Overview Minaret by Leila Aboulela is a story about a Sudanese girl, Najwa who comes from an upper class family and lives with her twin brother, Omar and her two parents in Khartoum. Her father is a government official and they live in a luxurious house assisted by six servants including a driver. Although Najwa is a Muslim, she is westernized and secular in the way she behaves, dresses and thinks (she is sent to an American school, goes party, drinks alcohol and wears fashionable clothes). Najwa and her family do not practice religious obligations such as praying but they do fast during Ramadhan. In university, she falls in love Anwar, an atheist and a radical socialist who always attacks Najwa’s father in his speech and writing. He always …show more content…
For example, Um Waleed leads the weekly talk at Regents Park Mosque and the talk is attended by many Muslim women in London. Lamya, Najwa’s employer is a mother and she continues her study in PhD, same goes to Shafinaz, who is a mother of three kids. These examples show that Muslim women are not subjected to any oppression and inequality, as stereotyped by many. • Najwa’s character challenges the stereotype of woman where she lives abroad on her own and manages her own life. In example, she wears hijab on her own choice, even though she was once violated by a group of men in London. The judging stares and glares do not affect the way she dresses as she continues to wear hijab and cover her aurah; "Laughter from behind me. Something hits the edge of the seat next to me and bounces down the aisle; I don't know what it is. He has missed his target this time. Will they move closer, and what if they run out ot things to throw? [...] I hear footsteps come up behind me, see a blur of denim. He says, 'You Muslim scum', then the shock of cool liquid on my head and face. I gasp and taste it, Tizer. He goes back to his friends - they are laughing. My chest hurts and I wipe my eyes" (Aboulela, “Minaret”,pp.
In the beginning of the novel The Swallows of Kabul, written by Yasmina Khadra, the audience is introduced to the character of Musarrat, Atiq’s wife. On first impression, she seems to be a lost cause clinging to any sense of normal life she has left; however, at the end of the novel, Musarrat becomes the unsung hero offering a glimmer of hope for the wretched city of Kabul. Through the use of her unconditional love for her husband, Khadra reveals how Musarrat became an image of hope for the audience, a daisy growing in the dump that is Kabul. In chapters eleven through fifteen, Musarrat’s image is opposite of the characters seen throughout the rest of the novel.
An original viewpoint on Islam, gender, and identity is found in Leila Ahmed's memoir, A Border Passage. Ahmed compares her experience with "women's Islam" throughout the book with the more formal "men's" Islam she encountered in Egypt throughout her upbringing. In this essay, two to three examples of these disparities will be seen, and I will discuss which interpretation of Islam is more accurate. The role of women in prayer is one instance of how men's and women's Islam differ from one another. Ahmed explains how women's Islam gave them the freedom to pray at home, in private, and without having to strictly abide by conventional Islamic laws.
She is under pressure to conform to American beauty standards while rejecting her Iranian ancestry. For instance, she says, "My whole life, my mom and aunts had praised me for how American I looked. It was a virtue to have paler skin than most Iranians…” (Saedi 43). This shows the transformed pressure of cultural assimilation and how it can cause people to reject their cultural identity.
I am WOMAN, hear me ROAR; the phrase women have been screaming since the beginning of time! The inequality of women is fundamentally out of sorts and despite improvements over the last 100 years, there’s far more work and acceptance that needs to be obtained before women have true equality in all aspects of their lives. In this paper, I will show how women incur inequalities in just about every aspect of their lives today, even after we have proven that we are more than equal to our counterparts. I will compare and contrast the inequalities of women in the Southern Baptist and Northern Baptist denominations of Christianity and then Liberal and Orthodox Jews. My initial conclusion is that women like other minorities will continually have
Hosseini portrays how this treatment of women was accepted in Afghani culture because men’s superiority was derived from tradition. He depicts a culture in Afghanistan where wives were seen as mere possessions, so their husbands found fault with them for the inconveniences they experienced. Hosseini demonstrates the mistreatment of women in Afghanistan through the multiple examples he provides where men laid blame with women for circumstances beyond the women’s control or for which were not solely to blame for, just as Nana had warned Mariam that they were prone to do. The first instance in which Nana’s statement rings true is when Nana found out for herself how easily women in Afghanistan could be held completely accountable for things that were not solely their responsibility.
