After having spent the past ten days in the Forests of Estonia, I am currently crossing the Baltic Sea in Ibn Fadlanian manner. Believe it or not, but this part of the world has internet access in both places. Despite this, I’ve been relatively idle when it comes to looking after the Long Slumber.
On return to my digital duties I have found that a lot of new sites have linked to the Slumber, many of whom have more than questionable content and raisons d’etre. I thus wonder:
” Is it unavoidable that, if I publicly criticize my culture and religion- as little as I have of it -that a bunch of Arab and Islam-hating loons jump on the band wagon? “
The question, seems to open considerations of ethics, ownership, identity and globalization that are intrinsically connected to the emergence of the World Wide Web and particularly Web 2.0 technology. On the other hand they are at least as old as human writing.
The sacred books surely are the supreme example of the uses and abuses of the written word. Was Mohammed guilty, when he invoked the Jihad al saghir (military or martial strive)- guided by God’s hand or not? Was Darwin responsible for the social darwinism of the colonial project?
Answers to this dilemma are not easily found, but they surely point to the ethical obligation of the writer.
Immanuel Kant warned, at the turn of the 19th century, of the use of mercenaries. He proclaimed that: “the practice of hiring man to kill or be killed…” (makes them) “… mere machines in the hand of another”. Kant morally rejected the idea of mercanaries on grounds of their skewed motivations.
The history of Blackwater, the worlds largest security company (new-age term for mercenary army), reads like John Grisham’s nightmares. Blackwater founder Eric Prince, is now being accused of murder, illicit arms dealing, and a bad attitude when it comes to religious coexistence. Jeremy Scahill, journalist for the Nation and author of ‘Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army’ has long documented the companies doings. Here the most recent episode:
“A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company’s owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe,” and that Prince’s companies “encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life.
In their testimony, both men also allege that Blackwater was smuggling weapons into Iraq. One of the men alleges that Prince turned a profit by transporting “illegal” or “unlawful” weapons into the country on Prince’s private planes. They also charge that Prince and other Blackwater executives destroyed incriminating videos, emails and other documents and have intentionally deceived the US State Department and other federal agencies. The identities of the two individuals were sealed out of concerns for their safety.”…(Here the full article)
Some background materials:
- Author of ‘Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army’, Jeremy Scahill Testifies in Landmark House Hearing on Defense Contracting (May 2007)
- Here the website of blackwaterwatch.
About two weeks ago my girlfriend came home proclaiming: “I hate men in this country!”. This country is Lebanon and she hated men because in only one day her service (taxi) driver shouted at her and a friend: “bidkun taamalu sex” (do you wanna have sex) after he dropped them off, then a group of guys in a car commented on her bum, and some other guy was wanking in dark street corner looking at women passing by.
Having asked a bit around I couldn’t find one women that didn’t have a story of sexual harassment to tell. Narratives ranged from guys in the car driving by mumbling something about vaginae or asses, to service drivers that reach over to ‘curtiously’ close the door properly while ‘unwantingly’ brushing the breast of a female passenger, to the obligatory adjusted rear-view mirror to peek under a women’s skirt, to outright groping in the street and straight forward sexual advances by superiors at work.
James Gruber noted that there are cultural roots to sexual harassment. Practices and settings seem to vary from country to country. While here in Beirut harassment seems to be mostly verbal in nature, in Egypt physical assault seems quite common.
Sexual harassment is widespread and I personally know of stories from Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. A recent study by the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights found that 83% of all Egyptian women experience sexual harassment, and 98% of foreigners in the country, while 62% of man admitted to harassing.
Sexual harassment is the all present, all ignored elephant that nobody wants to talk about. Mohammed Ali Atassi of al Jadid noted on sexual harassment in Egypt, that it is a: “social problem that politicians and the media have tended to treat as an instance of individual, abnormal behavior. Because they treat it as an isolated aberration from proper social norms – falling outside the path, principles and traditions of a sanctioned way of life – Egyptian society as a whole does not need to confront it.”
This silence is also reflected in the academy. Literature on sexual harassment is vast and is made up of such diverse fields as anthropology, criminology, managerial studies, gender studies and sociology. However writing on this, our part of the world seems as good as inexistent.
Definitions of sexual harassment themselves are flimsy and cause much confusion. The UN Office of the Special Adviser Gender Issues and Advancement of Women defines sexual harassment as: ” any unwelcome sexual advance, request for sexual favour, verbal or physical conduct or gesture of a sexual nature, or any other behaviour of a sexual nature that might reasonably be expected or be perceived to cause offence or humiliation to another”. Although sexual harassment can be directed by women and within one sex, hardly any man I asked had a story of their harassment to tell. But let’s come back to that later.
The Arabic term al taharush al jinsi (sexual harassment) has only been in use since the mid 90’s. Conceptualizations here also range widely and are influenced by class and levels of education. The Encyclopedia of Women in Islamic Cultures discusses that some women frame sexual harassment in accordance with Islam. In doing so they condemn sexual harassment as illicit behavior outside the sanctioned bonds of marriage.
A particularly disturbing instance of sexual harassment occurred in Egypt in 2006. Mohammed Ali Attasi described: ”During the downtown celebrations of the holiday of Eid al-Fitr, a crowd of hundreds of sexually frenzied young men participated in violent attacks on dozens of women, surrounding them in the streets, groping and even trying to undress them. As police stood by and watched the scene ambivalently, no one, not mothers nor veiled women, were safe from the mob”.
Reasons for this outbreak have been widely discussed by activists and across TV shows.
Some have pointed to the fact that Eid al Fitr, situated at the end of Ramadan, where man and women at least during the day have to abstain from sex, might have to do with that. Others have noted that overall economic pressures delay the age of marriage and thus of ‘legitimate’ sexual relations. Interestingly a statistic on Brian Whitaker’s al-bab suggested that Egyptians interest in sex is increased during Ramadan.
Outsiders have pointed to the suppressed nature of sexuality in an Islamic contexts in general, and the associated sexual frustration. Although there might be some truth to any of the arguments, in that in the West sexual harassment is very prevalent also. Particularly at the workplace. In the US for example 40% of all work related lawsuits are about sexual harassment.
Although it is good to look at societal pressures to explain a phenomena, sexual harassment is not new, not only prevalent in the Arab region. It’s seems universal and not completely about sex.
