "the touchstone of Westernization") are excellent. Her work on Islamist conceptions of women's issues is still worth reading, but her research seems to have been limited to interviews with Islamist students and a perusal of the Islamist press. Gole is still worth reading, but articles by scholars such as Jenny White may be of greater value to the casual reader.

Previous reviewers have complained about Gole's English. I must confess I found it only occasionally awkward. There is, however, a fair amount of sociological jargon. I don't think the text is beyond the ability of advanced undergraduates (indeed, I have assigned it in undergraduate seminars), but it may be off-putting for some.

Is Veiling a religious responsibility or social problem in Turkey? The latter is more related with Turkish case.. If veiling is a political symbol for some people. This is because of state's policies which take these people out of social life to represent their thoughts and themselves..

This is an interesting study of women's conditions in the most strictly secular country in the world. Even though the Turkish state and the majority of the Turkish people strongly oppose veiling and such pseudo-religious attacks on women, there has always been a small group of opportunists seeking to gain power by exploiting and misrepresenting religion. The backwardness of the majority of Muslims outside of Turkey strengthens the hands of religious demagogues within Turkey. So do the political Islam of Iran and Arabia. Add to this the rapid pace of industrial development in Turkey and the consequent alienation of the rural population and you get an explosive mixture. This book gives an interesting sociological analysis of these conflicts. Turkey (the most secular, democratic, European country) bordering the Middle East will no doubt triumph over the past and present demogogues of pseudo-religion.

Nilufer Gole is a professor of Sociology in an Istanbul University and a frequently quoted author in the Turkish and foreign press. The topic of this strangely named book, "The Forbidden Modern" being of great interest to me, I wanted to read her work. Unfortunately it is nearly impossible to understand the author's English and her ideas. She has invented new words that do not exist in the English language, and sounds like she is translating from one language to another which makes for a very painful reading. I also wanted to know more about her own personal feelings about the veiling issue since she is from the same "gender", "nationality", and possibly same "religion" as her subjects. But she never relaxes in the book and keeps struggling with big sounding but incomprehensible words, strange ideas, and thoughts. My recommendation to Ms. Gole would be to team up with an American or a British writer for her next project to make her ideas better understandable to the English speaking world.