Soccer season ended last night on a good note. It was a great rematch with the now notorious Black Tigers of girl-fight fame. Although I'm a bit exhausted, I'm sad to see the season end, my interaction with the girls was definitely privileged and I've come to appreciate how special they are.
This week has been especially busy with thesising and all, but I managed to eek (does anybody remember that show??) out some time for the Women's Leadership Conference today. It's this lunch that happens once a week where women come together to talk about social issues and their gender implications. Obviously women only. It's led by a professor here, Amal Al-Malki, who in addition to being totally progressive and approachable, is also the youngest woman to ever get her PhD in Qatar. She facilitates along side Darbi who I introduced earlier in the blog as a fellow teammate of mine as well as 2 QueRicco newbies, Jinanne and Rachelle. The conversation today was about Islamic feminism, a phrase which might sound paradoxical if we think of it in the Western context. We talked about what it means to veil- its religious, political and cultural implications- as well as what it means not to. Amal told an interesting story about a Muslim friend of hers who lives in the states and who chose to unveil to avoid confrontation after 9/11. The room was a little divided as to what that choice would mean to them, and Rachelle made a very pertinant allusion to her mothers struggle with intolerance in America as a black woman in the 70's. The readings we did to prepare included The Veil by Pamela Taylor and I highly recommend the chapter, "I just want to be me" if you have some spare time. Our discussions revolved almost solely on the choice to veil or not, which is actually a very tiny aspect of Islamic Feminism but certainly an interesting topic. The veil is now in different stages of outlaw and is in fact, illegal in France, arguing that women who wear the veil are wearing a symbol of oppression, which I agree with in a limited way. Like the fact that women are forced to veil in Saudi is totally oppressive but I think France is oppressive in exactly the same way by not allowing women to veil if they choose to. I would like to emphasize the word choose here because ultimately, it's the womans choice and to them the act is not oppressive, it's freedom. And screw you Turkey for following suit just to get into the EU.
There are soooooo many interesting layers in this discussion that I wish I could animate for you but a) it's very difficult to do so in type and b) I doubt most of you will even read this much of what I write. So for those of you who have managed to get down this far, here's a short video reprieve:
This is Freej, the first 3-D animation series in the Gulf. It follows the daily life of 4 Emirati women (in what can be assumed to be Dubai), the title for which means "neighborhood" in Arabic. You'll notice that the ladies are wearing gold masks which are the ultra-traditional form of the niqaab. Sorry it's not captioned but I think you can still appreciate how awesome it is. In many of the videos the women are interacting with younger generations or expatriates to highlight the extreeme cultural shifting that is happening in the region. We discussed the show in the Mapping Urbanism class I TA for, and the comparison we came up with was the Simpsons.