Customer Reviews

Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women

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Books on Islam generate a lot of controversy these days, especially after 9/11. Having read several I found this one fairly balanced. Brooks is a reporter by trade, which at times leads to a bit of superficiality in the treatment of complex topics but on the whole makes this a relatively dispassionate treatment of women and Islam.

Of course Brooks brings a Western point of view to her subject, and is intensely critical of a system where women are subject to male family members with few personal rights. She is careful to point out that Islamic law does provide for inheritance by women and allows a type of pre-marriage contract that can protect them from the husband's polygamy, give them the right of divorce, establish that their education will be allowed to continue, etc. But one suspects that these privileges are available only to the wealthy as a practical matter.

Brooks is careful to distinguish various Muslim societies from one another, just as one sees huge differences among Christian countries. She along with most authors I've read has little good to say about Saudi Arabia. But interestingly, she identifies Iran as a more progressive society in which women are permitted to work and participate in politics. And Egypt is described as having a lively, sensual culture that she believes will never be snuffed out by fundamentalists.

One of the more disturbing chapters of the book deals with education. The number of women in school is unacceptably low,education often ceases as women are wed at a very early age, and much schooling is focused on the study of Islam. Even more disturbing is the increasing control fundamentalists exert over educational institutions, which results in a student body much more conservative than the faculty who were educated in more open-minded times. And academic freedom has no place here.

Brooks tries to identify areas of repression that she sees as cultural rather than religious. At the same time, she says that Muslims cannot rely on the improvements to womens' lives that occurred during the time of the Prophet to defend Islam today. It is sadly true that any religion that literally relies on a Sacred Text from hundreds of years earlier--Christianity included--will inevitably fail to respect the notions of individual liberty and equality that are the ideals of the modern world.

Brooks' book was written over 6 years ago. The trends she identifies are very disturbing, but except for some vague familiarity with Ayatollah Khomeini, few Americans had any of this on their radar screens before 9/11. A book like this will hopefully lead to some better understanding of this complex subject.

These reviews are such extremes. Mulsims saying Brookes is an enemy of Islam etc. Others saying this represents the truth about Islam. What is required is some balance. The author is right about the sorry state of womens rights in Islamic countries. Her tone, while caustic, is entertaining and while I am a Muslim, I do not find it insulting at all. She is wrong on substantive areas of Islamic law. For example, she is woefully ignorant on divorce where the Maliki school allows divoce on the grounds of incompatability (contrary to her assertions). She also makes a great deal hinge on the age of the Prophets wife Aisha without even mentioning the controversy here (a comprehensive study by Pakistani Islamist scholars, Tehkik e Umar e Aisha, concludes she was 17 to 26 at the time of marriage). She does not search for truth and is only too ready to accept caricatures.

All of this said, we Muslims need to think hard about her views as we create the surface perceptions she reflects. Rather than condemn her work, we need to ask outselves why we give others such impressions. In return outsides owe us to dig deeper for the truth.

Australian-born Geraldine Brooks spent six years as a journalist in the Middle East. She's also the wife of Tony Horwitz, who wrote "Confederates in the Attic" and "Baghdad Without a Map." I read both of these books and remember how fondly he speaks of her. And so reading this book was, in a way, getting to know her too.

Ms. Brooks is a secular feminist. She makes no secret of that. And, as a woman, she was able to gain entry into a the world behind the heavy veils, which she often needed to wear herself. She spoke with many woman, did a lot of research, and moved within this special world as an observer and witness to her times.

Her interviews ranged from the Queen of Jordan to a Palestinian woman who lived in with her husband, his second wife and all their children in a modest hut. Some of the women she talked with were highly educated; others had never learned to read and write. They all accepted their religion and were able to express their point of view in a way I could understand even though some of them were often hostile to westerners.

Ms. Brooks tried to cover a lot in her book -- the treatment of women in different countries, the practice of genital mutilation, education of women, legal status. She even discussed the contradictions about the status of women all the way back to Mohammed's time. That's a big order for a little book. It was not always successful. It only opened my mind. It did not satisfy it, leaving me with a desire to learn more. And especially wanting to read some works written from an Islamic woman's point of view.

Also, since its publication in 1995, much of it is dated. Her interview with Mrs. Khomeini at the time of the Ayatollah's death took place in 1989. And, more recently, Jordan's King Hussein and Syria's Hafez Assad have passed away. But I must say that this book did open my eyes. It's time now to learn more.

This is an exquisitely written book. Brooks has great talent for pulling the reader into the mind of the people she tells about, and especially, I found as a man, pulling you into the minds and lives of women. I found myself empathizing with the women in ways that only real life can provide. It is amazing what Brooks has experienced, but it is far more amazing what the women she tells of have experienced.

