The Plight of Western Women in Muslim Lands
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 09.02.09 | 10:04 AM ET
Judy Bachrach looks at the circumstances and issues Western women face when they’re living or traveling in Muslim countries. She writes in World Affairs Journal:
Local women are of such negligible importance that they can be viewed as prey. On the other hand, foreign women are in a wholly different category: wild and yet easy, so menacing and just plain available they are invariably treated as prey. The foreigner without a murderous uncle by her side or a veil over her face is a communal dish.
It’s a powerful essay. (Via Arts & Letters Daily)
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Michael Yessis is the cofounder and coeditor of World Hum.
grizzly bear mom 09.02.09 | 11:57 AM ET
Boy does this sound egotistical. Western woman are sluts, or easilly sexually available compared to those in Islamic countries according to our dress, behavior, alcohol use, media, and as you put it, a lack of a murderous uncle to protect our virture. If y we violate Muslim ethics by traveling alone and in body hugging jeans (which are in no way modest like a galabeyah-caftan), we can expect men to hit on us. I’m about as conservative with men as they come, but was routinely approached by European and Iranian men when I lived there. I can say no in any language, and without one.
Additionally, if you are visiting/working in a country and can leave at will, it is not a plight, its the cost of being in Xland. If you are a native and can’t leave, that only is a plight.
As for women making the choice to marry men who take them to an Islamic country and “put them under house arrest”, you have to think of these consequences of marrying anyone, and marrying outside your culture before doing so. Ignoring the conservative dress urged on your by your Afghan in laws and then complaining about harassment at the market is both egotistical and foolish.
Also, please expalin why 45 years ago the Marines would return a runaway bride to her Afghan husband from the embassy. I wasn’t aware they provided taxi service.
I’m a Christian and wonder if the same number of women are harassed, shoved, raped, and murdered by their family members outside of Islamic countries, but without the excuse of Islamic Law. I know that the number one reason a woman visits the Emergency Room in the U.S. is because she was battered by someone she loved.
I’m shocked that the travel channel would publish such a one sided story.
Eva Holland 09.02.09 | 12:13 PM ET
Just to clarify, grizzly bear mom, it’s a World Affairs Journal story that World Hum linked out to.
And I have to disagree with the idea that women who make certain choices - traveling in the Middle East, marrying into another culture - should accept any and all consequences of those choices without question. If past inter-racial couples hadn’t fought against the prejudices they encountered, and instead said, “Well, this is what we signed up for, guess we have to shut up and take it,” would we be in the more accepting place we are today on that issue? If no one ever speaks up about harassment, it certainly won’t go anywhere.