Can she tell? Muslim? Mexican? Does she know that your clothes are Trendy, that your grades are Dweeby, that your heart is Goody-goodie?” (Kvashay-Boyle 169).
Once you step inside the life of a “harami”,you’ll never be the same with your new insight. The story starts with two interchangeable characters, Laila and Mariam. Similar in many ways, both of these women are introduced in the novel as young children. The author expertly describes events Laila and Mariam encountered within their everyday lives that has either affected them or helped them progress and deal with the modern rules for women rooted within Afghanistan.
In the progressive modern world, the ancient mindset of men’s superiority exists in many societies. Women who are opposed to such ideology are, in some cases, perceived as rebellious when words such as feminism has come to acknowledgement for over a century. Through the struggles that the characters of A Thousand Splendid Suns faced in the patriarchal Afghani culture, Khaled Hosseini delivers his feminist ideas. For her whole life, Nana endured the troubles given by men, and she is one of the “fallen female warrior” of the novel because she fought against the oppression and lost, due to the unfortunate circumstances of her life. Mariam also suffered the torments imposed on her by the men in her life, sharing a similar fate as her mother, Nana, in a way.
(Hosseini, 86). But after the Mujahedeen took over, women were treated horribly especially by their husbands and were sometimes the punching bags if something wrong happened. The novel does a great job on letting the readers know why women were always blamed and/or beaten, what happens after the men blame the women for something and shows examples of little things that a woman has done or does that trigger the men to become angry or upset. If you dig deep
Fatima Mernissi’s works include: Dreams of trespass: Tales of a harem Girlhood, Islam and Democracy: Fear of the Modern World, and the well-known as well as her first Monograph, Beyond the Veil, which was published in 1975. It has become popular book in fields such as sociology and anthropology of the women in the Arab World. Summary The Monograph THE VEIL AND THE MALE ELITE tackled various issues and subjects in the Islamic religion, which were mostly based on the role of the women as well as their rights in it. Initially in the preface of the Monograph the Mernissi compares the Islamic society with Judeo-Christian societies in order to unravel the reason as to why
The audience is presented with a black and white illustration which indicates sorrow or unhappiness. The main character is introduced to a political transformation as her female classmates are required to wear a veil which segregates the children by gender. The veil or hijab symbolizes the community and political variations that reformed the protagonist’s forthcoming. The student writer comprehends major vagaries to females however,
This highlights the importance of how these acts of cruelty Mariam and Laila faced; ‘fear of the goat, released in the tiger’s cage’ is what ultimately defines their inner feminist strength, ‘over the years/learned to harden’ which shows that Mariam and Laila’s past indirectly prepares them for The Taliban’s arrival. The Taliban take away the basic rights of Mariam and Laila ‘jewellery is forbidden’, but they fail to do so. Ironically, it is the society itself that gives them the strength and platform to strike back against Rasheed, who is a cruel, male-dominating character who symbolised and reinforced everything the term ‘anti-feminist’ stands
Cultural history, such as the role of the environmental history of an individual is more of a case in history. The movie “Wadjda” directed by Haifaa Al Mansour, and the article “Joyriding in Riyadh: Oil, Urbanism, and Road revolt” by Pascal Menoret explores how various in the Middle east has challenged current discourses between social, cultural, and legal aspects have shaped history. The movie “Wadjda” expressed how Haifaa Al Mansour indicated how modernity was a catalyst for activity to formulate interpretations that allowed for the challenges for the modern world for women in a culture dominated by religion. Women as seen as not victims in society, but rather exposed gender norms and roles striving to live with the constraints on
This thesis consists of Hanif’s portrait of women and their marginalized positions in the society and economic, social and religious pride and prejudices towards women in Pakistani society which is an important theme of his novels. He belongs to those who are proof of that some people can tell the truth more comprehensively and authentically with fiction than facts. In his second novel Our Lady of Alice Bhatti (2012), he discusses the battle and determination of a woman fitting in with minority goes out in a patriarchal society and endures accordingly. In a male dominated society women in Pakistan are in lower position than men , they are always on the periphery, and are subordinated to men and are in debased positions both within the house and outside the house. Alam (2011) shows by her study that women’s unequal positions contrasted with men make them weaker both out in the open and private circles.