As a man there was always a question that bugged me about sexual harassment. I wonder if guys that call ” Shou, ya ashta!” ( Hey sweet one) or ”Shou hal ties” (what an ass) actually expect to get anywhere in terms of actually having sex with a women. I never heard of a girl that turned around and said: “yalla taffadalu” (be my guest). Actually most women here ignore it. They’ve normally been told by their mothers not to react in order not to provoke physical advances, and have therefore build up a thick skin against it over the years.
So sexual harassment at least in this instance doesn’t actually seem to be about sex. Also the fact that men here, tough I am sure that they have been approached in such a way that would fit the above definition either by older women, the so-called ikht rijal or by other man , would not qualify such behavior as sexual harassment easily.
Actually very recently a friend of mine, playfully touched my balls in the pool during a pool party. I told him that I am not into it, but wasn’t really appalled. If the same thing would happen to a women I probably would be. After contemplating on reasons for that, i realized it was related to our power relationship. Firtsly I felt superior in physical strength to him and could have waned him off by force. But also in terms of social status, he as an homosexual man is more vulnerable in the Middle Eastern context. I am sure I would have felt different if I would have been powerless or in the weaker position. It was our power relationship that didn’t make me qualify it as sexual harassment. The very same friend, however is himself being sexually harassed all the time, due to his effeminate looks, and the fact that as a homosexual he ranks lower on societies packing order.
Also the other above scenarios seem to point in long slumberian manner into the direction of power, which is backed up by much of the literature. Much of feminist analyses proclaims that sexual harassment is not really about sex at all, or at least not about sexual branks, misunderstandings, or miscues, but about power. Namely, the power of men within a male-dominated social and economic institutions to violate and victimize women.
Such scholars using widely differentiating methods, from a myryiad of disciplines seem to agree on three basic prepositions in relation to sexual harassment 1.) men sexually harass women because they are culturally privileged 2.) social mores and practices sanction their right to do so and 3.) organization i.e.society does not adequately protect victims or appropriately punish perpetrators. Although this vantage point has been criticised by another feminist camp that proclaims that such analyses: “betrays feminism to be largely populated by a group of victim-obsessed, animale sexual puritans who see a sexual predator in every man and who would thus excise heterosexuality from contemporary life” the three points seem to hold in an Arab context and allow us to explain the great prevalence of sexual harassment.
Courtesy of (http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3221/2709837533_58e3888dd2.jpg)
One, man in Arab society are still privileged, there is no two ways about it, despite Kandyiotis patriachal bargain. Two, cultural practices do sanction that behavior. Nihad Abu Al Qumsan, an Egyptian women’s right activist notes that: “Many perpetrators believe that they are acting according to an ‘old Eastern custom’”.The Muslim women discussed in the Encyclopedia of Women in Islamic Societies article were described to tend to see physical harassment as a problem while excessive staring and verbal behavior were interpreted as ‘natural’ or in ‘order’ with the biological nature of men. Interestingly I have found similar conception among some friends here in Beirut, that didn’t seem to see verbal harassment in the streets as unusual or even classified it as harassment.
Yet further, the public discourse on sexual harassment is normally linked to proper or improper behavior of women. It confirms the societal ambivalent status of women in the public sphere. There seems to be much agreement that sexual harassment doesn’t happen to ‘proper women’ and women themselves are normally blamed for sexual advances. Which is untrue as the above mentioned study found that women of all social strata are affected and that it is not related to dress ie. women that wear the niqab (face cover) are as likely to be harassed as women that wear mini-skirts.
Sadly, despite the fact that all evidence suggest that dress-code is unrelated to the advances, more and more women wear the veil only to protect themselves from such advances as the Encyclopedia of Women in Islamic Cultures proclaims.
The Eid al Fitr instance for example was deliberately exploited by religious conservatives to re-moralize the public sphere. Atassi talks about a poster campaign that followed the instance. He writes: “The second poster continues the theme of objectifying woman, likening her to a piece of candy ready to be eaten, by portraying her as a lollipop that cannot be protected from flies (which means men in the language of these campaigns), save with the wrapper, which translates to the veil. Under the images of two lollipops, one wrapped and the second naked with flies hovering over it, a religious statement professes that an unveiled woman will not be able to protect herself – for God, the creator, knows what is in her best interest, and thus ordered the veil.”
And finally three, there are no legal or societal penalties on that kind of behavior. As mentioned women are discouraged to answer back to the harassment. The 2005 Arab Human Development Report proclaimed that despite most Arab penal codes guaranteeing the safety of women at the work place no code contains a concrete definition of the crime of sexual harassment. Yet societal values are not only reflected in codes but the practice of the executive. Zahra Hankir recounts in her article ‘The Reality of Harassment’ the story of Rima: ” a 26-year-old woman, … that when she went to the police station to report that she had been assaulted by a male colleague, the police officers on duty laughed at her and made lewd remarks. That experience sheds some light on why so many women who have been exposed to sexual harassment are often too scared to come forward, fearing that the incident will be interpreted as their fault.”
Following these insights, when a group of young man proclaim “yislam kissik” (praise your vagina) to a women in the street and especially if the women doesn’t reply, they re-enact the social order, re-claim the public space as an intrinsically male domain in which women are only tolerated on the whims of men. The same is true for advances at the workplace, a formerly exclusively male-dominated space. What further emphasizes this interpretation is the fact that women are hardly ever molested if accompanied by man. A free roaming women, uncontrolled by fathers, brothers or husbands, has to be put into her place as Gedah pointed out in relationship to sexual harassment.
The fact that sexual harassment is particularly prevalent in the Arab World is not to do with our ‘unhealthy’ relationship to sexuality. It is rather to do with the system of patriarchy and the above discussed consequences. Surely this in itself is related to our relationship to sexuality.
However what can be done? Pragmatically speaking the problem has to solved at a legal level, with the introduction of a legal concept of sexual harassment in the Arab codes and the training and sensitization of police forces.
In Egypt a man has recently been sentenced to three years imprisonment for groping a women publically. But this was only possible because the women came forward and established a precedent . More and more women have to come forward in order for the states to realize the problem and take action. And more and more man have to stand up in face of harassment.
