عراقيات حكايات مكتومة منذ 1948

by Nadje Al-Ali, فالح حسن فزع (ترجمة)

Nadje al-Ali challenges the myths and misconceptions which have dominated debates about Iraqi women, bringing a much needed gender perspective to bear on a central political issue of our time. She traces the political history of Iraq from post-colonial independence, to the emergence of a women's movement in the 1950s and Saddam Hussein's early policy of state feminism. The book also discusses the increases in social conservatism, domestic violence and prostitution, and shows that, far from being passive victims, Iraqi women have been, and continue to be, key political actors. The impact of Islam on women's lives is analysed in the context of the recent invasion and occupation, and it is argued that US-led calls for liberation may in the long term serve to oppress the women of Iraq further.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Politics

335 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Nadje Sadig Al-Ali (Arabic: نادية صادق العلي‎) is the author of Iraqi Women: Untold Stories From 1948 to the Present. and co-author with Nicola Pratt of What Kind of Liberation? Women and the Occupation of Iraq. Born to an Iraqi father and German mother, and having lived in Egypt for several years and being involved in the Egyptian women's movement, Al-Ali is also Professor of Gender Studies at the Center for Gender Studies at the School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS).

Al-Ali graduated from the University of Arizona (BA), University of Cairo (MA) and received a PhD from the anthropology department of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London in 1998. She is currently chairing the Centre for Gender Studies at SOAS. She is also President of the Association of Middle East Women's Studies (AMEWS), and a member of the Feminist Review Collective.

Alongside her academic career, Nadje Al-Ali is a political activist and was a founder of the Iraqi British organisation Act Together: Women's Action for Iraq in 2000. She is also a member of the London branch of Women in Black, a worldwide network of women who are against war and violence.

Many of her publications reflect the lives of Iraqi women and recent struggle to voice their opinions during the US-led invasion of Iraq.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Sincerae Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished this book today as I received in the mail this other very important, mammoth size tome about the modern history of Iraq:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

I have been fascinated by Iraq for years since it was in the news for such a long time. I wanted to learn about it in depth far away from the media. I was very excited over a year ago when I happened upon Iraq Women by accident while surfing online.

Though I have a few points of criticism about Iraqi Women: Untold Stories from 1948 to the Present by Nadje Al-Ali, I really appreciate and enjoy this book.

Iraq came on the scene for me and all the American public back in 1990 when I had started teaching English and Social Studies after getting my masters in education. From that time until about 2006 (by 2006 I had started to re-invent myself as an educator and switched over to teaching English as a second language), Iraq was constantly in the news. For over 15 years the news had been a caricature and about one man, former president Saddam Hussein. Once he was executed Iraq just faded out of the news. To this day the average American and Westerner in general do not know anything about Iraqi culture or history, its' complexities, much less about the modern history of Iraqi women.

This book is important. At the end the author admits that it's only a start in telling the story of Iraqis for the first time not from the top down. She also states that in recording history one should be conscious of the fact that different people view history and their experiences in different ways. What might have been an era of repression for one might be a golden age for another. Contained in this book is the author's own personal experiences and reminisces while visiting her relatives in Iraq and also narratives by Iraqi women starting before the revolution of 1958 which ended the monarchy up through the invasion of the Iraq in 2003.

My only problem with this book is I wish the author could have interviewed a more diverse group of women. None of the Iraqi women she interviews still live in Iraq. Some have lived for many years or decades in the US, UK, and Jordan. She also did not report the thoughts of or interview women who were from diverse religious, ethnic, socio-economic and political ideological groups. Despite these shortcomings, I still give it 5 stars because it offers detailed information about Iraqi culture and ideals which would leave the majority of us Westerners very surprised considering all the stereotypes and falsehoods in the media about Middle Eastern nations. Iraqi women, especially in the urban middle and upper classes, have not been passive bystanders in the modern history of their country.

[Sura ✿ · Rating 4 out of 5]

كتاب قيم يستحق القراءة

[Sia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd definitely had liked it more if al-Ali had interviewed a more diverse population of women. All the women interviewed were middle to upper class, secular, and well-educated. Nonetheless, these are fantastic testimonies and assist in understanding the history of Iraq and its people since 1948.

[Nadia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a really great book on many levels.

It's really weird for me to think that at this time Iraq has largely faded from public discourse. Since 1990, and as long as I'd been paying attention to politics for sure, it had been the subject of fear, of containment, of violence and constant debates in global and American policy. We talk about other places now.

At the time of the 2003 war and when this book was published I think there were two main points of rhetoric that came up WRT Iraq and women and the decline of women's rights. The first was total erasure and the belief that countries in the Middle East were always "this bad" whenever stories about horrific abuses or even things that were directly a result of the war like human trafficing occurred. There also was-like in Afghanistan but to a lesser extent-a mythology perpetuated by neocons that the war was in part about defending women's rights and some pro-war Iraqi expats in the US encouraged this and made flat out false claims that women were not allowed to study in universities in Iraq.

The other strain of the rhetoric WRT Iraq and women is also popular but just as wrong: it recognizes that Iraq once had a better situation for women's rights, but for some reason gives credit to the regime of Saddam Hussein for this when in fact the legal rights that women had in Iraq were the result of feminist activists' work and were implemented in the late 1950s, a decade before Ba'thist rule and 20 years before Hussein was in power.

