A great deal of Westerners, if not most of them believe that female inequality had arisen from Islam. Indeed, today’s civilized human being would see that there is evidence of sexism present in the Middle East but Islam is not the origin of it. Today I read a chapter in Ann Elizabeth Mayer’s book titled Islam and Human Rights. In chapter 6 of the book, Mayer addresses the point that Islam was intended to improve women’s rights in society. This is because pre-Islamic Arabia was a terrible time and place to be a woman. People think that Middle Eastern society degrades women and reduces them to being inferior to men and being second-class citizens, well it was even worse before Islam actually. “In an environment where women were so devalued that female infanticide was a common and tolerated practice, the Quran introduced reforms that prohibited female infanticide, permitted women to inherit, restricted the practice of polygamy, curbed abuses of divorce by husbands, and gave women the ownership of the dower, the bride price that had previously been paid to the bride’s father” (Mayer p.100). Conditions were so bad for women that Islam actually improved their rights. It is also stated in the chapter that Muslim women enjoyed more rights than European women from its beginning in the seventh century until very recently. “Muslim women enjoyed full legal personality; could own and manage property; and according to some interpretations of the Quran, enjoyed the right to divorce on very liberal grounds” (p.100).

The Second document I found is an actual report from CEDAW on women’s rights in Bahrain. I have heard that women in Lebanon are the freest in the Middle East and women in Afghanistan are the most oppressed so I thought it would be intruiging to do research on  a more moderate country that is between the two extremes. According to the report, Bahrain has made many improvements to its law and its constitution since 2008. The list of things done is endless honestly but a few significant changes include: “The National Plan for the Advancement of Bahraini Women (2013-2022) and its implementation strategy”, “The vocational and technical training strategic plan 2008-2014, which widens training opportunities for girls in non-traditional fields”, and “Royal Orders 46/20009 on the establishment of the National Human Rights Institution and 28/2012 amending certain provisions” (CEDAW). Women in Bahrain still dress somewhat conservatively in Bahrain but there are no laws keeping them from dressing untraditionally according to unofficial sources I found when googling “women in Bahrain”.

I was an intern at the NIHR in Bahrain for a brief period of time. Two years ago, I spent Christmas working side by side with human rights lawyers that work to improve human rights and insure individual human rights for everybody in Bahrain. These lawyers spent everyday talking to people whether they be legal/illegal immigrants, women, political prisoners or minorities. They receive phone calls, reports, emails and listen to individual complaints. They answer to the United Nations and keep record statistics of all aspects of Bahrain like its economy, geography, demographics, law reviews, etc. and releases a report to the UN, the Bahrain government, and to the public sharing the information it gathers every year. They were kind of like super heroes keeping a watchful eye on everybody. I reviewed this very report from CEDAW in Bahrain and even reviewed Bahrain’s law’s regarding equality and women’s rights. In the Bahraini constitution, “articles 4 and 18, stipulates that equality is guaranteed by the State, that all citizens are equal before the law and that there shall be no discrimination based on sex, as well as the fact that the Convention has the status of law in Bahrain” (CEDAW). One thing the lawyers at the NIHR kept telling me is that there just having the law present serves no use to the public. Laws can be present but not implemented in reality and that is a big issue in Bahrain.

Mayer’s book on human rights has inspired me to make my blogs revolve around the oppressed in Middle East. I look to answers questions like who is being oppressed and where? I want to explore what it means to be a gay person in Saudi Arabia, a transgender in Kuwait, an atheist in Yemen for example. I may be too ambitious and change my mind if I do not find sufficient information though because I know people in the region like to keep matters like these on the DL. As for women in the Middle East, I personally believe that there should still be major changes in the way men think about women in the Middle East because you simply cannot compare women’s rights standards of today with the middle ages. Women are more oppressed in some areas then others in the Middle East; I have literally seen a video of an entire village of men beating a woman to death then publically burning her body for something she probably did not do. This atrocity took place in Afghanistan, where thirty years of Western intervention seems to not have done much for women’s rights as the mentality of a lot of people in the country is still very backwards. Women have been the subject of many atrocities over the centuries in the Middle East and it does not look like it will change in the near future

Google Maps link

https://www.google.com/maps/dir//Road+2830,+Seef+5559,+Bahrain/@26.2374706,50.5036458,13z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m8!4m7!1m0!1m5!1m1!1s0x3e49a5695715a861:0x86e4a4045c243dbf!2m2!1d50.5387512!2d26.2374749

Bibliography

Mayer, Ann Elizabeth. Islam and Human Rights: Tradition and Politics. 5th ed. Boulder, Co.: Westview, 1991. Print.

“CEDAW: Concluding Observations on the Third Periodic Report of Bahrain | Bahrain Center for Human Rights.” CEDAW: Concluding Observations on the Third Periodic Report of Bahrain | Bahrain Center for Human Rights. N.p., 1 Mar. 2014. Web. 01 June 2016.