Courtesy of (http://observers.france24.com/files/images/anti-harcellement-3-nov-2006.jpg)
A European friend of mine that is fluent in Arabic recently challenged three guys that harassed her in a car. She walked up to the driver, told him to look into rear-view mirror and asked him to tell her what he sees. She said:”I see an ugly, stupid and silly guy. Please remind me why I should be talking to you. Because really I forgot”. His friends exploded in laughter while the guy stuttered “sorry, I am really sorry!” and she walked away feeling incredibly empowered.
I am not insinuating that this is the best way to deal with harassment in any setting. But for women to answer back in one way or another is an important point, both for the men to realize that there is some form of social penalty, and definitely for women to speak up. What the most appropriate behavior in each context is is unclear. The sexual harassment support group for example mentions that naming of the behavior is important. In an Arab context the invoking of the harassers mother or sister might help also.
On a societal level however sexual harassment is yet again another expression of the deep inequalities that lie at the fundaments of our societies and to change these will take more than only speaking up and changing the law. However it is start!
Just over a week ago the UNDP launched the fifth Arab Human Development Report. Despite being widely criticized as being a Western liberal investigation of our region, which is basically true, it’s also a very interesting analyses and full of worthy research and statistics. It enforces all the great stereotypes about us (despotic rule, hate our women, desert is even increasing, etc. ) apart from what we’re supposed to do with camels, but also sometimes sheds some light and reveals interesting little facts.
I for example really liked the conclusions of the 2002, report which in foucauldian manner described that the lack of knowledge production systems as the greatest hinderance for development in the region. The reports are further an indicator for on what, both local (Khaliji) and Western, governments will spent their money on in the next years. After the 2002 report for example the Makhtoum foundation was founded, particularly set up to promote Arab knowledge production, also countless Universities (mostly in the Khalij) and research institutes followed.
The prism of this years report, ‘human security‘ is also cutting-edge. The paradigm developed in contrast to national security, as history showed that the latter is frequently abused to suppress opposition groups resulting in the ‘insecurity’ of much of a nations citizens.. Therefore the switch from the state to the individual, which in itself is a liberal vantage point.
The report is cut up into seven sections. Many of which carry comical headings. They keep on referring to us, the Arabs as insecure, whileI thought we come across as cool and nonchalant. Here some gems of the report, interpreted by my authoritative voice:
Section 1: People and Their Insecure Environment
- Time for celebration! 395 million people (Arabs) by 2015 (p.2). Bring it on Israel!
- Air pollution among the lowest in the world. On the other hand they mention 60% urban population by 2002 (p.3). Hell0! Have you recently been to Cairo, Damascus or Beirut? I am still mourning the amount of brain cells the afternoon traffic in Damascus has cost me. I always thought air pollution in this part of the world was a building pillar of the regimes control mechanisms. The exhasut fumes make you strangely numb and compliant. And I don’t know why they worry about urban growth. You can get the Arab out of the desert, but not the desert out of the Arab, as Dubai proves.
- “Water pollution in the Arab countries has grown into a serious challenge” (p.3). I don’t need UNDP to tell me that. Last time I swam on Beirut’s Corniche, I smelled like a turd for 23 days.
Section 2: The State and its Insecure People
- “States are artificial creations” (p.4). What has that to do with our development. Put it in fucking Sykes and Picots Human Development Report, wherever the wankers were from.
- “Across the Arab region, six countries continue to prohibit the formation of political parties” (p.5). The other seven-teen odd states have them, but does it make any difference?
- In 2002 we had the lowest police-recorded homicide and assault rate in the world (p.6). This might speak for our inherently docile nature, which for so long has been misinterpreted (as I have discussed elsewhere) of the inherent lack of accountability.
- “The path to (state) reform in the region has been laid out most clearly by its increasingly active and vocal civil society. The latter’s demands focus on: • Respect for the right to self-determination of all people. • Adherence to the principles of human rights, and rejection of all prevarication based on cultural particularism and the manipulation of national sentiment. • Public tolerance of different religions and schools of thought. • Sound parliamentary systems. • The incorporation in Arab constitutions of guarantees of political, intellectual, and party political pluralism, with political parties based on the principle of citizenship”(p.7). The fact that this reads like Voltaire’s christmas wish list, shows you how depoliticized civil society really is.
Section 3. The Vulnerability of those Lost from Sight
- The Arab region is characterized by a: “male culture of denial” (p. 8). Denial? Never! We would never deny anything!
- “So-called ‘honour crimes’ are the most notorious form of violence against women in several Arab societies”(p.8). Honor crimes? When was the last time UNDP included a statistic of how many women are killed by their partners in the US Human Development Report?
- Human trafficking of children leads to: “employment as beggars, itinerant vendors or camel jockey’s” (p.8). That is pure racist! Isn’t there a less offensive term for somebody riding a camel?
Section 4: Volatile Growth, High Unemployment and Persisting Poverty
- “Overall the Arab countries were less industrialized in 2007 than in 1970, almost four decades previously” (p.10). That’s only because of our progressive green politics as my friend Qifa Nabki has suggested.
- “Arab countries will need about 51 million new Jobs by 2020″ (p.10) and “now suffer the highest unemployment rates in the world” (p.12). Pah, infidels! what do they know of the employment power of international terrorism.
- “Inequality in wealth has worsened siginficantly more tahn the deterioration of income” (p.12). Zakat (islamic practice of alms-giving) will handle that next Ramadan! I guess the strategically published before it to make us look bad.
Section 5: Hunger, Malnutrition and Food Insecurity
- “In a seeming paradox, while malnutrition is on the rise in both absolute and relative terms in some Arab countries, obesity is also an increasing health risk in the region” (p.12). That’s only due to the cultural practice of having to drink tea and eat before every political, social or business encounter. Breaking a slim-fast bar, just doesn’t sound as good as bread and salt.
- “food security needs to be pursued, not in terms of absolute sovereignty in food production, a goal impractical in light of regional water scarcities, but rather in terms of sufficiency for all members of society in essential commodities” (p.13). Don’t they know who they’re talking to? We peruse everything in terms of absolute sovereignty!
Section 6: Health Security Challenges
- “ In the last 40 years, Arab countries have made striking progress in forestalling death and extending life” (p.13). I guess they’re still mocking us for 67.
Section 7: Occupation and Military Intervention
- “Many of the threats to human security discussed in the Report coalesce in situations of occupation, conflict and military intervention. In Iraq, the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Somalia, people’s basic rights to self-determination and peace have been forcibly annulled” (p.14). Here it is we always said it! Why doesn’t UNDP listen? It’s the fault of the two great shaitans, Israel and Americe.