This second mythology comes out of the really popular binary that there is only post and pre-2003 Iraq, and pre-2003 Iraq is represented by the Ba'thist regime and nothing else. As if nothing else had happened before this time and as if there were no other political actors, and I think this book largely seeks to counter this. The dominant question asked of Iraqis at wartime over and over was "was it better before or now" was and is irrelevant because there were many "before"s, and the answer is there are many ways that Iraq was experienced and also many ways in which things got worse. This actually isn't a book strictly about women's rights which is just one facet of life in Iraq.

The book is based on interviews of many Iraqi women whose stories begin to be narrated in the 1940s upto the present: it goes through what people's lives were like in the 1940s, following the overthrow of the monarchy and communist-leaning government of 1958, the coups of 1963, 1968, the following Ba'thist regimes and political persecution, the Iran-Iraq war, the Gulf war, the crushed rebellion, the 1990s sanctions and then finally the war of 2003.

One of the book's strengths is how much it lets its subjects speak for themselves which also is a limitation: being written and researched during the absolute worst of the secatarian violence, interviewing in Iraq was not an option and her subjects are interviewed in neighbouring countries as well as in the diaspora in the UK and the US. At the time quite a sizable chunk of the Iraqi population had fled to either Syria or Jordan once the violence got bad but of course many could not make that trip.

That also had really interesting results because her work became a map of the Iraqi diaspora: from those like the author's father who emigrated to London in the 50s, those who left fleeing political persecution in the 70s, were deported in the 1980s, fled the violence of 1991 or who migrated for economic reasons and all experienced Iraq very differently. Some were leftist activists while some were apolitical and some participated in US funded NGOs and worked as translators post-2003. Tensions between those who tried to return to Iraq after 2003 and those who never left, some of whom worked with American-funded groups and some that didn't.

That was all really helpful for me to read when so many competing narratives about Iraq were flying around. This is a really good read not just for those interested in the Middle East and gender issues but also for Iraqis outside Iraq who don't always get talk to people with different views from their own. Maybe pair it with Anthony Shadid's book or the documentary About Baghdad to get more views from those living inside.

[Ayat Hazem · Rating 3 out of 5]

كان من الممكن ان يكون الكتاب نقل حي لحكايات نساء سبقوا عصرنا وزماننا، كان يمكن ان يكون مرجع تاريخي لأي انثى عراقية. الا ان الكاتبه تناولت الكتاب بشكل دراسه تحليله لشخصية المرأه والاوضاع المحيطة بيها في العراق وكيف اثر ذلك على تكوين شخصيتها. وكانت في اكثر الاحيان تتناول شخصها اكثر من موضوع بحثها. يمكن ان يكون كتاب ممتع ومرجع لبعض الاحداث التي لم تذكرها ولن كتب التاريخ كونها تمس حياة الفرد العامة والعائلية لكن لايعتمد عليها كمرجع موثوق.

[Emily · Rating 1 out of 5]

The book is biased and contradicts itself in many places. While Al-Ali claims to get views from a wide variety of Iraqi women most interviews are with upper middle class, secular educated women. She also contradicts herself in many places, especially when speaking of the March 2003 invasion of Iraq and its aftermath.

[Fred Dameron · Rating 4 out of 5]

This work is a doctoral thesis turned into a book. Which is good, since Nadje Al-Ali describes the way she did her research and describes her reasoning. The start is slow since she is interviewing women who left Iraq in the 40's and 50's. As Al-Ali moves forward intimate she interviews more women who have lived through both the Gulf War and following sanctions by there U.S. and Allies through there fall of Hussein and the post invasion period. These interviews show a different view from the American and even the BBC news told the world.

I hope that Al-Ali future research into how art was affected since the Gulf War is published and I hope she does more research inside Iraq or in Amman as the world goes further. Her work is needed and should be read by decision makes both in Europe and the U.S. as how our policies directly affect the women Al-Ali writes about.

A necessary read if you are interested in what is actually happening in the Mid -East and effects on the West.

[Maha · Rating 5 out of 5]

كتاب متميز لباحثة عراقية عرضت فيه أصوات نساء عراقيات من خمسينات القرن العشرين و حتى العقد الأول من القرن الواحد و عشرين. تناولت الكاتبة المشاكل و الفرص في حيوات تلك النساء و شرحت الخلفية الاجتماعية و السياسية و الثقافية للمجتمع في الفترات الزمنية المختلفة التي تناولتها. ترجمة ممتازة و اسلوب سهل و سلس و مشوق لقراءة تاريخ العراق الحديث بوضع المرأة في الصدارة. التزمت الكاتبة الحيادية في تناولها للمواضيع الحساسة و بالذات الطائفية. كذلك وضحت محدودية الدراسة بكونها اعتمدت على وجهات نظر المثقفات و ساكنات المدن و لم تضم النساء الريفيات. جهد متميز و شكرا للترجمة العربية.

[Khulood Al Junaibi · Rating 4 out of 5]

دراسة مستفيضة عن وضع المرأة العراقية من الجمهورية والملكية انتهاء بسقوط حكم صدام حسين ودخول القوات الامريكية للعراق

[فلاح رحيم · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent anthropological study of the lived experiences of Iraqi women.

[Virginia Rand · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a really sad book, but one that I think more people should read.