Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Religious Studies – Anthology
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c ult ure was t o be found wit hin families and among individuals. T hat families
ec onomic ally in a posit ion t o c ont rac t ually impose monogamy on t heir daughter's
spouse or otherwise protect her interests in marriage sometimes did impose such
t erms is one indic at ion of familial and personal resist anc e t o t he view of t he
dominant c ult ure on t he plac e and right s of women. Similarly, t hat some families
educ ated their daughters despite the lac k of any formal avenue for the educ ation of
women not merely to the point of literacy but to the point where they could become
distinguished sc holars and eminent women of learning is another kind of evidenc e
of resistance among people to the prescriptions and dicta of the dominant view of
w o me n.
The unraveling of this system began to oc c ur with European ec onomic
enc roac hment in about the early nineteenth c entury. From that point forward, the
c onsonanc e that had thitherto pertained in the Muslim Middle East between the
disc ourse on gender espoused by establishment Islam and the soc ial and
inst it ut ional art ic ulat ion of t hat disc ourse began t o be st eadily eroded. T hat erosion,
leading to the gradual foundering of the old order and institutions, c ontinues into
our own day.
Muslim women have no c ause to regret the passing of the c ustoms and
formulas of earlier Muslim soc iet ies or t he foundering of t he old order and it s
c ontrolling and exc luding institutions. In the c ourse of the last c entury or so women
in a signific ant number of Arab c ount ries have at t ained c ivil and polit ic al right s and
virt ually equal ac c ess t o educ at ion, at least insofar as public polic ies are c onc erned;
c ultural prejudic es, however (as in other parts of the world, Western and non-
Western), and inadequate resourc es c ontinue to hold bac k women's educ ation in
some areas. Again, in a signific ant number of Arab c ountries women have gained or
are gaining entry into virtually all the professions, from teac hing and nursing t o
medicine, law, and engineering. Developments in these matters have occurred at
slight ly different rat es in different c ount ries, but broadly speaking, most Middle
Eastern nations have moved or are moving toward adopting the Western politic al
language of human and politic al rights and toward ac c ording these rights to women
as well as t o men.
There are two kinds of exc eptions to this tendenc y. One is an exc eption with
regard to a geographic region. The soc ieties in the Arabian Peninsula, the area in
the Middle East least subjec t t o European ec onomic , c ult ural, or polit ic al dominat ion
and least open generally to other c ultures and ideas, c ontinue to resist the c urrent
of c hange. Moreover, in response to inc reasing exposure to global influenc es in
recent dec ades, t he soc iet ies in t he region, part ic ularly Saudi Arabia, have
attempted to erect yet-more impregnable c ult ural and ideologic al walls. Alt hough
the peninsular c ountries have opened up educ ation to women, in most other ways
t he old st ric t ures remain firmly in plac e, and modern ideas about rights suc h as the
right to vote, constituting part of contemporary political thought, have made no
inroads. (Kuwait , however, prior t o it s invasion by Iraq, was be- ginning t o move
toward important c hanges for women.)
The other exc eption to the trend toward amelioration and extension of rights
to women in Middle Eastern c ountries other than those of the Arabian Peninsula is
wit h respec t t o Islamic family law – the laws governing men's and women's rights
in marriage, divorc e, and c hild c ustody. These laws have remained profoundly
resistant to c hange. Even though for a good part of this c entury liberals and