This is an excellent book that details women's performance of mystical texts in South Asia. A must for anyone who wants to know about the sociolinguistic contexts of the languages of Pakistan and India. The book has lovely photographs. Easy to read language and details.

this is an excellent book and has the memoirs of a large range of individuals from the middle east. Easy to read and understand

I read this book in preparation for a return trip to Morocco and wish I'd read it the first time. This is a story of what it's REALLY like to move to a foreign country--non-western--and try to live as the people do. For those of us who have read books like "A Year in Provence" and suspect that it all sounds too good to be true, this book is a refreshing change. It's told from a woman's perspective, and focuses on domestic life, the sharp difference between public and home behavior in Islamic societies, the pervasiveness of religion, and male-female roles. I would have liked a bit of a broader perspective--the author's descriptions of public unrest and a strike were tantalizing, and I would have liked to know a bit more about what was going on in the country at the time, but she describes pretty clearly why Europeans or Americans, well-meaning though they may be, wouldn't necessarily be met with open arms.

My long time fascination with North Africa, culminated in the mid 1980s when my husband and I lived in Algeria for one year. Since then I have tried to enlarge that experience by travelling through the area and reading about the different cultures living in North Africa. How I wish that in 1984 I had already read Elizabeth Fernea's account of her year in Marrakech! Marocco and Marrakech are obviously different cultures from that of Algeria, but the detailed descriptions Fernea gives us about feasts, customs and manners, so very sensitively rendered would have helped and would also have alerted me to the minefield of possible "faux pas" -- which in retrospect I committed by the dozens!
From my experience this is a very credible account of life in the region. And most important -- it is not patronizing. Marrakech life is presented with humor, with that perplexing foreignness that is typical to Westerners in North Africa, and with respect for religious differences.
The book reads very well, it is full of curious data and also of excitment. A great read!

I am an American woman who has been living in Marrakesh for the past 9 years. I just read this book. Even though it was written in the early 1970's, I found it to be a very accurate portrayal of life in the old medina, even now. The author and her husband are anthropologists, and both spoke fluent Arabic upon their arrival, from having lived previously in Iraq and Egypt. Therefore, the author was able to converse with people daily, and understand completely, what they were saying. This is something I have never been able to do. Because of this, she is able to give a VERY detailed look at an aspect of life which is nearly impossible for most outsiders to penetrate--the hidden life of Medina women, which takes place behind high, closed walls. What she describes is very similar to what I have experienced here of life with my Moroccan husband's family, and the people who live around them in the Medina. This book is NOT a study of political or historical conditions--it is the detailed, personal history of one family's year-long experience of living, and immersing itself, in the life of Marrakesh.

Children in the Muslim Middle East successfully aspires to open a whole new topic. Fernea brings together forty-one short pieces that range in area from Morocco to Afghanistan, in subject matter from orphanages to child soldiers, and in genre from scholarship and literature to speeches and lullabies. Over thirty of the book's contributors hail from the Middle East, and a fair number of chapters have been specially translated from Middle Eastern languages. Together, they put Middle Eastern children on the research map.

Chapter titles signal the children's bleak status. We learn of 'girls' participation in combat' (in Lebanon), of 'bodily mutilation of young females' (in Egypt), and of 'working children in Cairo.' According to Hassan al-Ebraheem of the Kuwait Society for the Advancement of Arab Children, there are 90 million Arabic-speaking children, of which 'half today are threatened in their physical health by the dangers of hunger, poverty, and war.' A majority of them, he reports, live in unsuitable dwellings, and 3,500 of them die each day from treatable diseases.

Then, of course, there is the particularly debased status of girls. A sixteen-year old Turkish girl who does piecework sewing for her father's business sums up the predicament of her sex: 'I work, but I have no value.' Nor are matters improving, for, as Fernea explains, 'in general colonialism intensified traditional family patterns, particularly those involving differentials of gender identity,' and matters have changed little since independence. Taking on new roles in society appears not to have helped the status of females.

