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Women and Words in Saudi Arabia: Politics of Literary Discourse

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Before moving to Saudi Arabia, I found Women and Words in Saudi Arabia: The Politics of Literary Discourse by Saddeka Arebi. I eagerly devoured the substantial text, believing the book would give me a context where I could situate myself as I settled into my new environment. I also hoped the book would help me understand a part of the world that is surrounded in mystery and intrigue--at least, to most Westerners. I was not disappointed. Saddeka uses literature to explore Saudi Arabia's "preoccupation...with the subject of women--their education, their work, their mobility." Why the use of literature for such a daunting task? Because "literature...has historically and continues today to define reality." How do women themselves "read" their own culture? How do they perceive their own religious heritage, their cultural traditions, and history? How do they respond to conventional interpretations of their religion, tradition, and history? What do they see as they look at the world from their particular social space?

Saddeka has produced an ambitious, scholarly text. The bulk of the text focuses on the work of nine Saudi Arabian women authors. Constraints are placed on writers--whether they be male or female--"writers are always disseminators of a culture if not its creators, in the Saudi society they are expected to be gatekeepers, advocates, protectors of the canons, and interpreters all at the same time. The purpose of writing, as defined by the centers of power, is to produce a perception of reality congruent with and guided by the ideas of these power centers." Then, after all is written, edited and published, Saddeka says, "writing in Saudi Arabia is economically unrewarding."

Chapter 2 focuses on three writers. Fowziyha Abu-Khalid, known as a poet, is interested in the relationship of literature to religion. She believes "that the right of discussion and of participation in discourse should be accorded to everybody." Change, she believes, depends on the masses, not the intellectuals. Ruqayya Ash-Shabib, best known as a short story writer, bases her work on ordinary women who hold no positions of formal power, but changed history in a profound way. Two examples are Sheherazade and Balqees, the queen of Sheba. She believes "that the problem is not male dominance, but rather female submission." Rajaa 'Alim, a pioneer in playwriting, thinks the primary function of literature is "liberation of the individual." With her use of well-known symbols such as the camel, she attempts to create a new way of looking at those symbols.

Chapter 3, under the broad heading of victimization literature, gives the spotlight to three more writers of short stories. Sharifa As-Shamlan "draws most of her stories from the real lives of women with whom she comes in contact as a social worker, especially those in prison." She "writes to and for the ordinary person." Khayriyya As-Saggaf explains that she doesn't "write for someone who is in a hurry, who reads in a car, or who reads while busy doing something else." The reader travels with the writer, known for her sensitivity to cultural values, exploring new meaning for existence. Najwa Hashim began like all women writers, working for newspapers and magazines. Najwa's stories generally deal with women "who struggle with the discrepancy between the real and the ideal."

Chapter 4 gives us a look at three of "the most widely read female Saudi Arabian essayists. Juhayer Al-Musa'ed's skill revolves around her ability to ask the right questions without necessarily providing the answers. Not especially popular with women readers, Juhayer is seen as "declaring her alliance with men, hence emphasizing the premises of the dominant discourse." Fatna Shaker believes the problem of how societies arrange themselves "can only be solved if understood in broader terms and explored in terms of structural causes." Sohaila Zain Al-Abedin is correctly perceived "by other literary men and women as being in line with the dominant discourse." Two themes dominate her writing: women--veiled, immobile, segregated from men and battling the encroachment of the West.

Above all, Saudi Arabian women writers would like their work to be perceived as having to do with humanity--not just a reflection of a feminine experience. So often, their writing is demeaned further by those critcs who render their work as reflective only of the writer's own experience.

Excellent, thorough treatment of selected women authors in a country that has experienced a lot of change over a short period of time.

Arebi lets the reader know from her introduction that she intends to interpret Islam without any semblance of scholarship whatsoever, and base her research on her own personal understandings without reference to any kind of Islamic authority. Not a tafsir exists in her world, nor a book of Hadith, much less scholarly exegesis of it, and she cares not to cite any modern scholars on the issues of which she speaks, many of whom are women in Saudi Arabia, rather she chooses to ignore Islam and the Muslim woman completely except for what pleases her and supports her thesis. The Saudi woman, to Arebi, and unfortunately much of the mainstream American market, has to be necessarily, in a state of protesting Islam, the Hijab, the Islamic segregation of men and women, the man's being her guardian as a role assigned to him by God. This she makes clear from the very outset, allowing only the unknowing, or the willing, to subject themselves to her misinformation and her single-tracked portrayal of the Saudi woman, and in reality, the Muslim woman.

She begins her injustice with slandering His Eminence, Shaikh 'Abd al-'Azeez ibn Baz, from the scholars most loved across the globe by this generation, whose death was a moment in which not a small number of women wept in their homes and mourned, for he was a mentor and a support to many of them, and a teacher and nurturer of a generation. His defense of the statement of God as revealed in the Qur'an regarding men being Qawwamoon or guardians and caretakers for the women from Surah an-Nisaa, and his warning from a writer who openly opposed this statement, citing open antagonism with the Qur'an as being clear disbelief by consensus of the scholars is called by Arebi as "the ultimate weapon that would ensure pushing women away from their territories for a long time to come..." and calls it an "attack on this woman". She also falsely portrays women as being distanced and deterred from religious interpretation, stating "Some women may have been deterred from venturing into the territories of religious interpretation but not others," and builds her research on the heroic portrayal of a handful of women who choose to leave the Hijab and oppose their faith and their Islamic environment. It is not of interest to her that a number far greater choose the same Islam that these have abandoned in the country in which she writes her book.

For the reality is that, for every poet she has chosen to glorify, there are thousands of pious, educated women who defend the Qur'an and the Sunnah, and are parts and members of the knowledge base and intellectual community, studying and teaching at Saudi universities and centers across the nation. The book Naseehati Li an-Nisaa, written by Umm Abdullah al-Waadi'iyyah is a brilliant example among many, and has been printed numerous times since the author, a female scholar of Islam from north Yemen, wrote it roughly around the same time as Arebi's book. Why must the woman conform to Arebi's understanding of Islam, which she provides no basis or reasoning for, though seemingly calling to "religious interpretation" throughout her book? Does she intend by "religious interpretation" intentional misinterpretation founded upon hypocrisy, the literary disguising of disbelief as done by those who hide what lurks in their hearts? For there seems not to exist a woman to her except that she is both deviant and controversial and in opposition to Islamic teachings.

Whether a million Arebis wear the blinders of ethnocentrism and prejudice and refuse to learn first what they pretend to be experts about, they will not turn the believing Muslim woman from her religion, rather she runs to it and embraces it, and will continue, by the mercy of God, to do so.