Tag Archives: Saudi Arabia

The “Veil” in Tunisia

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P1020927I am very happy to share this guest blog post, written by a new member of our Cultural Detective community, Dr. Larry Michalak. His story illustrates a topic we’ve posted about before: veiling and how easily people can jump to the (wrong) conclusions about a person’s appearance.

What I particularly appreciate about Larry’s piece is that his list at the end illustrates a vital cross-cultural skill: the ability to generate multiple possible motivations for behavior. This ability is crucially important if we are to get beyond our own biases and expand our worldview, really get to know others, and develop respect, empathy and the ability to collaborate. Here is Larry’s post:

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Sit in a café on any street in Tunis (one of the pleasures of life!), and you will notice that the women who pass are covering up more than they used to in years past. There is a new kind of women’s clothing that didn’t exist when I was here in the 1960s—headscarves and smock-like dresses that cover the arms.

This “veiling” phenomenon has become a widespread topic of conversation, journalism, and social and even political analysis. Women began covering up more in the late 1970s, the headscarf was suppressed by the government in schools and public offices until the Tunisian revolution in January 2011, and now women are free to dress as they please.

Some scholars count the percentage of Tunisian women who are veiled, and cite these statistics in articles. This mode of dress (the argument goes) has religious and/or political meaning. It shows an increase in religious conservatism, and/or means that the wearer of the veil is showing sympathy with Islamic politics, opposition to the U.S., etc. When these observations come from secularists they are usually accompanied by expressions of disapproval of the veil.

But there are problems with this argument. One of them is the difficulty of defining what constitutes “veiling.” There is the hijab, which in Tunisia can mean a headscarf or else a headscarf accompanied by a smock-like dress that covers the arms and comes down to the ankles. Sometimes there is just a headscarf, and sometimes the headscarf is worn to cover the woman’s hair—sometimes completely and sometimes not. Full veiling, such as one finds in the Eastern part of the Middle East (e.g., the chador in Iran, the burka in Afghanistan, and the nikab in Saudi Arabia), is very rare in Tunisia. The term “veiling” is used indiscriminately to refer to all these different ways of covering.

Some years ago there was an excellent article in Jeune Afrique by a Tunisian woman journalist who thought that fashion was probably the most important reason for veiling. Some women wear the veil as they would a miniskirt—because it’s the fashion—and the cut and the color are more important than any religious content. Many of these women who veil have never read the Qur’an or performed the prayer. Some go veiled on weekdays and wear bikinis on the beach on the weekend. Some wear the veil to nightclubs with their whisky-drinking boyfriends. And on the boulevards of Tunis, one can see veiled women holding hands with their boyfriends.

My conclusion is: You can’t tell much about people by looking at how they dress. Just as you can’t judge a book by its cover, neither can you judge a woman by her clothing. This goes for men, too. I have known traditionally dressed men with very modern ideas, and men in Western suits who would feel right at home with the Taliban. I once heard a scholar give a paper at a conference, with statistics on what percentage of the women he observed in different places and at different hours were “veiled.” But he was calling lots of things “veils” and assuming that the “veil” reflects religious and/or political opinions.

To make my point, here is a list of ten reasons, other than religious or political, that a Tunisian woman might “veil.”

  1. “I do it to piss off my parents—especially my mother, who doesn’t veil.”
  2. “On TV I saw some women in Egypt who wear it and I think it looks great!”
  3. “I just got married and now I don’t have to advertise my looks.”
  4. “I just washed my hair, and I can’t do a thing with it.”
  5. “So that the guys will leave me alone on the bus.”
  6. “I want people to think that I’m a virgin so that I can find a husband more easily.”
  7. “I’m on my way to have sex with my boyfriend and I don’t want anyone to recognize me.”
  8. “I’m so beautiful that I have to cover up to keep the guys from going crazy.”
  9. “I’m not attractive and I’m self-conscious about it, so I leave my looks to people’s imagination.”
  10. And, finally: “It’s cold out today and I want to keep my head warm.”

In other words, sometimes a headscarf is just a headscarf!

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Dr. Larry Michalak is a cultural anthropologist with degrees from Stanford, London and UC/Berkeley. He was Vice Chair of Berkeley’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies for 23 years. His specialty is the Arab World, especially Tunisia, where he was a Peace Corps Volunteer in the 1960s. He has now spent over ten years there. Larry is fluent in Arabic and French. In his retirement he has enjoyed traveling with his wife Karen as an enrichment lecturer for UC/Berkeley and the Smithsonian, and he has also taught on Semester at Sea.  His favorite topics are anthropology of food and anthropology of tourism.

Syria — The war within and between

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Many have asked me to give a briefing on Syria because I am here in person. Well, here is that briefing, in a VERY simple way.

