Rachel Kenyon Dr. Campbell HST-317 May 7, 2022 Women and Religion in the Middle East Many of the world’s major religions designate specific roles in society for men and women. As Judaism, Islam, and Christianity are all Abrahamic religions, their gender roles throughout history have been quite comparable, though some have shifted and evolved over the years. Women would be expected to dress and act modestly, get married and have children, and be a homemaker. They were also not allowed to get a proper education, work, and make a living for themselves like men could, or hold the same level of power within their respective religious institutions. Much of the reasoning behind these gender differences can be found in each religion’s respective texts and writings. Judaism, Islam, and Christianity all have a creation story involving Adam and Eve taking place in a garden portraying the original sin. However, in Judaism and Christianity, Adam and Eve are held responsible and punished for their sin while in Islam they are forgiven. In the Bible, although Adam and Eve are both punished, Eve is specifically ordered to obey Adam and take a place of inferiority under him. She is told by God: “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee” (Genesis 3:16). Christians then took this narrative of the man ruling over the woman and applied it to all people and their relationships. Eve’s portrayal in the Bible also fuels some of the negative ideas surrounding women as she is said to have been the first to sin and then tempted Adam into sinning as well. However, in the Islamic version of the story of Adam and Eve, neither of them is punished and Eve is not blamed for being the one to tempt Adam. Islam’s original sin was committed by both of them, while Christianity and Judaism’s was specifically committed by a woman, and this was used as a way to disempower all women (Paparella). Islam’s holy text, the Quran, contains many passages stating that men and women are treated equally under Allah. Women are not associated with sin like they are in the Bible. However, not everyone who practices Islam follows the Quran as it is written. In Guests of the Sheik, Elizabeth Ferna writes about how it is more revered to give birth to a boy than a girl. Meanwhile, the Quran states that male and female children are completely equal in worth and importance. It explicitly condemns female infanticide, which has been an issue around the world for thousands of years, including in the Middle East. Islam’s Prophet, Muhammed, also advocated against female infanticide (Hindustan Times). Ferna states that one of the reasons why people prefer to have a son rather than a daughter is because the son can work to earn money while a daughter would only work in the home. However, that reasoning only applies if they adhere to the gender roles they’ve been taught. At the time of Fernea’s visit, women could receive an education and find paying work, whether in the village or in nearby cities. Another reason given is that men need an heir to pass their property to. Once again, if they would simply allow women to own property, that would be unnecessary. In My Father’s Paradise, Ariel Sabar tells the story of a couple in Zakho, Miryam and Rahamim, who had a baby girl. Both the mother and father were overjoyed, but the father “kept his head low” and avoided contact with the people of the village as “shame greeted the birth of girls” (Sabar 35). The hatred toward daughters was so intense in Zakho that Rahamim recalled some boys mocking another father of a baby girl by chanting: “A daughter, a daughter, shit in her father’s beard!” (Sabar 35). In Judaism and Christianity, Eve is responsible for the original sin which brands her as guilty, and guilt is said to pass down from mother to daughter (Paparella). This reasoning has been used to discredit women’s abilities and keep them out of powerful positions in their religious institutions and government. What stands out in William Dalrymple’s From the Holy Mountain is not what he writes about women but what he does not write about women. The focus of the book is on the historical aspects of Christianity in the Middle East - the fact that so few women are mentioned by name is a grave example of how women were treated throughout such history. As regimes rose and fell and cultures evolved, women were almost completely left out of the conversation, resulting in a world made by men, for men. One of the primary ways in which females were made subservient to males is through access to education. Sabar mentions that in the Iraqi Jewish village of Zakho, girls do not go to school. Many boys also are not sent to school or are pulled out of school early on in the course of their education in order to work for their families (Sabar 50). However, families with more money do let their boys stay in school, showing that education is of importance to them. Parents of boys are given a choice while girls are simply not allowed to go at all. This holds them back career-wise, forcing them to have to rely on the support of a male, whether that be their father or a husband. In Guests of the Sheik, Fernea also notes that girls are not afforded the same educational opportunities as boys. At the time that Ferna was in the Iranian village in the late 1950s, girls had just recently started being allowed to go to school. One of the women of the village tells Ferna that only a short while ago “it was considered great shame [for girls] to go to school” (Fernea 160). An easily identifiable difference between the roles that men and women are assigned to in the religious societies discussed by Dalrymple, Sabar, and Fernea is the way that they are expected to dress and present themselves. While head coverings are heavily associated with Islam, the practice of veiling existed in other cultures and religions, including Christianity and Judaism, before Islam even came to be. All of the Abrahamic religions have specific rules about women’s modesty. When Ferna arrives in Iraq, she experiences an immediate culture shock regarding the veils that the women wear and how she is stared at for not wearing one. While she will not be punished for not veiling, she does feel ostracized for not doing so; “They say an uncovered woman is an immoral woman” (Fernea 6). As the world has become more progressive and women have been granted more freedoms and political power, many women have stopped adhering to their religious or cultural ideals of modesty. There have been large protests in Iran calling for the removal of hijab mandates. Conversely, Dalrymple notices that there are more women wearing veils in Istanbul when he is there in the late 1990s than there were when he had visited a decade ago. He describes the women as appearing to be “competing with each other to wear the most all-enveloping veil or medieval-looking burkha” (Dalrymple 29). With Christians, Jews, and Muslims having many similarities in their origins, traditions, and beliefs, it can be clearly seen how religious misogyny came to be what it is today. Despite the differences in their holy texts and how each religion has evolved and branched out over time, many women of all three have been subject to the same fate: having little to no control over their own lives and their own fates. With women not being able to hold much power compared to that of men, many are living in a world that is not meant for their success and fulfillment. Works Cited Dalrymple, William. From the Holy Mountain. Vintage Books, 2012. Fernea, Elizabeth Warnock. Guests of the Sheik. Doubleday, 1989. Holy Bible: King James Version Giant Print. Thomas Nelson Incorporated, 1980. Paparella, Emanuel L. “The Three Abrahamic Religions and their Image of Woman.” Modern Diplomacy, 26 May 2016, https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2016/05/26/the-threeabrahamic-religions-and-their-image-of-woman/. Accessed 4 May 2022. “Quran condemns killing of girls | Latest News India.” Hindustan Times, 8 March 2006, https://www.hindustantimes.com/india/quran-condemns-killing-of-girls/storyeQshojrzFP0ztegdfhucxO.html. Accessed 5 May 2022. Sabar, Ariel. My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for His Family's Past. Algonquin Books, 2009.
