Iraqi women: untold stories from 1948 to the present
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ili doi:10.1057/palgrave.fr.9400380
Iraqi women: untold stories from 1948 to the present Nadje Al-Ali; Zed Books, London and New York, 2007, 256p, ISBN 1-84277-745-9, d14.99 (Pbk)
This book, based on individual memories, personal experiences and collective narratives is truly the untold stories of Iraqi women. It is the diverse voices of secular, ethnic and religious (Shi’i, Sunni, Kurds) women of different generations and political orientation. These moving voices come from different parts of Iraq and from different parts of the diaspora (Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, UK, Germany, Canada and the USA). It is beautifully written, especially in that the author’s personal experience is part of these untold stories. So often Iraqi women, as a part of the women in the Muslim majority world, have been portrayed as passive victims of male and religious oppression waiting to be reviews of books about war
feminist review 88 2008
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liberated by the West. This book shatters these myths and demonstrates how Iraqi women, resourcefully and creatively, have resisted oppressions. Nadje Al-Ali constructs the truth about the diversity of Iraqi women’s experiences without falling into the postmodern trap of nihilistic relativism. The diverse voices of Iraqi women tell different stories about life in diaspora, under the Ba’th regime and Saddam Hussein, at the time of wars, sanctions, and under occupation. But there is a powerful commonality in these voices – wars and sanctions diminish women’s powers to struggle for gender equality. Al-Ali’s description of how she developed her own sense of Iraqiness in diaspora is very moving. It is the story of all those who live in diaspora because of repression at home. But life in diaspora becomes unbearable when they witness the destruction of their homeland and suffering of their people under aggressive foreign occupation. Iraqi women, with all diversities, evaluate their past in light of post-9/11. They consider the past governments repressive. Nevertheless, they find life more bearable in the past than in the subsequent wars and sanctions since 1991. The older generation remember when, under the regime of Abd al-Karim Qasim in 1959, Iraqi women increased their legal rights and equality through one of the most progressive family laws in the region. Under Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship women’s liberation was empty rhetoric, when the state, as the patriarch, lost credibility among the population. The Shi’i and the Kurdish communities, constituting the majority of the population, became victims of collective punishments and many atrocities committed against them. The eight year war with Iran (1980–1988), which Saddam Hussein started with the support of the West, intensified the power of the patriarchal state. Decrees were issued forbidding Iraqi women to marry non-Iraqis; prohibiting Iraqi women married to non-Iraqis transferring money or property to their husbands; Iraqi men were encouraged to divorce their Iranian wives; Iraqi Arab men were encouraged to marry Kurdish women. Saddam
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