For a solution to all the above, here an executive summary and the full report. And for even more in-depth analyses and serious comment on the report check Al-Bab.
Thank you UNDP! Thank you glorious West!
I have found an article that discusses much of what has been said in my last post “Hymen: The Arabs Finest Fetish”, only in a far more comprehensive, thoroughly academic and insightful manner. The article is: “written in retaliation to Cairo’s masturbating taxi drivers and other urban perverts.” . Having read a bit on the literature relating to the topic, this is truly a treat! Sadly the author is anonymous. However, scouting the net, I will try to get in touch with her.
Here some excerpts and the link to the full article:
“How can you ask the Arab woman to celebrate her body? Will an Arab sexual revolution ever occur? Can the current pantheon of Arab feminists address the sexual curiosities of present and forthcoming generations of Arab adolescents? Or shall the prurient continue to seek sexual education in the pages of foreign magazines that adorn their local newsstands, boldly advisory on matters of sensual pleasures that neither haboba nor imam can answer? Isn’t Cosmopolitan more resourceful to the sexually speculative Arab girl than Sayidati? Is Arabo-medical feminism explicit enough regarding women’s sexual health issues? These are but some of the modern conundrums that occupy relative space in every-day Arab feminist rhetoric, but are hardly ever effectively answered nor given significant attention…. (full article)“
Filed under: Arab, Gender, Idenity, Masculinity, Personal Narrative, Sexuality, Social Comment
Contrary to common belief, fetishes do not just exist in the tents of West African witch doctors or the smelly S&M dungeons of some perverted Westerners. No, they exist in the midst of even the most pious of Arab families, and that despite the Islamic prohibition of idol worship.
William Pietz wrote a series of essays called the ‘Problem of the Fetish’ in which he basically discusses how rather ordinary objects are transformed into objects of great desire or value, a value that often seems somehow displaced, inordinate or inappropriate.
We in the Arab World, but not only in the Arab World, make a rather inordinate membrane such an object. It grows about 1mm per year of the age in most, but not all, women and is still big enough to bear the honor (sharaf or wuj bait) of a whole extended Arab family. In many parts of the Arab world its loss, particularly under the wrong circumstances, is a greater disaster than the loss of life of its carrier. In fact its loss might, in severe cases, result in the killing of its carrier at the hands of the all so honorable family. Its rupture, if present in the first place, is connected to much shame and self-loathing… The hymen.
Nawal Al Saadawi writes: “Every female Arab child, even today, must possess that very fine membrane called the hymen, which is considered one of the most essential, if not the most essential part of her body”. 
From a medical perspective the hymen can be compared to the appendix, as having no real pragmatic function. Its socio-cultural importance is derived from its physiological position in the external vaginal opening, and through it’s wrongly perceived measure of female virginity. Virginity is a strict moral rule and as moral rules go in this part of the world, they are far more rigorously imposed on the female members of our societies. Saadawi goes on to say that: “a girl that does not preserve her virginity is liable to be punished with physical death, or moral death, or at least with being divorced if she is found out at the time of marriage”. Here the story of the ‘moral death’ of a loved one:
“My mother asked me if I was a virgin at an overripe age. We were sitting together in the kitchen for breakfast and I had recently come back from the corrupt(ing) West, where her surveillance could only be remote, at best. Naively assuming that this was an invitation to share sex secrets over morning coffee, I bluntly confided that I was not. Nothing could prepare me for the disarray that ensued in the household after revealing that terrible truth. And mother proved to be a real entrepreneur in trying to salvage the shame I had brought onto the family name by giving up something precious so easily, a talent which undoubtedly from raising her girls almost single-handedly from adolescence, to a troubled teenage-hood, and into a silent womanhood.
My options were clear and in the following order: I would have to stitch up my hymen, that insignificant membrane we carry with us as a burden until we find someone eager enough to graciously get rid of it, then I would be married off as soon as possible, lest my sexual urges prompted me to break this sacred tissue again. And so it was proposed that I choose between two brothers who were diamond traders in Belgium. I tried to be patient with all this maternal shock by laughing it off. After all, I was seeing a European man at the time and had no intention to settle down with anyone. But that revelation meant that I had dishonored my family and was continuing to do so by engaging in a sexual life, rather than what my mother had chosen to believe, was a ‘mistake’ or that I was taken advantage of by the big bad West. And so, I was to be forcibly disowned from my family due to that invisible membrane that was the only proof I deserved to be in it at all. At the time, the consequences of my honesty were far from humorous and I kept thinking how this connective tissue and all its societal implications, was certainly not strong enough in keeping women’s thighs together, nor their bodies inside their clans.”
In the rhetoric of honor and shame we fetishize the hymen, make it an all or nothing attribute of virginity. According to my experience many people believe that the hymen is the very proof that God destined virginity only for women. Even if not spelled out in this particular way, men in our societies are very much encouraged to sleep around from a young age. When I was 14, my dad asked me:
“Son, did you ever touched the breast of a women?”
Me: (thinking, oh no! I don’t want to have this conversation): “Yes!”
Dad: “ You know if you like, I could take you to one of these institutions”.
I am pretty sure he wasn’t talking about an asylum. When my older sister however lost her virginity. Dad wasn’t so happy! He beat her boyfriend up and my sis had to stay with grandma for a couple of months.
But wait a minute, doesn’t that seem strange, at least from the position of a newly-wed Arab groom. I am not a pious or very traditional man, and at least to my knowledge I have never had sex with a virgin. But I guess if I would want to marry a chaste women I wouldn’t think of reducing chastity to a tiny membrane. As far removed as it might sound I guess I wouldn’t be too happy for her to have given blowjobs to 62 bearded man. Neither would I probably approve petting, anal penetration, nipple braces, gimp suites, strap-ons, the insertion of love balls, whipping, golden showers or any kind of fecal games. Nothing of which would lead to a loss of that particular kind of virginity.
Help me out here, am I not following the logic? Why reduce all the worlds’ wonderful perversions to that little membrane? And why would I be so desperate to sleep with a woman that has virtually no experience in the game and will most definitely be in pain while we’re at it? Isn’t that like longing to play football (if that’s your favorite pastime) with a five year old that’s been badly fowled?
