Why should a woman have to learn reading and writing?

Source
The Useless Sex
by Oriana Fallaci
Horizon Press 1964 pp. 26-32

Moslem women rarely walk alone along the street. Generally they walk in groups, with their children, and with the husband who keeps three paces ahead to make it clear that he is the master and she must follow him. There are times when even girls who are students, the most progressive girls, do not evade this ruling. You can see them coming out of high school, muffled up like nuns, and they are girls who know all about Einstein or Leonardo da Vinci, but if you come too close or try to photograph them, they'll suddenly huddle together in a group, lowering their heads as sheep do when they're afraid.

In a land which is struggling to convince women to take off their veils, explaining that they prevent the skin from breathing, carry infection, and enfeeble the sight, such anachronism is cruel. In the streets you might still happen to see cars with closed curtains: these are the cars of the richest Moslem women, for whom it is not enough to hide their head in purdah. Inside the houses, into which incidentally it is extremely difficult to gain admittance, you will very rarely set eyes on any women. At home they do not wear the veil, and if accidentally or on purpose you mistake the door and enter their quarters, you are met by a concert of shrillest screams. A friend of mine in Karachi who has employed a certain gardener for the last three years, tells me that she has never once seen his wife without her veil. 'I really think,' she says, 'that that woman has never been touched by a ray of sunshine.'

There's plenty of sun in the lands of Islam: a sun that is white, violent, blinding. But Moslem women never see it - their eyes are conditioned to gloom like the eyes of moles. From the darkness of the mother's womb they pass into the darkness of the father's house and from this to the darkness of the tomb. And in all this darkness nobody takes any notice of them. Asking a Moslem about his women is like asking him about a secret vice, and when one fine day I said to the editor of a Pakistani newspaper: 'I have come to ask you about the problem of Moslem women,' he became quite angry and answered: 'What problem? There isn't any problem of Moslem women.' Then. he handed me a sheaf of typescripts which were all about the dress of Moslem women, the jewels of Moslem women, the make-up of Moslem women, and about how they use coconut oil to give lustre to their hair, and how they use henna to stain the palms of their hands and the soles of their feet red, and how they use antimony mixed with rose water to colour their eyelashes. 'Here,' he said, 'you'll find everything about Moslem women.' Then I asked him what the percentage of illiteracy among Moslem women might be, and he replied angrily: 'Why should a woman have to learn reading and writing? And to whom would she need to write? The only person she could write to is her husband. If the husband is living with her, what would be the point of sending him a letter?'

A thousand and three hundred years have passed since Mohammed raised his voice in the scorching desert of Arabia, and although something new is now taking place among the women of Islam, the vast majority of his faithful followers continue to observe his laws as if time has stood still. It is true that in Tunisia President Bourguiba condemns to imprisonment any man who takes more than one wife and exhorts the young women to cast off their veils, but, as the weekly paper L'Action reports, 'the parents are ashamed of this'. It is quite true that at the American University in Beirut and at the Beirut College for Women the girls wear blue jeans, go water skiing and dance rock and roll, but, as Time Magazine reports, you are still likely to overhear a couple of male students make such remarks as:
'Would you ever marry a girl who had been to the cinema with another boy?'
'No, no I really don't think 1 would.'
It is quite true that in Nigeria an eccentric woman called Zeinab Wali gives a weekly broadcast in the course of which she urges women to come out of their houses and get to know the trees, the mountains and the butterflies. But when the wife of a minister of Kaduna asked her husband's permission to go out and get to know, the trees, the mountains and the butterflies, the husband held a family council during which it was decided that she should be allowed out only after five in the evening - when there is still sufficient light to be able to see but when the sinful brilliance of the sun is turning to twilight. It is quite true that in Egypt there is an auxiliary force of women in the army, but Nasser still hasn't had the courage to abolish polygamy because, he well knows, the men would revolt against such a measure. If polygamy ceases it certainly won't be his doing; it will simply be because maintaining two wives is expensive.
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