Brooks writes honestly and directly about the good and bad of Islam, and how it influences women. She doesn't pull any punches, but also is not writing to denigrate, as she finds aspects of official and folk Islam that both hurt and assist women. She speaks of the positive attitude Islam has towards sexuality, being largely uncorrupted by the Greek dualism that invaded later Christianity, so that, within marriage, Muslims are encouraged to celebrate the gift of God in sex. Indeed, this provides the title of the book, as Ali, the 4th Khalifa, speaks of how sexual desire is 1/10th the man's, and 9/10ths the woman's. Of course, this provides later motive to sequester women, put them in hijab, and restrict them, so that the "ever-devouring vagina", as later Islamic jurists speak of, does not overcome the men around them.

Since Brooks relies primarily on her experiences, with what she's seen with her own eyes and heard with her own ears, she is hard to argue with. This is the plight of many women in the Muslim world. But lest we think these are limited experiences of one Western woman talking with a few Arab and Persian women scattered in a few countries, Brooks has also done extensive research to intersperse between her stories- relying on the Qur'an, Hadith, Ijtihad, and Muslim history. But mostly she relies on women's experiences- for, let's be honest, the perspective of women is largely missing from the official sources, as it is in most religions- with notable exceptions like the wonderful hadiths of Aisha. Most of which were discarded by early Islamic jurists, as Brooks points out.

One regret, is that there is not more here about the countries of North Africa, particularly, Morocco, with the exception of one paragraph paying tribute to that great Moroccan feminist, Fatima Mernissi. But of course, this book is about Brooks' experiences, not a research text, and her journalistic experience was much more centered on the Middle East.

I found one of Brooks' most powerful arguments to be on issues like FGM, Female Genital Mutilation. She shares how Muslims say it's not authorized or encouraged in the Qur'an. How it's not only Muslims who do it, but some African Christians. I've hear this many times before myself. They're quite right. But Brooks brings up the sapient question- why isn't there more spoken against it from the minbar? Why are 20% of Muslim women in areas where this is practiced? If Islam is a religion that supports women, or if there are at least some aspects of it that are positive towards women (as I believe there are), why isn't there more said publicly about the plight of women, on many issues, to change things, to encourage women's emancipation, using the wealth of resources? Why is Mernissi such a lone worker in the night?

As a non-Muslim who's been doing research on women in Islam, when I first ran across the reader reviews here, I figured they were just the complaints of religious Muslims oversensitive to any Westerner's depiction of them. But then I read the book. I was quite taken aback by some of Brooks's generalizations and sarcastic observations (she complains that it's hard to talk to someone who opens all conversations with the Bismillah--"always a disincentive to small talk"). The occasional hostility of her tone may well come from the obstacles she encountered as a woman traveling alone in the Middle East: she recounts being denied a hotel room, ordered to cover herself, and other harassment. But the unfortunate result is that her book sometimes reads like the supercilious and condescending travel narratives of Europeans during colonial times.

Still, it's a wonderful read, full of vivid scenes and memorable characters--a great chance to visit a world most westerners will never see. Just don't take the author's opinions at face value.

Nine Parts of Desire by Geraldine Brooks details, as the subtitle says, the HIdden World of Islamic Women. Brooks is an Australian reporter who spent the late 80s and early 90s doing a lot of Middle East reporting, and spent a lot of time with Muslim women in various Middle Eastern countries at a time when fundamentalism was on the rise and had already triumphed in a few countries. She spoke with women who embraced a return to traditional women's roles (often symbolized by taking on the veil or chador or otherwise covering oneself and turning away from Western fashion and styles) and those who resisted it in countries like Egypt and Lebanon, which had had a more liberated tradition, and those trying to negotiate for greater liberalism for the first time in areas like Saudi Arabia and the gulf states.

Ms. Brooks never takes her own personal reactions and opinions out of picture but examines Islamic beliefs carefully, bringing Islamic history of the first Muslim women, the wives and children of Muhammad himself, and the writings of the Koran and hadiths to bear on the modern day issues. She finds at times surprising amounts of liberation in the thoroughly fundamentalist nation of Iran as well as hidden hypocrisies in supposedly more "forward thinking" countries. She does differentiate between Koranic customs and tribal customs (particularly the practice of female genital mutilations)but does not let Islam off the hook entirely, pointing out that 20% of Muslim women live in areas that practice some form of genital mutilation and yet it is rarely spoken out against and most people who practice it believe it is officially sanctioned by the Koran.

The bulk of Ms. Brooks stories were researched in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a period of great upheaval and change but only the start of another decade and a half of continuing change in the Middle East and the Islamic world in general. I found myself continually wondering what had become of the women she had interviewed, a decade and a half later, and how their opinions had changed or not changed. Alas, Ms. Brooks seems to have left reporting behind for the life of the novelist so the follow up remains for someone else to carry out, but this book still stands as an excellent overview of the varied worlds of Muslim women, even if it is a bit out of date. It's easy to see why it is frequently assigned as a text in college courses and it's well worth a read for any interested layperson curious about Islam and the role of women within it, as well as in a part of the world that remains a central focus of current events and politics.