I remember a former lecturer told me once, if everybody tells you they do something for the same particular reason it’s normally another one. And sorry for the metaphor acrobatics, but think about it. The only reason why I would want to play the kid is that I would most definitely win.
Sex is integral to power and as Foucault reminds us in his History of Sexuality, the locus of that power is the body. Although we might feel that our sexuality is intimate to each of us, it is actually constructed and regulated publicly in many different ways. All cultures reflect, legitimize, naturalize and reinforce their interests in part by how they define and construct sexual norms and values for the body. Thus cultureo-religious prescriptions on sexual issues are a most effective from of social control, providing the means by which the dominant culture is maintained. Following this, enforcing virginity, is a form of rule. Sounds fair enough, no? However why reduce that virginity to the hymen? That’s where the idea of the fetish comes back in.
Many theorists amongst them Pietz himself, Marx and Marcel Mauss have argued that social relations can be ascribed onto particular objects. Mauss wrote, in relation to fetishism in gift-giving, that such inscriptions are “total social facts” i.e. inform a wide variety of aspects that order society. In the case of the hymen this total social fact seems to be the old Arabo-Mediterranean chestnut of the honor-shame complex. Therefore the great shame my friend, in the story above brought onto her family, by having lost her hymen. The conceptualization of the complex would fill a blog in itself. Its principles vary widely and are subjects to dispute. However it has been argued to stand in relation to the patriachal system. Or as Mernissi put it, strangely similar to something my father said (mentioned in this article), although I am sure he doesn’t read feminist literature: “The concepts of honor and virginity locate the prestige of a man between the legs of a women.” However this still doesn’t explain why the complex would rest there.
Feminist theory further illuminates this relationship between the hymen and the patriarchal order. It has it that the hymen represents the transfer of property between men. It’s kind of a quality control, like the cork on a good bottle of wine. The unruptured hymen allows a father to hand over ‘unspoiled’ property to a husband, whose then legitimate rupturing of the hymen seals the marriage contract. Tina Beattie thus notes that the hymen has only negative meaning for the patriarchal order i.e it only has meaning in absence. The ruptured hymen becomes retrospectively a sign, not of the women’s integrity and independence, as is frequently quoted as a reason by my virgin friends here to preserve it, but of her commodification. The daughter has been preserved intact by her father in anticipation of a transaction by which her body passes into her husband’s possession. So like in Mauss’ gift exchange the hymen becomes the marker of a social relation between man.
The patriarchal system is by no means only Arabic, despite our great propensity to claim that we have invented things. Having come up with the ‘zero’, who cares! But having come up with the suppression of women would have shown the true greatness of our civilization. However we just copied, like everybody else. Also it predates our religions, but we have smartly managed to integrate it into them. Thus interpretations of hymenal rupture and the patriarchal order can also be found in early Christian thought.
From the time of the earliest Marian writings in the second century, the mutual virginity of Eve and Mary has been a prominent feature in the interpretation of woman’s role in the fall and redemption. Yet there is no mention of Eve’s virginity in Genesis. Ireneaus, a bishop of the second century France, suggested that Eve looses her virginity after the fall. Thus virginity plays a great role in women’s redemption as Tina Beattie argues. She goes on to say that Genesis clearly states that women becomes subordinate to her husband Adam as a consequence of the fall. Wedding night rituals in all eastern monotheistic religions replay the above-mentioned theme, but they do even more, they create the very categories the system controls.
“When a marriage is celebrated in a traditional semi-rural town like Zawiya, the wedding festivities often culminate in the bride’s and groom’s retreat to a bedroom nearby. After a brief time, a female family member will bring out blood-stained sheets for triumphant display to the crowd, attesting to the bride’s virginity and the groom’s potency.”
Starathern argues that creation of ‘dividual’, that is binary constructed, identities depend on exchanges of parts of themselves. Thus in this interpretation the unambiguous ‘male’ and ‘female’ identities of bride and groom depend on intercourse and exchange of essences: the penetrated hymen, semen, hyminal blood etc.
Mathew Rowlinson, in discussing Derrida, describes how the word hymen initially referred to a Greek and Roman deity, while the existence of the physiological hymen was utterly unknown. He writes: “Its discovery occurred in the Christian era and coincided with the transformation in sexual representation and practice that the new era brought about… it accompanied a reconfiguration of sex by which the dimorphism of penetrator and penetrated was replaced by that of female and male. The “discovery” of the hymen as a trait specific to women played a part, if not in the eventual invention of heterosexuality, then in the investiture of what we would now call heterosexual practices with a new set of functions and privileges, and in the concomitant relegation of male-male sexual practices to the sphere of the extrajudicial or the pathological”.
Andrea Cornwall brilliantly writes: “rhetorically the virgin’s unbroken hymen is an attribute which stands for unitary individual, and at the moment when the chastity is proven, it defines the individual’s gender as entirely and unambiguously female. Hymeneal penetration also creates an unambiguously gendered male: it is a means by which man makes known his virility to himself and to others. Finally hymeneal penetration effects a radical transformation. The womb thus acted upon is transformed and can realize its fertile potential and by extension that of the man and the woman…” She concludes by saying: “ the notions of virility that depend on the defloration of a virgin bride amount to a wholesale and circular affirmation of male superiority and power over women.”
Once again we have reinforced this in our creation of religion (Not to say that the Quran isn’t the word of God himself transmitted through the vessel Mohammed, God protect him and all that). Abdelwahab Boudhiba writes about the visions of Islamic paradise as an ‘infinite orgasm’ where man experience eternal erections and have invited intercourse with houris who after each penetration, become virginal again. Thus eternally experience manhood and the subjugation of the essentialized female.
So there it is! The reason why we wanna play the kid! The hymen and in extension virgin, is an essentilization of the female. The virile man rupturing it is a essentializion of the male, recreating the two categories eternally and setting the scene for the patriarchal order.
Graeber elaborated on the power of the fetish, wrote: “We create things, and then, because we don’t understand how we did it, we end up treating our own creations as if they had power over us”. So the final question to answer is then, if the hymen is all about the patriarchal order why are women so keen on perpetuating it? Why do women obsessively keep their virginity and why is it mothers, as in our story above that keep the keys to the imaginary chastity belts?
