An educator in Saudi Arabia is coming up with a book that seeks to correct false notions of women's roles in their society and how these notions are being upheld by a misinterpretation of the Qur'an, the holy book of Islam.
Most commentary on the condition of
women in the Middle East assigns a central place to the role of Islam. In fact,
there have been important variations, as well as persistent similarities, in
women’s conditions in Muslim societies. To make sense of the varieties of
women’s real, concrete historical experience, we must avoid confusing analytic
and polemical goals.
Current writing on women in
the Middle East exhibits two equally vigorous, but so far divergent trends.