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Price of Honor
Muslim Women Lift the Veil of Silence on the Islamic World

Jan Goodwin

New York: Plume (imprint of Penguin), 1995; Pages: xiii,363

Review © 2001 Branislav L. Slantchev

Written years before the full horror of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan became known here in the West and caused enough outrage about its treatment of women to get Sen. Clinton to speak publicly against it, Price of Honor is an astonishing achievement of a superb reporter. In chilling detail, Goodwin recounts her trips in ten Muslim nations in the Near East and Africa, and although, thankfully, she did not experience maltreatment firsthand, her sympathetic narration of the plight of Muslim women makes a disturbing and eye-opening revelation.

As a journalist, Goodwin pays much attention to personal experience of the various people she interviewed, from the family of a taxi driver in Egypt to the Queen of Jordan. Her insights are liberally sprinkled with Koranic quotes and statements from various ullema who deigned to talk to her. Although the account is a bit sensationalist at times (and, given the ubiquity of what can only be characterized as brutality in the Near East, this should not be surprising), there is enough level-headed reporting to provide a more or less balanced picture. And what is it that Goodwin describes?

Simply put, the main thrust of the book, doubtless aimed at Western audiences, is to separate Islam from the scandalous treatment of women in Muslim countries. Again and again she insists that there is no basis in the Koran for the demands that all women veil completely. Quoting directly and citing interviews with various religious scholars, she even contends that Islam used to be a liberating force that always envisioned an equal status of women in the social, political, and economic life of the Muslim world. (As a side note, it is still disturbing to realize that this status is described as being "permitted" by the Prophet, as if women must be "given" their rights, which, of course, implies that this act is somehow dependent on the good graces of men. A similar attitude persists in the West, something I never understood.)

Giving numerous historical examples (e.g. from the life of Mohammed) and describing the promising progress many of the states had made in the second third of the 20th century, she then confronts the question of why the status of women has lapsed back to the times when they were treated as property of men. It is futile to list all the abuses that Muslim women have to suffer today although a few might help pain the grim picture. In Pakistan, the police routinely rape female prisoners who then are charged with fornication. In Iran, women can be imprisoned for a lock of hair showing from under the scarf. In most societies women are either banned or strongly discouraged from participating in the social life, let alone the political or economic. They have to ask permission from their fathers, husbands, brothers, and even sons, leading to such absurd situations where a seven year old can forbid his mother from going out for groceries and she complies! The question then is why? Why does a religion that is so tolerant become so oppressive?

To quote the Islamic scholar Akbar S. Ahmed, "The position of women in Muslim society mirrors the destiny of Islam: when Islam is secure and confident so are its women; when Islam is threatened or under pressure so, too, are they" (p. 47). Goodwin interprets, rightly, the rise of fundamentalism and radical Islam to the state failure of the Muslim countries. The years of decadent, incompetent, repressive, arbitrary, and tyrannical rule of the various heads of state, have left to a virtual economic disaster in most of these countries. Even the opulent Saudis are seen as decadent and too Westernized by their Wahibi subjects. When there is no hope, people turn to faith and the message of Islam proves alluring to the youths who seek a radical solution to their problems. Mostly uneducated, almost always poor, they depend on the similarly illiterate ullemas for the interpretation of the Koran, and thus become pliable subjects in their hands.

The struggle for the soul of the Muslim world between fundamentalists who want to institute "pure" Islamic states modeled on Khomeini's Iran (and, more recently, on Taliban's Afghanistan) and the secular regimes who want to keep themselves in power is increasingly lost by the latter. In fact, because of the growing strength of these radical Muslim organizations (financed by the petro-dollars of the Gulf states and generous private donations from the West), the governments become schizophrenic in their responses to political problems: they simultaneously suppress, often violently, any opposition, but also tolerate the incursion of the fundamentalists in basic educational and social questions. Moderate Muslims, on whom rapprochement with the West depends (itself based on understanding precluded by the violence espoused by the extremists), are marginalized and silenced by fear or outright murder.