To many people, the war in Syria is just another Arab Awakening. Being in the country myself, I realize that this is not at all the case. There are at least three conflicts going on:

  1. A true Arab Spring involving young liberals regardless of religious backgrounds, demanding regime reform and democracy.
  2. A war between two Islamic sects, the Alawite government and the Sunni opposition.
  3. A political game with hidden agendas among the big boys (US, EU, Iran, Israel and Saudi).

Mainstream media in the West seems more likely to feature war number 1 and manipulate war number 2 to the advantage of war number 3. Those representing the opposition who appear on CNN and BBC look liberal, westernized and almost victimized.

Next, the media backed by (Sunni) Saudi will call for jihad to provoke war number 2. I saw with my own eyes an opposition’s channel broadcasting from Saudi called “Sunni blood as one.” Note that the Syrian president is not a Sunni Muslim; he is from Alawite, a small sect of Islam.

Last, micro media — social media (blogs, Twitter, forums…etc) and word of mouth will keep circulating around zillions of conspiracy theories and guesswork about war number 3. For example, one of them I have heard: “The West does not want to topple the government; they just want to keep Syria in conflict to the point that it would benefit Israel and weaken Iran, who is Syria’s big ally.”

In this age when images and video clips dominate and cloud our thinking, one easily loses the big picture and falls victim to the vivid power of visual effect. As a good Cultural Detective, please pay attention to hidden biases.

As a journalist, I have the power to CHOOSE what to report. Is there something called “complete objective journalism”? I doubt it.

I have seen demonstrations for and against the regime. Which one would I report? Most secret journalists in Syria would choose to capture the opposition because they and their news (sub)consciously support wars number 1 and 3.

I’ll make a counterbalance here to share with you a view on war number 2. This is the picture of the regime’s supporters who gathered to celebrate with cheerful music and dance. Quoting a local from the crowd: “To be honest, our president is not perfect. But between him and the Sunni extremist opposition, I would go for the lesser of the two evils.”

Saudi and Its Treasure

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Saudi Arabia absolutely deserves its renowned title, “the last forbidden kingdom in the world.”

There are virtually no tourists in the country. There is also no such a thing as a tourist visa. In order to get into the kingdom, I needed to have an invitation from a friend or a company. After a few months furiously networking, I still found no one who was bold enough to want to get involved. A colleague of mine kindly explained: “You don’t make friends with a Saudi through email. You need to have incredible luck to meet one first, then wait until you have eaten all their dates and your body has been swollen with their tea, then you may say you have a friend.”

However, I must say I do have some self-claimed friends from a Saudi forum. One of them, not sure of his nationality, has helped me generously up to a point where he asked me to send a photo so he could pick me up at the airport and (word by word) “…make sex together”. After many other dramas, I decided to contact the embassy and frankly told them my whole idea: “Sir, I would like to travel along the Islamic history route, from where Islam began, which is your country. And then I will follow its expansion path through three continents. Think Ibn Batutta! I want to show people that there is also a different Middle East than what is described in media. I’m a good person with good purpose. Please help!”

I started to email and call Saudi embassy in The Hague nine months before my journey began, without much luck. Then I decided to just knock on their door. The first man I talked with made me jump to my feet when he said this is an amazing project, and the embassy “has to” support me. I came back home, preparing a cover letter and all other documents as suggested. A month later, I got an appointment with the first secretary and was overwhelmed by the friendliness I received. I came home again to prepare a thick package of paper as suggested, even got to details such as who I plan to meet and where I plan to visit. Mr. Secretary promised to inform me if anything else is needed. He kindly asked for my patience as the papers would have to wait after the annual Hajj to be submitted to the Ministry of Culture. Three months later, he informed me that my application had been sent away.

Then I patiently waited for another three months…

And I am still waiting…

Now, let me tell you another story. When I was small, my father – a colonel in the North Vietnamese army – had in his room a small safe that nobody was allowed to touch, let alone to open it. My siblings and I used to stare at it for hours, arguing what it was inside. Our imagination ran wild, starting with all sorts of guns and weapons, or maybe poison. One day, I – by then five years old – stood up and seriously concluded that there must be a monster being kept in the safe. None of us ever thought of something beautiful, like a precious stone or similar treasure. Daddy would share it with us no doubt if it was a beautiful thing.

Years after, when my father got his cancer, in one of the last days of his life, he called me to his bed and gave me the secret that he had been keeping away from us for so long.

It is a bible. It is a small bible with a beautiful red leather case.

In another story, I will explain to you why the bible must be hidden in my family. For now, whenever I recall my childhood staring at father’s safe, letting the wild rumor and imagination consume my mind, I could not help a chuckle. It still surprises me how far from the truth our guess work had been.

My friends, don’t you think we have done enough guess work about Saudi?

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It’s nice to meet all of you here on the Cultural Detective blog! I am a proud member of this team, and co-author of Cultural Detective Vietnam. I am in the midst of a journey that traces the path of Islam, from its origins as it spread outward around our planet. You can follow my journey daily in Facebook or via my blog.