For those of us who have a newly kindled (or revived) interest in the lives of Islamic women in the Middle East, this book is a welcome read. I found it as easy to devour as a novel, but full of glimpses into the lives of real women the author has encountered during travels and journalistic expeditions in the Middle East. From relationships between women in multi-wife and/or multi-generational households, to attitudes on women in education, business and sports, this book gives you a little of everything. While I still find myself confused about some of the terminology and apparel, this book made me feel like I had some grasp of the issues facing women in Islamic countries. I was particularly interested in the accounts of the author's experiences with the family of the Ayatollah Khomeini, and in the descriptions of the teachings of Mohammad as she sees them played out in the lives of Islamic women. I felt she did a pretty good job of remaining non-judgemental, especially being Jewish herself. I didn't think she was critical of Islam, as much as the way certain cultures have interpreted or distorted Koranic (?) teachings.

After stumbling into the Women's Studies section of my favorite independent bookstore, one of the titles that grabbed my eye was this one. It not only gave me an amazing insight into the lives of Muslim women (something no man would ever get first-hand), but I also received a broad grounding in the basics of Islam and it's history. Although many reviewers have not spoken well of her depiction of Muslim women, I find her descriptions dovetail well with the other books I have read that are also first-person accounts by female journalists. Like any writer, she most certainly reflects her own cultural biases, but the bigger picture rings true.

My copy is stained and dog-eared from all of the friends and family I have loaned my copy to, calling it a "must read" for anyone who wants to understand the Middle East better.

This is the third book that I've read that outlines the plight of Muslim women as a whole. Yes I'm sure, there must be plenty exceptions to the brutality and inhumanity that is outlined in these books and the stories that are depicted are most likely, the worst cases the authors came across but what comes through with disturbing clarity, is a systemic, religious, abusive, misogynistic undercurrent against all women of Islam, which varies in intensity from country to country (infidel women don't even count).

Nine Parts of Desire is written by prizewinning Wall Street Journal correspondent, Geraldine Brooks and is based upon her experiences during the seven years she was stationed in the Middle East. She gets the title for her book from an old Muslim proverb "God created sexual desire in ten parts; then he gave nine parts to women and one to men."

Brooks does try to provide a more balanced view of Islam than previous authors have presented, however the bottom line remains the same - that Muslim women, in most Muslim countries, live at the whim and total dependence of their husbands or their male relatives. Brooks tries to explain and I do believe her, that this untenable situation is not sanctioned by the Muslim Holy book, the Quran. In fact she maintains that the Quran and Hadiths (sayings of the Prophet) of Islam's original message actually gave women sweeping rights that were unheard of in the Seventh Century. These rights included the right of inheritance and the right of divorce.

Brooks claims that the rights of women started to erode early on as Islamic armies spread the word of the one true God in the Seventh and Eighth Centuries, by borrowing and adopting those anti-woman customs to which they were exposed. Islam adopted the royal Persian custom of veils, accepted gender mutilation from Egypt and when it found societies in which women had little or no voice in public affairs, its own traditions of lively women's participation withered. Women in the time of Muhammad rode camels and horses, ran businesses and even fought with the armies, yet woman of today are generally timid, fearful and backward, especially in the less progressive countries or the more primitive areas of large progressive countries.

Nine Parts of Desire tends to concentrate on those countries where the author spent the most time and had Muslim women friends, namely Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Lebanon and even Palestine.

CONCLUSION

Nine Parts of Desire is a laconic, well written book of 289 pages. Though it is a relatively short book, Brooks manages to disseminate a torrent of information. There is also a useful glossary of Arabic terms in the back as well.

Though Brooks does not make excuses for the troubling situation Muslim women find themselves, she does point out that those who condemn these practices in the West, tend to overlook parallel though less overt treatment of women around the world, including in the West. I agree that there are wife beatings, even killings in America but at least it is against the law. A woman could be stoned to death in Saudi Arabia if she has been found to have had sex out of wedlock. This requires testimony of four male witnesses, who in one case, I read about in another book, were the girl's accusers but were in realitly her rapists. Brooks on one hand show how Muslim women are discriminated against but also points out that many women claim to like their present status and point out the advantages of being anonymously cloaked. These tend to be older women who are afraid of change.

A by product of Brook's writing, though most likely inadvertently was the appearance that Islamic society appears to be grossly inefficient. Prohibitions against the full integration of women in most of these countries make some of the simplest tasks virtual impossibilities. As an example she tells of a surveyors inability to conduct a poll in Saudi Arabia for laundry detergent. Saudi women are forbidden from talking to males outside of the family and females if allowed to work at all are restricted to jobs such as medicine or teaching.

I think Nine Parts of Desire would be a good place to start for any reader that is interested in getting a balanced view of how women of Islam fair in various countries and the outlook for more liberal women's rights.

Final Rating 3.9 Stars

Geraldine Brooks has written an excellent book on some of the most important issues an Islamic woman faces in the Middle East. She combines the real life stories of women with quotes from the Koran which either support or do not support the way of life they are subjected to. She also includes the male perspective and their interpretations of the Koran - all which affect the lives of the women in her book. I have lived in the Middle East for short periods of time and I have found her analysis to be well founded. In her six years in the Middle East she experienced the lives of a diverse group of women, from Bedouin to Queen, teachers to rebels, working moms to women in the military, and more. Her point of view from the heart left me with a mixture of emotions.