Middle East Quarterly, March 1996

This book consists of a very varied collection of essays about numerous aspects of children's lives in the Middle East, as well as some short fiction and poetry. The book is organized into the following sections: growing up; children's health; children and work; children's education; children, politics, and war; and children and the arts. At times, the book steps beyond its stated theme, describing in some cases situations that have more to do with poverty than Islam or the Middle East (particularly in the health section), or Christian women (at war in Lebanon). But on the whole, every piece is well written and extremely informative. This is an important contribution to Middle Eastern studies; it will also be of interest to those studying families or children across cultures.

Leila Abouzeid's novel and accompanying short stories are all the more remarkable because, at the time this collection was published (1989), it was the first time a novel by a Moroccan woman had been translated from Arabic into English.

The contents of the book were also radical: that of a female activist facing divorce in mid-life and her struggle to survive when her rights were perilously few in a society that did not accommodate her situation. Rather, it punished her for the failed marriage. I read this book back to back with Malika Oufkir's harrowing account of her family's 20 year imprisonment in Morocco. Abouzeid's story touches on some similar issues: that of revolt, torn allegiances, political and personal persecution in a country fraut with power struggles. Oufkir was a member of the elite who went from palace to prison, from being somebody to nobody. On the face of it, Abouzeid's heroine Zahra led a more ordinary life although her other life as an activist was extraordinary. She had to muster even more courage after her divorce and the near impossible task of rebuilding her life. Like Oufkir, she went from being somebody to nobody with the loyalties of family and friends in tatters. Zahra is divorced, illiterate and without economic resources, but finds strength within her Muslim faith. This is an illuminating account of Morocco's struggle for independence through the eyes of a working class woman on her own path to personal independence.

A must read for Western feminists and Western women in general. It is a window to another world where women fought and still fight different battles, and some that are the same.

In a society where women's voices can not be heard, Leila made her voice clearly audiable for the whole world to hear her. The freedom to give her perspective and beliefs were evident, as she boldly used her autobiography, to speak on behalf of the Muslim Moroccan women and citizens. She corrected any misconceptions that are normally made about Islam and Muslim women throughout her intricate piece of literature. After reading this novel, I had a better understanding of Morocco's history as well as the Muslims who inhabited the country. As a Christian, it is no wonder that the Muslims do not have a good attitude towards many Christians, for look at the poor example the Nasaras (the Christian French colonists) displayed to the Moroccans, the injustice and cruelty they gave them, it disgusts me. Leila Abouzeid did a wonderful job in the providing the readers an opportunity to get into the mind and the emotions of a typical Moroccan that had to tolerate and endure through the hardships of unjust French colonialism. I completely agree with her perspective on the West and it's self-sufficient ways, for being full of self-interest is so against God's Word! The struggle for power is the main concern for the evil world, instead of the struggle for peace. We must work together to make this world a more righteous environment for our children to live in, wallah. Peace can begin with one person, so let us attempt to make harmony with our brothers and sisters, for the struggle for independence in our daily lives can be less painful if we make conscience effort, inshallah.

I borrowed this book from a colleague of mine and carried it around for five months, not having time to sit and read it. Oh I wish I had read it five months earlier! It is so well written, capturing the very essence of life in the Middle East. But what really struck me was that much of the culture that was described by Fernea still exists in various shapes and forms. I lived in an oasis village in the United Arab Emirates, and though we knew it was the 90's, the locals held to customs and ideas as if nothing had changed, only the roads now were paved. Extraordinary story from the female perspective. A must read.

