Women & Islamic Cultures Family, Law and Politics

Arab States

The expression kalàm al-nàs(talk of the people)
is a common term for gossip throughout much of
the Arab Middle East and how information in the
form of gossip circulates in communities can be
quite important.
Gossip, positive or negative, can be used to rein-
force group norms or to negotiate and further dif-
fering interests. Comments can be embellished to
highlight basic points or outright falsified, perhaps
backfiring upon the speaker. Men may depend
upon wives or female relatives for certain types of
information and vice versa. Secrets may be kept or
revealed, including by eavesdropping children.
People may recall events inaccurately. Public opin-
ion may be of one mind or many minds. In such
ways, the spoken word is very much the lived word.
Positions of honor and status of an individual or
a family can be achieved, lost, or stay the same
through gossip. The hospitality shown to guests at a
home by one person, for instance, can reflect upon
the honorable reputation of their entire family. In
the United Arab Emirates, where people reportedly
dreaded being the subject of bad gossip, violating
the rites of hospitality would expose the host family
to severe social disapproval. If the hostess failed to
meet the guest’s expectations, gossip ensued: “God
forgive us, not even coffee was offered.” Whereas,
when the guest was satisfied, the praise to others
could be: “They honored me, they fulfilled their
duty toward me” (Kanafani 1993, 133–4). This
continues to be true in many places.

Gossip and social control
When there is a family dispute, the gossip of vis-
itors and neighbors can be the channel by which a
family member makes the problem public, whether
by accident or deliberately. In Egypt, a young
Beduin woman who had left her husband to have
her marital problems formally mediated by her
father had this to say about her mother-in-law’s
attempt to generate negative gossip against her, just
before she left:

Nowadays people get each other into disputes through

talk. I took my good clothes along to my father’s

because I was upset, for my husband and I had had an

argument. And some clothes which I didn’t want and

Gossip

had no need for – if I had tried to give them to a poor,

old woman, even she would not have accepted them – I

had taken them and I had burned them. My husband’s

mother came and said, “She has burned her house, and

now she wants to burn ours and go.” I alwaysburn the

garbage there, but she just wants to talk empty talk so

that people will say that I am wrong and she is good and

such. She says meaningless things. People know I would

not burn good things.

The mother-in-law had rushed over from her house

next door screaming those remarks. An elderly

neighbor visiting the mother-in-law heard the loud

marital argument and the mother-in-law’s reaction,

as did others nearby. This incident took place in a

tribal village in South Sinai where gossip was being

used by both genders as a method of social control

to keep women and older girls at, or near, home. It

was considered immodest for them to be outside, in

increasingly crowded conditions (Gardner 2000).

Yet public support, garnered by sympathetic gossip,

could also have a bearing on the resolution of a

marital dispute. The young wife was confident that

people would not be swayed by her mother-in-law,

who was known for having a flash temper and

exaggerating. She was right.

In more serious situations, South Sinai Beduins

can be held responsible for slander. When another

woman was repeatedly slandered by her unhappy

husband and his family to others, the offenders

were found liable in a tribal court. Both of these

cases took place in 1990 but being a topic of gossip

could have long-term, dangerous effects. Some of

the most stubborn evil-eye illnesses in women are

considered by believers to be the result of attention

caused or compounded by gossip, as the young wife

who had left her husband thought was the case

when she became chronically ill.

Women, judgment, and honor

An activist group of Palestinian women in Israel,

al-Fanàr (The lighthouse), stressed how controlling

and damning gossip can be:

Damage to the reputation of a girl by means of the

rumor and gossip system means damage to the reputa-

tion and honor of the family. This leads to the mobi-

lization of all the “family forces” to uphold this honor,

usually by inflicting heavy punishments on the young

woman, the victim. It should be noted that the degree

of truth of this gossip and its relation to reality is usu-

ally unimportant (al-Fanàr newsletter 1991, 7).