Since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, images have flowed out of the Middle East, scenes that depict fiery street protests, quiet prayer services or people just going about their day-to-day lives in the public sphere.
After a while, something curious about these images emerges. There are no women in them. Ever. It's as if the other half of the population doesn't exist.
When Al-Badr Al-Hazmi, the San Antonio radiologist who was first suspected and then cleared of complicity in the attacks, returned home after his detention, something equally curious happened, at least by Western standards. His wife couldn't come outside her home to talk to the press, and only female reporters were allowed inside to talk to her.
The images of Islamic women in some countries of the Middle East and Central Asia typically show them draped in concealing fabric and often sequestered from society. News reports tell of circumscribed females lives - Afghan women who can't work, leave their homes, even seek medical care, and Saudi women who can't drive. News clips document horrific executions of female adulterers and show mosques and schools open only to men.
To the average American, unversed in the ways and means of Islam, these images tend to lead to one obvious conclusion: Muslim women are oppressed. Their culture and their religion relegate them to secondary status, where they lead joyless lives of servitude to the men who run their world.
But attempt a closer look at the subject of Islam and women, and such certitude quickly slides out of view. Is Islam at root a sexist religion? Do Muslim women lead lives of oppression? Does the veil necessarily mean subjection? Are all Muslim women in the same miserable boat? These questions turn out to be exceedingly complex, the answers defying broad-brush generalities and easy stereotypes.
"There is no monolithic Muslim society," says Elizabeth Warnock Fernea, a retired University of Texas professor who has written five books on Islam, including In Search of Islamic Feminism. "There is an amazing diversity across the Islamic world with regard to women. Take extremists like the Taliban, with the way they've shut down schools, hospitals, forbidden women to work. Many in the Muslim world would say that goes against Islam, goes against the Quran."