I cannot give this review without some personal background - I was a student of Robert Fernea's Middle EasternAnthropology class in 1972 at the University of Texas - "Guests of the Shiek" (duh) was the textbook for the course. I failed this class - didn't even read the book. Some years later,I picked it up again, and could not put it down. I was 18 when I took the course and about 22 when I read the book - I had always been interested inEgyptology and Middle Eastern life, and for that reason I guess, I just devoured this book, set free from university pressure. Mrs. Fernea delivered one of the mostunbiased and factually accurate renditions of the muslim culture I have ever read, and this is in the aftereffect of having been to the Middle East myself, several times.As she points out, we only see the menwho come on Western shores from Islam and we (western people) cannot understand these men's seeming lack of all decorum, especially in terms of dating and sex. But from this book, we can see that these sheltered men have been taught since birth that women who showed themselves are immoral women,and are reacting to a situation in the only way they know how to - i.e. in assuming that any woman who dresses scantily is inviting male attention and is not anything but a promiscuous woman. What is not so obvious is that women in Muslim society wield alot of power behind the scenes - who can their sons marry, what family do the daughters marry into, how much and what kind of education to the children, male or female get, etc.Americans of today don't think alot about these issues, but they should since they shape the next generation. Lastly, I will just say that this is an enchanting book and a very easy slide into another world for anyone with an open mind. It changed my life, truly. CM

When Elizabeth Fernea set out for the rural Iraqi village of El Nahra in 1956, she was no trained anthropologist, no great published writer - no, she was, very simply, a newly married woman going to join her anthropologist husband overseas & to help him in his studies. When she left 2 years later, however, she held in her hands the germ of an idea for one of the most finely wrought ethnographies in existence, a book she would call GUESTS OF THE SHEIK.

GUESTS OF THE SHEIK, being fully a product of Fernea's untutored description of her stay among the women of the village, is a deeply personal work, full of small details & emotional shading that might otherwise be omitted from a more scholarly tome. Her own failures & victories - nothing is hidden; the reader learns from her mistakes as SHE learned from them, & typically we find the cause of her blunders to be the values & ethics deeply entrenched in our Western culture. When broken down into its roots, the word 'ethnography' literally means 'folk story,' and that this is, being both a story of the 'women of the veil' in this tiny village in southern Iraq as they were in 1956, and also a story which goes far towards explicating our OWN culture, revealing the sometimes absurd nature of our OWN thoughts & desires. It is not meant to be taken as a universal tale, or some steadfast rule that we must measure ALL Iraqi villages by, but is a description of ONE woman's singular experiences in ONE small, unique village. Fernea's purpose here is simple; to give these women a voice, so that others might hear. In doing so she destroys many preconceived notions about their culture, & paints a vivid picture of these women, their intelligence & their way of life that will not be soon forgotten.

This book presents a wide-ranging description of Nubian culture by juxtaposing reprints of 3 different works by the authors. The first section, representing a woman's observations of Nubian village life before relocation, consists of excerpts from Elizabeth Warnock Fernea's "A View of the Nile". Following that are excerpts from Robert Fernea's work from the same time period, "Nubians in Egypt: A Peaceful People." The book concludes with an update on Nubian culture in the 1980s from a paper given by Robert Fernea and Aleya Rouchdy and published in "Nubian Culture: Past and Present". If you have the original works, you naturally don't need this book. But for others, this book is a very convenient and succinct summary of several viewpoints on Nubian culture.

I had to read this book for Islamic class and let me tell you this book was very well informative but it was a bit boring...Very factual which is important in the controversy about the treatment of women in Islam. It talks about that there are communal practice permitted freedom in muslim society. It is not right that the freedom is hard to get but I am reminded of the Susan B. Anthony and the suffragettes. Globally, Women always suffer. This is a good book for research.

This book describes Fernea's personal quest for Islamic feminism throughout the Middle East. Each chapter describes her experiences in a different country. It is never made clear whether the ordering of the chapters corresponds to the chronology of her visits, although she mentions in the beginning that she began in 1994, and the most recent entries seem to be from about 1997. Although some of the visits seem to be specifically for this project, others appear to have been incidental, where she did research for the project while on various lecture tours arranged for other purposes.