One of Marxism’s finest offsprings, Antonio Gramsci, delivered some great insights to explain self-subjugation. Initially concerned with the question why the peasant revolution didn’t materialize, Gramsci came up with his concept of hegemony. Basically this concept describes how ideas of the ruling classes (in our case men) come to be seen as the norm, common sense, perceived to benefit society as a whole, but in reality benefiting only the rulers of the system.
Thus Christa Salamandra’s ethnography among middle-class women in Damascus concluded that chasity is cultural capital for women i.e. a precondition to find a good spouse and thus get access to prestige, money and raised or at least reinforced social status. As spouses have mothers and sisters that are highly influential in their marriage decisions, women try to impress other women with, not only but also, their chastity. This results in a contest between different families, fought out mostly by females. Thus comodification of relationships in an environment of strong male dominance sets up women against women. Basically man are also responsible for cat fights!
However here’s my all-time favourite thing about power. It is contested, negated and negotiated. Herzfeld writes that women ‘creatively deform their submission to male dominance. Thus young people all over the Arab World use the fetishization of the hymen to negotiate sexual intercourse. It is for example quite common for a young man and women to loose virginity (as I would argue as an extended definition of defloration) by other forms of penetration, rather than the ordinary vaginal one. Oral and Anal sex are widespread among youth, especially in places where there is little restriction between the meeting of the sexes.
Another negation is hymenoplasty or restoration of the hymen. According to a female friend of mine from the Gulf, it is quite common for girls to have the hymenoplasty done before each new boyfriend. There’s a do it yourself artificial hymen kit for only 29.90$.
None of these negotiations however challenge the underlying order, but rather enforce it throu perceived freedoms within the system. Also something that Gramsci warned of. He went on that a first step to revolution is to question the prevailing cultural norms. “Why am I still a virgin, and why do mom, Dad and my boyfriend want me to be one? Why do I wanna play the kid?” Norms must be investigated for their roots within a system of power an their implications for liberation.
To put it into the words of Miguel De La Torre: “Sex was transformed into a tool to protect patriarchy. Sexual ethics have been defined to perpetuate an unjust social order, mainly at the expense of women. Therefore, establishment any justice-based social order will require a subversion of the normative sexual ethics of the dominant culture”.
Foucalt asserts that “if repression has indeed been the fundamental link between power, knowledge, and sexuality since the classical age, it stands to reason that we will not be able to free ourselves from it except at a considerable loss: nothing less than a transgression of laws, a lifting of prohibitions, an irruption of speech, a reinstatement of pleasure within reality, and a whole economy in the mechanism of power will be required”. It might take a while until we experience a full blown sexual revolution in this part of he world. And the possibilities for this might be the discussion of another post.
However if our bodies and sexuality are the locus of power, then they have to be the site for its negation also. Or at least a site where we can start to change the system.
Absolutely brilliant! Thanks Shanshun!
by Pierrette Fleutiaux
If I were a pious man, this is what I would propose. Women are weak beings, submissive to all temptations, this we have known since the dawn of time. They are concupiscent, entirely the prey of condemnable impulses. Their bodies long for that of a man; society must master these bodies, from their earliest age…. more here
Gentlemen, gentlemen, gentlemen I ask you what has become of us? What the fuck is wrong with the male members of our societies and their conceptions of masculinity? My initial conclusion is that we are a bunch of sissy, impotent,macho-wanna-be, narcissistic, traditionalist, misogynist, mama boys, whose sense of fashion is eternally stuck in the eighties. But let me elaborate.
What an image of a true Arab man! Muscular, bearded, bleeding with eyeliner, red lips and wearing a sarrong. No offense to Imam Ali and his sons, god praise and protect them. Only to his representation.
Just as a side note. I know a lot of us and a lot of outsiders blame Islam for this mess, and Allah knows that his religion has to be blamed for the perpetuation of many social ills relating to gender. However, from my observations I conclude that Christian, Druze, Jewish and other specimens of the Arab male family, are not much better.
Masculinity, as femininity, is a social construct. It is a role ascribed with a set of values in a given social and cultural context. In order to belong, one has to self-ascribe and be ascribed this identity. Julie Peteet writes that: “Arab masculinity (rujulah) is acquired, verified and played out in the brave deed, in risk taking, and in expressions of fearlessness and assertiveness. It is attained by constant vigilance and willingness to defend honour (sharaf), face (wajh), kin and community from external agression and to uphold and protect cultural definitions of generic-propriety.”
The Fighting Masculinity (Al Rajulah Al Muqatilah)
Let’s look at these in more detail. “Risk taking, bravery, fearlessness and asssertiveness.” Many have argued, especially in recent years as the profession of terrorist/ freedom fighter becomes more and more popular among our kind, that Arab notions of masculinity is intrinisically coupled with violence. From my experience physical violence is quite absent from the masculine experience in this part of the world, at least oustide political and military realms. Let me recount a small story, that I have similarily observed in three Arab countries and that will sound familiar to anybody who has lived in this part of the world.
Damascus. Heavy bearded man drives car into stall of less bearded man. Less bearded man starts screaming and insulting heavy bearded man’s mother and sister. Heavy bearded man, as protector of his women’s honour, jumps out of the car and rushes towards less bearded man shaking his fists and screaming. Less bearded man answers in even greater rage, also shakes his fists. Crowd of more and less bearded men gather around them. Heavy bearded man lunges forwards, only as somebody is in arms’ reach to hold him back. Held back, heavy bearded man struggles theatrically, still screaming. Less bearded man follows in suit.
Basically the performance went on for 30min. without any assertion of physical violence. You can relax dear fogreigners, we’re not dangerous, just like to pretend…sadly!
Bourdieu came up with a nice framework to view this theater in his work among Berbers of North Africa. Once again, he situates masculinity here in a framework of honour, and describes ‘performed masculinity’ as a form of challenge and riposte that establishes social hierarchies. A challenge confers honour onto a man, because there is an assumption that this requires a reposte, act of possible injury or danger. Therefore a challenge is only adressed to a man deemed capable of playing the theater of honour. Thus the challenge provides an opportunity for both males to prove their belonging to the world of man. Accordingly, proving one’s manhood is a competitive and hierarchical process.
R.W. Conells’ notion of hegemonic masculinities, enlightens the notion of hierarchy and competition between males. He looks at the relations between different kinds of masculinities. Relations of alliance, dominance and subordination: “these relationships are constructed through practices that exclude and include, that intimidate exploit and so on”. Basically the gender politics within masculinity ya3ni who has more hair on their chest or the lusher mustache.
