I\u2019m sure you\u2019re familiar with the formula already. Find a Western-based intellectual who is disillusioned with his or her childhood upbringing in the big bad Muslim country du jour, encourage him or her to write a tell-all exclusive on how backwards and primitive said upbringing was, add a sensational headline pitting the \u201cWestern world\u201d against the \u201cMuslim world\u201d, and voila \u2013 you\u2019re on your way to a crowd-pleasing piece in which a lucrative book deal can\u2019t be too far behind.<\/p>\n
The premise of the article is clear. The writer attempts to explain how his former homeland, once \u201csecular and cosmopolitan\u201d lost the war with extremism and \u201cturned its back on social progress and intellectual freedom\u201d \u2013 a premise he tries to articulate by describing how the same phenomenon happened to his family.<\/p>\n
Al-Solaylee laments the Yemen of old when his \u201csecular\u201d family could live in peace and security under the British, Yemen\u2019s former colonizers. But soon that \u201csecurity was rocked by guerrilla uprisings in the mid-1960s,\u201d which led the writer\u2019s family into exile in Lebanon and Egypt.<\/p>\n
Despite the turmoil, Al-Solaylee recalls with fondness his days of frolicking on the beach with his sisters, helping them pick out bikinis \u2013 all evidence somehow of how \u201cenlightened\u201d and \u201cprogressive\u201d they were.<\/p>\n
But when the family moves back to Yemen 15 years later, it is a place the author says he can barely recognize and prompts him to leave for the U.K. to pursue his studies before eventually migrating to Canada.<\/p>\n
It is on his periodic return trips to Yemen to visit his family that he begins to see how \u201cdramatically\u201d they have changed and how they have \u201cembraced hard-line interpretations of Islam.\u201d What Al-Solaylee fails to make clear is his evidence for how his family\u2019s changes equate to \u201closing the war against extremism.\u201d<\/p>\n
He says, \u201cReturning again in the summer of 2001 \u2013 my first visit since I had moved to Canada in 1996 \u2013 I encountered a family that was a lot closer to the stereotype of regressive Muslim culture than I had ever known.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe veils were in full view. Everybody prayed five times a day. My brothers were unapologetically sexist in their dealings with their wives.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The latter example has nothing to do with Islam, and it is unfortunate that the writer chooses to link his brothers\u2019 sexist views to their religion. But even more disheartening is his equation of praying and wearing a scarf to extremism.<\/p>\n
He says women in Yemen are also now expected to cover their heads and wear the burqa in public.<\/p>\n
Al-Solaylee goes on to say: \u201cThe rare times I look at them, I see only a family that has betrayed its secular, intellectual history and has either chosen or been forced to accept intolerance instead.\u201d<\/p>\n
What connection do prayer and wearing a veil have with intolerance? What is his definition of extremism? Does increased religiosity necessarily mean extremist views? Al-Solaylee misses a chance to expound upon those questions, and instead chooses to hand the reader the trite equation of \u201cbikini equals good, veil equals bad.\u201d<\/p>\n
The one example that might have helped corroborate Al-Solaylee\u2019s premise was the anecdote about a brother who suggested that his eldest daughter need not go to college because an education wouldn\u2019t help her as a housewife. But even that was simply glossed over without a mention of any possible nuances to his brother\u2019s suggestion \u2013 especially in a family where some of the other women attended university.<\/p>\n
Also absent was any mention of an attempt by the writer to engage his family and try to understand why they seemed to have moved away from their secular values. If they were once intellectual, forward-thinking people, what turned them into religious drones, as the author would have us believe?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s feasible to imagine that a woman might wear a burqa outdoors if everyone else is doing so, and the prevailing society demands it. But who prays five times a day in the privacy of their own homes if they don\u2019t really want to?<\/p>\n
If in the end, all Al-Solaylee can see is \u201ca family that has betrayed its secular, intellectual history\u201d, then it makes sense that he fails to respect or attempt to understand the purpose behind their behavior. It\u2019s just too bad that the general public has to be subjected to another clich\u00e9d article in the meantime.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s hard not to judge a book by its cover, or in this case, an article by its headline, when the first words that scream out at you are: From bikinis to burkas: A Yemeni memoir. If your first thought is, \u201cNot again. Haven\u2019t we been down this clich\u00e9-littered road before?\u201d then you\u2019re not alone. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":161,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,18],"tags":[245,252,420,563,656,1527],"class_list":["post-5508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culturesociety","category-web","tag-burqa","tag-canada","tag-extremism","tag-hijab","tag-islamists","tag-yemen"],"yoast_head":"\n
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