This, then, is the problem. Because governments are afraid to oppose the religious leaders, they cater to their demands on women's rights and education, and even unite in denouncing the West and America as decadent and pernicious (an easy target and a convenient vent). In the political struggle for power, women suffer mightily, denied their basic human rights and freedoms. Still, even if the government sanctions the excesses of the religious zealots, one must account for why men prefer to trod their women also? In many cases, as Goodwin herself shows, Muslim women with progressive husbands are able to move quite freely, engage in business, or even political life (at least in the states where this is possible).

There is, perhaps, also a psychological explanation that accounts for the willingness of men to treat their womenfolk as property. Strangely enough, Muslims insist that their honor revolves around their women: the entire family (or tribe) can be dishonored by the inappropriate behavior of a woman. Invariably, this reduces to sexual fidelity. In an effort to ensure the fidelity (NOT chastity!) of their women, Muslim men reduce them to slaves while enjoying vicarious sexual life through "co-wives."

The most puzzling question here is: Why should women suffer for the weaknesses of men? Even the prominent fundamentalists say that men can be easily tempted and led astray by women. They conclude, in a bizarre fit of un-logic, that it is necessary to reduce the sexual attractiveness of women, hence the burqa, hence the prohibitions, hence the degradation. However, it seems to me that the obvious solution here is to educate men, not imprison women. The Bible (of all things!) has a better injunction: "if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell" (Mark 9:47). As an atheist, I find it strange to use the Bible to illustrate a point, but clearly the solution advocated here makes much more sense: it is "your eye" that should be plucked out if it causes you to sin, not the one that causes the eye to sin. (I should note that in verse 42, on the other hand, the same Bible advocates throwing the ones who cause the believers to sin into the sea "with a large millstone tied around his neck." So there you go, not as tolerant as one would have hoped for after all.)

At any rate, why should women suffer for men's weaknesses? Or is it something different? Does it have anything to do with the culture of masculinity which depraves baby girls from any prospects in life? Or maybe the demands that such a culture places on men are just too hard to bear for them? Is that without the severe restrictions men would have to acknowledge that women can do just as well as they? That, given a right to choose, many would not remain with their husbands? Of course, in a culture of tribal politics where arranged marriages are the norm, there is a long way to go to marriages of love. Some may contend that for all its shortcomings, the Muslim way is better than the insecurity produced by the freedom in the West. I disagree: this is a personal question that should not be "resolved" for everyone by an oppressive state-mandated religion. On the question of whether women are inferior to men, the answer is very simple. The role of a woman in a relationship is the same as the man's: to be a trusted friend and companion in what is essentially a lonely journey through life. Everything else takes second place, even the decision to have children is not "a duty" or "a responsibility," only a decision to procreate.

I am certainly glad that Islam is not what the fundamentalists make it out to be. On the other hand, I am quite disturbed that the Koran is just as easy to subvert as the Bible. What bothers me most is the desire some people have to force everybody else to live a life according to their definition of propriety. There will never be a constraint-free society, that's for sure. But there will be more or less free societies and the Muslim world seems headed toward the tyranny of theocracy. If there is a way to halt this, it is to attack the root of the problem: the economic depredations of the rulers, the religious extremism of the illiterate, and the instability of the region caused by decades of faulty power politics of the Western nations. One does not have to believe in the "clash of civilizations" to see that if fundamentalism takes hold in the Near East, the oil-hungry West will be faced with a struggle that will be bloodier than the Crusades. And it won't have anything to do with faith but everything to do with economics.

November 27, 2001

@book{goodwin:95,
    title     = {Price of Honor: Muslim Women Lift the Veil of Silence on the Islamic World},
    author    = {Jan Goodwin},
    year      = 1995,
    publisher = {Plume},
    address   = {New York},
    isbn      = {0-452-27430-3 (pbk.)},
    note      = {Index; Pp. xiii, 363}
}