Fernea writes from a very personal point of view in this book. Indeed, the book, with its details of such things as the food she ate and her misadventures with her hostesses' dog, comes across more as a travel journal than an academic survey. Throughout, she seems to go out of her way make it clear that she does not consider herself an expert on the topic, but rather as a curious seeker. She also laments frequently her limited ability in Standard Arabic. Coming from an author of her stature, this is a bit surprising. But then again, this is in line with her previous ethnographic studies on the Middle East, which described her and her family's personal dealings with the culture as much as they described the culture itself. And perhaps given the topic and the ethnicity of the author, this was the only possible approach for a book exploring these questions.

Fernea presents few clear conclusions in her search for Islamic feminism. Those generalities that are mentioned come mostly from the mouths of the women she interviews. The clearest message is that women in the Middle East seem leery of the term "feminist". To them, "feminism" seems to represent attitudes of Western women (of perhaps questionable morals) who want to subvert their culture. On the other hand, virtually all the women interviewed in the book are concerned about women's issues and would like to improve the lives of women in their communities. Several of the women stressed that there is no overall "Islamic" culture; each Islamic country has its own culture. The issues that are important for women in any given country arise more from the culture than from the religion. Nevertheless, the religion does provide certain rights and expectations for all Islamic women; whether the women can take advantage of these rights depends on the conditions prevailing where they live.

This book represents yet another chapter in the Fernea's growth in understanding about the women in this region. As such, it will be a welcome addition in the library of anyone who has read her previous books, or for anyone else who is exploring women's issues and Islam.

Very interesting personal account of a Western woman's experiences in the Middle-East, giving a voice to those who really have no voice: the women. No, this isn't scholarly and her lack of ability to speak Arabic certainly handicaps her, but still this is valuable.

Those who complain about the emphasis on clothing are either apologists or fail to understand the meaning of such required restrictive dress to Western women: it means a lack of ability to move about freely (because of voluminous fabric or the heat of wearing such occulsive clothes) as well as, more seriously, the idea that women are objects to be kept secluded because they belong to a man. It means that women are responsible for men's morality and must pay for men's inability to exhibit self-control. I don't think Fernea did a good job of explaining her own view of such subjects.

A superb book, describing the authors travels to several Middle Eastern countries emphasizing the role of women in each country. In her discussions with local women, she explores the various images of women, in those countries and in the West, and looks for how feminist ideas interact with Islamic cultures. I lead tour groups to the Middle East, and one of the most common questions I hear from prospective travelers is the perception that women in all Islamic countries are oppressed and undervalued. Fernea and her associates dispell this idea, and show the wide range of responses and possibilities. As in the West, many people have a reluctance to even use the word 'feminism', when in fact there is substantial agreement on the actual ideals of equality and other principles that transcend other cultural or religious artifacts and obstacles. On our trips, we don't often have the chance to get as involved in discussions as Fernea, with her years of experience and contacts does, but, in what I have experienced (in Morocco, Egypt, Iran, Syria, Uzbekistan and Turkey), her discussions here ring true. Along with Dalrymple's From the Holy Mountain, these are 2 of my highest recommended books as glimpses of modern culture in the Middle East. It was particularly interesting to read some of the negative reviews on Amazon -- I find it hard to believe those people were reading the same book I was!

I bought this book thinking I would get a good overview of each of the countries the authors lived in. Instead the book consists of lengthy conversations between them and their friends, intersperesed with really trivial and banal comments. Given that both authors are academics, I expected some depth--but there was none. A real waste of money.

The Arab World - Forty Years Of Change had a tendency of praising most things that are in some ways connected to arab culture. Everything is "wonderful" or "interesting" and so on. This tendency is enhanced by the fact that the authors seems to have more interest in achieving insight in Arab culture than Western culture, and thus have a pretty narrow and onedimensional view on issues that concerns Western politics and behaviour. Issues that are far more complex than the authors seems to believe. Anyway, The Arab World is also a book written by two people who seems to be genuinely interested in the matters that they are dealing with, and the analytical approach that the end of every chapter contains is a delight to read. In the next update of The Arab World, I would like a more balanced and critical view. It would double the quality of the book.