Table Of ContentGlobal Masculinities – a new series from Zed Books
series editor: michael s. kimmel
Men face common issues – the balance between work
and family, fatherhood, defining masculinity in a globalizing
economy, health and reproduction, sexuality, and violence.
But they are experiencing these all over the world in very dif-
ferent contexts and are coming up with different priorities and
strategies to address them. This new international series will
provide a vehicle for understanding this diversity, and reflect
the growing awareness that analysis of masculinity will be
greatly impoverished if it remains dominated by a European/
North American/Australian matrix. A number of regional and
thematic cross-cultural volumes are planned.
The editor, Michael S. Kimmel, is a well-known educator
concerning gender issues. His most recent book, Manhood in
America: A Cultural History, was published in 1996 to signifi-
cant acclaim. His work has appeared in dozens of magazines,
newspapers and scholarly journals, including the New York
Times Book Review, the Harvard Business Review, the Nation
and Psychology Today, where he was a contributing editor
and columnist on male-female relationships. His teaching
examines men’s lives from a pro-feminist perspective. He is
national spokesperson for the National Organization for Men
Against Sexism (NOMAS) in the States.
Already published
Robert Morrell (ed.), Changing Masculinities in a Changing
Society: Men and Gender in Southern Africa
Bob Pease and Keith Pringle (eds), A Man’s World? Changing
Men’s Practices in a Globalized World
Frances Cleaver (ed.), Making Masculinity Matter! Men, Gender
and Development
In preparation
Adam Jones (ed.), Men of the Global South: A Reader (forth-
coming Autumn 2006)
About this book
This challenging book of essays outlines the great
complexity, variety and difference of male identities in Islamic
societies.
From the Taliban orphanages of Afghanistan to the cafés of
Morocco; from the experience of couples at infertility clinics
in Egypt to the trials of Iraqi conscripts, these essays illustrate
how the masculine gender is constructed and negotiated in
the Islamic Ummah.
The collection goes far beyond the traditional notion
that Islamic masculinities are inseparable from the control
of women. The essays outline an experience of the relation
between spirituality and masculinity quite different from the
prevailing Western norms. Drawing on sources ranging from
modern Arabic literature to discussions of Muhammad’s viril-
ity and Abraham’s paternity, Islamic Masculinities portrays
ways of being in the world that intertwine with non-Western
conceptions of duty to the family, the state and the divine.
This innovative and illuminating book will be of major
interest to students of culture, gender and sociology, and will
provide new insights even to specialists in the Middle East and
Islamic Studies.
lahoucine ouzgane | editor
Islamic masculinities
Z
Zed Books
london | new york
Islamic masculinities was first published by Zed Books Ltd, 7 Cynthia
Street, London n1 9jf, uk and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York,
ny 10010, usa in 2006
www.zedbooks.co.uk
Editorial copyright © Lahoucine Ouzgane, 2006
Individual chapters © individual contributors, 2006
The rights of the editor and contributors to be identified as the authors
of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
Cover designed by Andrew Corbett
Set in Arnhem and Futura Bold by Ewan Smith, London
Index: <[email protected]>
Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by Biddles Ltd
Distributed in the usa exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of
St Martin’s Press, llc, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, ny 10010.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
us cip data are available from the Library of Congress.
All rights reserved
isbn 1 84277 274 0 hb
isbn 1 84277 275 9 pb
isbn 978 1 84277 274 4 hb
isbn 978 1 84277 275 1 pb
Contents
Acknowledgements | viii
Islamic masculinities: an introduction. . . . . . . . . . . 1
lahoucine ouzgane
one | Masculinities and religion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1 Gender and Islamic spirituality: a psychological view
of ‘low’ fundamentalism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
durre s. ahmed
The psychological/theoretical framework | 12 Elements of
doctrine and practice in Islamic mysticism | 16 Ulemas-
culinists, money-theists, and other ‘low’ fundamentalists | 21
The terror within | 23 The hero’s shadow | 24 The absence
of eros and logos | 25 Masculinity in crisis | 28
Conclusion | 30
2 The smile of death and the solemncholy of masculinity . 35
banu helvacioglu
Tragedy is comedy | 36 Islamic masculinity, will you please
stand up? | 45 The end: go in laughter | 53
3 Alternate images of the Prophet Muhammad’s virility . . 57
ruth roded
Forthright classical Islamic descriptions of the Prophet’s
sexual life | 57 Western European attacks on Muhammad’s
‘licentious behaviour’ | 59 Modern Muslims’ defensive
responses | 62 Modern Muslims’ views of sexuality | 65
Conclusion | 67
4 The trial of heritage and the legacy of Abraham . . . . . 72
najat rahman
two | Masculinities and the Palestinian–Israeli conflict . 87