Lahoucine Ouzgane, an expert on Arabic literature suggested that, virility emerges as the very essence of masculinity in the novels and stories of some of the region’s most imminent writers, both male and female. This obsession with fertility and virility can be also seen in the practice of measuring man by their number of male offspring, which is still very prevalent in the region.
Ouzgane writes: “Because women are not the centre of men’s experiences (other men are), misogyny is actually fuelled by something deeper–by the fear of emasculation by other men, the fear of humiliation, the fear of being not so manly.”
To illustrate the point he recounts a anecdote from Nawal El Saadawi’s novel ‘Sand Child’. The story of a publicly humiliated father of seven girls. Antar is a leganday warrior chief, who in reality is a disguised woman.
“Sometime he would turn up veiled; his troops thought that he wanted to surprise them, but in fact he was offering his nights to a young man of rough beauty, a sort of wandering bandit… One night they fought, because, as they made love, she gained the upper position after forcing him to lie on his belly, and simulated sodomy. Though the man yelled with rage, she pinned him down with all her strength, immobilizing him, pressing his face into the ground…. He began to weep. She spat in his face, kicked him in the balls, left…. and never came back; the wounded bandit went mad…”
Intrinsically this story describes the volatility of dominant masculinity, expressed through an ultimate fear of the Arab man: sodomy. It also shows the proscribed the assumed relationships between man/dominant woman/submissive. Projecting homosexuality onto the other is meant to strengthen one’s virile status in the eyes of one’s friends. The fact that Antar is a women doubles the humiliation, especially in a social setting where “passive/ receiving” homosexuality in contentious. How much sexuality in the Arab world is an act of power becomes clear to the fact that an active or penetrating homosexual is not considered as such.
Frederic Lagrange writes that sexual intercourse, no matter if heterosexual or homosexual, does not take place between equals and necessarily involves the exercise of power. By that logic if a man is attracted to another man of the same status, that can only mean a desire to be subjugated.
The Politicized Masculinity (Al Rajouleh Al Siasieh)
Homosexuality in this part of the world is frequently expressed as a foreign, western ill. Despite the fact that there is much literature, pre and post-Islamic that recounts the love between old men and their young disciples. What this notion of foreignness seems to express however is the politicization of masculinity. The image of the masculine is equated with that of the territory. And penetration from the outside results in shame and loss of face. The same process can be seen in reverse.
Saddam Hussein at his time was the epitome of Arab masculinity. Hazim Saghieh noted: ” to put it in simple, perhaps clicheed psychological terms, Saddam’s machismo can be seen most glaringly in his attempt to penetrate neighbouring countries: Iran and Kuwait. By the same token the last war changed Iraq (and Saddam) into a totally feminine (submissive) entity in confrontation with the totally male (dominant) who tortured her and brought her suffering.”
Also the problem with perfomance, mentioned below, becomes a political one. The very expression of Samir Qassir’sArab malaise, is one of political impotency.
If political and historical subjugation is a matter of masculinity, I then wonder what we do to sustain our image of the dominant and virile man, given the fact that we lost pretty much any major encounter with a foreign power over the past 100 odd years. One idea would be to establish new packing orders from within, subjugating whoever we can to make us more powerful and masculine. I am really just thinking aloud but at least in Iraq, subjugation by foreign powers seemed to have gone hand in hand with a decline in liberalism, thus infringing on women’s rights and that of less powerful man. But that’s a far from scientific observation.
The Honorable Masculinity (Al Rajouleh al Sharafieh)
Back to the second part of our definition. The Arab man as defender of honor and propriety. My Father once wisely said: “The problem with this part of the world is that honor is situated between the legs of a women”. Let me recount a small story to emphasize the point and the schizophrenia it brings about.
Three Lebanese guys from East Beirut and one girl are driving in a car. The guys are talking about the fact that most women today are sluts. That they would never marry a woman that is not a virgin and that these women have no honour. Note, the girl in the car is not a vrigin and one of the guys is her boyfriend. The sissy doesn’t speak up for his woman, who, according to his own value system, he’ll never gonna marry anyways. Sissy boy responded to the empty masculinity talk perfectly as protector of culture and propriety. We shall be proud of him.
Nissim Rejwan quotes to this phenomena: ”More than one Arab writer and sociologist has remarked on the contemporary young educated Arab male’s intellectual immage of his female friends and associates and his actual behaviour towards them.
With all his education and liberal views, they point out, this young man continues to subscribe to the age-old belief that women outside the safe walls of the home is in moral danger of losing her chastity, and that she has no business exposing her charms…unless she means to sell them or give them away. Moreover, he automatically disqualifies as wife any girl who would give herself out of wedlock, even to him.”
What lies behind the masculine urge to contain our women? Fear! what else? What have we just learned. Arab Man = not as fearless as he pretends to be.
Fatima Mernissi, describes famously in her book ‘Beyond the Veil’ that western sexism is based on a belief that women are biologically inferior. In the East on the contrary, the whole system of subjugation is based on the idea that women are incredibly powerful and dangerous and that all sexual institutions (polygamy, sexual repudiation, sexual segregation etc.) can be perceived as a strategy to contain their power. Although Mernissi writes in particular about the Islamic context, her claims once again fit perfectly within the region beyond sectarian boundaries.
This fear of the feminine also describes why we’re such mama boys. Essentially we’re afraid of our mothers. Saddam Hussein for example, only abandoned much of his mother’s clan and aligned to the Madjid, his biological father’s clan, after his mother’s death.
Mai Ghoussoub goes deeper in elaborating these fears by reviewing several of the popular Islamic manulas on sexuality written over the past four hundered years. Classics like Sheikh Muhammad Nefzawi’s ‘The Perfumed Garden’ describes women as: “never sated nor tired of copulating… Their thirst for intercourse is never quenched.” Ahmed Bin Selman confirms this notion when he writes:”women’s sexual appetite is many times superior to that of man.” These authoritive manulas on marriage and sexuality must have made made it seem impossible for man ever satisfy their women and to match their sexual demands. These man spoke with the authority of the fiqh (islamic law). Thus what underlies our obsession with family honour exercised through the control of women, is mere performance angst.
