#10 in African history books
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Reddit mentions of Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village
Sentiment score: 3
Reddit mentions: 4
We found 4 Reddit mentions of Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village. Here are the top ones.
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Specs:
| Color | Black |
| Height | 7.99 Inches |
| Length | 5.19 Inches |
| Number of items | 1 |
| Release date | October 1995 |
| Weight | 0.59083886216 Pounds |
| Width | 0.78 Inches |
Hi! Thanks for doing this! Reposting from the original thread that was taken down.
Do you plan on staying in New York?
First thank you for the well thought out response that wasn't just "Omg don't you know that everyone who wears that is obviously abused by their husbands!"
I personally am going to throw out the "practically it doesn't work here" argument because there are plenty of people who wear things that practically don't make much sense other than burqas. The fact that I still see people walking around in my college town in just sweaters or in shorts when it is 20 degrees. A silly example, but an example nonetheless.
And although I agree that it does most likely help perpetuate certain ways of thinking about women, I don't think it's fair to take someone from another culture and tell them to immediately adapt to how we view women and the world.
I read Guests of the Sheik for an anthropology class I took (great read for the record, I'd definitely recommend it). It talked at length at times about the roll of the burqa there, including the positives it held for those women.
Having one apparently gives you a feeling of anonymity and protection on some level, and I can see and understand this being the case. It's the same reason when I have to make a speech or go to a job interview, I like to wear certain clothes, so I feel confident in myself in those moments.
If I came to a new country with a culture and way of thinking very different than my own, I'd want a sense of confidence, protection, and anonymity that came with my usual way of dressing. With time hopefully those people will be aware of their freedoms and the way people think and act in the new culture they are in and make choices on how to dress.
I'm aware that there are of course still people that are going to be oppressed on some level and end up still wearing the burqa for reasons related to that oppression. But the larger issue at that point is religious indoctrination and not specifically the burqa or Muslim people anymore. So banning the burqa isn't going to fix that problem. Most likely it will just push those people away from our culture even further, squashing any chance that these oppressed women will ever see a different way of living.
Tl;dr - The burqa may help continue misogynistic ways of thinking but it is also a tool of protection, anonymity, and familiarity in a new culture. It's unrealistic to expect people to immediately adapt to our ways of thinking. And at the end of the day the larger issue is religious indoctrination. Banning the burqa will probably push those people away from other cultures more than actually help them.
I really liked Guests of the Shiek. It's a personal account of an anthropologist's wife living with the women of a rural Iraqi village. It's less about the political history of the country and more a snapshot of the old ways (social structures, politics, religious codes) meeting the new. Take it with a grain of salt (being written in the fifties, it has some problems with both "noble savagery" and closed-mindedness) and you'll really enjoy it.
Do yourself a favor and educate yourself as much as you can.
Read the ethnographic book Guest of a Sheik
Elizabeth Warnock Fernea spent the first two years of her marriage in the 1950s living in El Nahra, a small village in Southern Iraq, and her book is a personal narrative about life behind a veil in a community unaccustomed to Western women.
It will give their point of view through a console academic source.