5 ‘My Wife is from the Jinn’: Palestinian men, diaspora and
love . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
celia rothenberg
The jinn and politics in the West Bank | 89
On interpretation | 91 Diaspora and return | 93
Love and desire | 96 The power of love | 101
6 Chasing horses, eating Arabs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
rob k. baum
The language of struggle | 105 The Palestinian position | 109
Plot lines | 110 Screening male/female sexuality | 112
Feminizing the enemy | 115 Eating Arabs | 118
7 Stranger masculinities: gender and politics in a
Palestinian–Israeli ‘third space’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
daniel monterescu
Identity conflicts and dilemmas of the Palestinian citizens
of Israel | 125 The mixed context in Jaffa: otherness,
strangeness and stereotypes | 126 To modernity and back:
three competing models of masculinity | 128 Stranger
masculinities as postcolonial products | 137
three | Masculinities and social practice. . . . . . . . . 143
8 Gender, power and social change in Morocco . . . . . . 145
don conway-long
Social changes | 154
9 Masculinity and gender violence in Yemen. . . . . . . . 161
mohammed baobaid
Methodology | 163 Understanding gender violence
within the family | 163 The status of women in Islamic
countries | 165 Yemen society | 168 Violence against women
in Yemen | 169 The legalization of gender violence | 173
The response of society towards gender violence | 175
Conclusion | 177 Appendix | 180
10 Opportunities for masculinity and love: cultural
production in Ba’thist Iraq during the 1980s . . . . . . . 184
achim rohde
Nationalism and gender | 186 Mass culture in Ba’thist
Iraq | 188 Militarism, war and gender | 188 When the
land is female, war is love and the nation is a family | 190
Conclusion | 198
11 On being homosexual and Muslim: conflicts and
challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
asifa siraj
Source of conflict | 204 ‘Coming out’ | 209 Marriage | 210
The challenge to heteronormativity | 212 Conclusion | 213
12 ‘The worms are weak’: male infertility and patriarchal
paradoxes in Egypt. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
marcia c. inhorn
Male infertility in global perspective | 217
Methodology | 220 Two cases of male infertility | 221
Egyptian patriarchy | 225 Patriarchy and procreative
blame | 226 Conclusion | 233
Contributors | 238
Index | 241
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Robert Molteno, Michael Pallis and Anna
Hardman for their contributions to the production of this
book. I am grateful to Michael Kimmel, who has com-
mented on this work with care, enthusiasm and speed; his
faith in and support of this project have been invaluable.
I would also like to thank Ryan, Ben and Joni for their
unwavering love.
Edmonton, August 2005
Islamic masculinities: an introduction
LAHOUCINE OUZGANE
In the last three or four decades, scholarly attention to gender issues in
the Middle East and North Africa has been focused almost exclusively1 on a
quest to understand femininity: what it is and how it is made and regulated
– with Muslim women’s oppression, the question of the hijab, and the
practice of female genital mutilation receiving most of the scrutiny.2 Some
of the most significant literature on this subject includes Fatna Sabbah’s
Woman in the Muslim Unconscious (1984), a detailed critique of the complex
and contradictory messages which the Islamic legal and erotic discourses
inscribe on the female body; Fatima Mernissi’s The Veil and the Male Elite
(1987), an indictment of the ways in which numerous Hadiths (or sayings
of the Prophet) have been manipulated by a male elite to maintain male
privileges; Fedwa Malti-Douglas’s Woman’s Body, Woman’s Word (1991), a
study of the relationship of woman’s voice in Arabo-Islamic discourse to
sexuality and the body; Leila Ahmed’s Women and Gender in Islam (1992), a
study (the best so far) of the development of Islamic discourses on women
and gender from the ancient world to the present; and Marnia Lazreg’s
The Eloquence of Silence (1994), an analysis of gender relations in Algeria
from pre-colonial times to the present.
By contrast, studies of Islamic masculinities are surprisingly rare. At a
time when masculinities studies is experiencing a tremendous boom in
the West, masculinity in Islamic cultures has so far remained an under-
examined category that secures its power by refusing to identify itself.
Except for Imagined Masculinities: Male Identity and Culture in the Modern
Middle East (2000), there are very few studies that render Muslim men vis-
ible as gendered subjects and that show that masculinities have a history
and are part of gender relations in Muslim cultures. Although most of the
essays are reprints, Mai Ghoussoub and Emma Sinclair-Webb’s Imagined
Masculinities is thus the first serious collection that addresses the different
aspects of being and becoming a man in the modern Middle East. The book
examines some widespread rites of passage by which male identities are
constructed and desirable versions of masculinity achieved: male circum-
cision, a boy’s expulsion from the women’s hammam, military service, and
the Palestinian rituals of resistance to the Israeli army.
Two other books on the subject of Islamic masculinities are limited