Who doesn’t have that? Only the idea of erectile problems brings sleepless nights to any man. Yet instead of quitting on booze and smoke, observing a healthy diet may be supplemented with viagra in order to improve our performance; we just lock our women away so they cannot cheat. This tactic has become increasingly questionable. Despite all the recent setbacks, the status of women has changed dramatically in the past years. They have made their way into the public sphere and even, god forbid, into the economic shere. Shopping and working alongside other men. Which will once again result in sexual rivalry among men.
The crisis of masculinity in the Arab world, is the crisis of the Arab world itself. Masculinity as a concept rather then expressing honour, fearlessness and bravery is the sum of all our fears. Sexually insatiable women, perfomance angst, sodomy, foreign domination, impotence, you name it.
The answers to our fears have resulted in ill-advised conceptions of the masculine. Basically we’re haunted with our own obsession with power, the domninant and sumbissive and find ourselves for too long in the latter position. Thus because we’re so week in face of the foreign, we oppress our own at home.
Thus I propose to drop the leather jackets, shave the moustaches, stop asking our mothers for advice. We could start by recognizing our fears and talking about them openly. Taking resposnibility for fucking mess we are in, not always pointing our fingers at the evil West and Israel. Standing up for ourselves even if it means breaking a jaw or have one’s own broken.
I am sorry if I offend anyone. But here’s a masculine universal for you. We are blunt and straight forward. If you’re a dick, it has to be said!
Last monday, prime minister Nuri Al-Malki declared the 30th of June: ”A day of national sovereignty” for Iraq. The motive of this grand announcment was the retreat of american troops from urban centers, and thus a step towards Iraqi self governance. The message was directed at Iraqi and American citizens, both of whom have been weary about the occupation for a long time. The question remains is the retreat of troops an indicator for true sovereignty?
Much political philosophy of the 19th and 20th century has theorized around political rule and much of it derived at a crossroad between violence and sovereign state power.
Already Thomas Hobbes’ concept of the Covenant, through which subjects surrender their right to self-rule and bestow it to the monarch in exchange for protection, places acts of violence at the very heart of our understanding of sovereignty. Max Weber famously described the ’state’ itself as being the single holder of formal, legitimate violence in a specific territory .
The postcolonial writer, Achille Mbembe noted that: “modernity was the origin of multiple concepts of sovereignty”. Mbembe, building on the foucauldian concept of bio-power, writes that the true sphere of the sovereign “is the world in which the limit of death is done away with. Death is present in it, its presence defines that world of violence, but while death is present, it is always there only to be negated, never for anything but that”.
Many other contempraries have come to the same conclusion, expressed for example in George Bataille’s, Michael Foucault’s and Giorgio Agamben’s writings. Sovereignity is the power to decide over life and death, if that is by states, through inclusion of some people in health programs and the exclusion of others, military operations, or the decision of the individual to take his/ her own life in martyrdom.
Any of these understandings would pose a serious challenge to the justification for a “Day of National Sovereignty”.
Firstly, today the Iraqi police forces and army total about 106,000 man. Three times as many as the U.S. , but only a small fraction of the forces under Saddam.
US troops, although present, will try to operate invisible from now on. As the Independent writes: “Convoys from Camp Victory, the US base at Baghdad airport, will travel to the Green Zone in central Baghdad only at night. In Mosul, US vehicles must have signs saying they are not part of a combat force. In rural areas, US combat operations can continue only with the permission of the Iraqi government.” Also Iraq has not got a functional airforce, and the Iraqi government sees the Americans as taking this role over, for at least the next decade.
Secondly, the days immediately prior to the pull-out costed about 250 Iraqi’s lives, mostly taken through vehicle-born bombs. 40 more were killed yesterday in Kirkuk. Attacks are being blamed on Al-Qaida, who are once again trying to stir sectarian tension. However the fact that the U.S. has released a figure head of the Mahdi Army, at least indicates that other players are expected to raise the game. Thus although, Al Qaida has very little support by the Iraqi people, many other militias hold the legitimacy of taking lives on behalf of their constituencies through patron/client relationships.
Finally the constant power struggle between the Kurdish region and central government, leaves many questions unanswered about Iraq’s sovereignty.
Thus amid the Iraqi states inability to hold a monopoly of violence, hindered through both, attacks and the ongoing presence the U.S., the legitimate celebration of a “Day of National Sovereignty” seems far, far away.
What an interesting coincidence. Today marks, both the retreat of American troops from urban centers of Iraq and the negotiation of contacts for foreign oil companies.
Many, especially in this part of world, would argue that the military retreat coincides with the actual objective of the invasion. Namely American hegemony over Iraqi oil resources. Yet, I would plead to not simplify the issue. At least among the neo-con architects of the second Gulf War ideology played a huge role. Particularly Wolfowitz and his cabal believed in the liberation of the Iraqi people and the interventionist politics that were meant to bring it about. Gerorge Packer’s ‘Assassin’s Gate‘ insightfully traces the ideological developments in the run up to the war.
However, Oil, obviously had it’s strategic position as we can see today. A total of 32 firms, including US and European giants ExxonMobil and Shell as well as companies from China, India and other Asian states are courting the Council of Ministers and Misnistry of Oil today. Ahmed M. Jiyad, a senior economist and consultant in Iraq, has discussed the implication of the contracts. He argues, that these institutions that negotiate the deal on the Iraqi side: ” are not constitutionally empowered to “enter into force” such contracts, and only the Parliament/Council of Representatives (CoR) has such authority.”
He goes on to critisize the length of the contracts: “the 20+ years is indeed unjustifiable, especially when compared to the world range of less than 9 years for such service contracts.”
Finally talking about the impact on Iraqi economy he points out, that:
“Emphasising competitiveness would undoubtedly end the prospects of any development in local industries and service providers and could de-link the upstream oil sector from the rest of the economy.”
For a full,legal discussion on the controversy of contracts see the Iraq Oil Report.
Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani told the press that the general objective of the deals is to: “increase oil production from 2.4 million barrels per day to more than four million in the next five years.” This would generate an extra $1.7tn in he same timeframe. $30bn of that will go to the oil companies while the rest will build “schools, roads, airports, housing, hospitals” as Sharistani says.
Yet even if the firms would try to go for the offer in a, yet again, increasingly hostile environment, has to be seen. And if then the extra income will make it’s way into rebuilding infrastructure, rather then the pockets of corrupt government officials is questionable.
