Saddeka Arebi facts for kids

Saddeka Mohammed Arebi (Arabic: صديقة محمد عربيي, Ṣaddīqah Muḥammad `Arabī) was an American and Arab American social anthropologist and author. She was born in Tripoli, Libya. In the late 1970s, she moved with her family to the United States, settling in Northern California. After earning her advanced degree, she became a professor of Anthropology at several universities, including the University of California, Berkeley, San Francisco State University, and Saint Mary's College of California. She was also an active member of the Muslim World League, a large group of Muslim religious leaders from many countries. Saddeka Arebi passed away in July 2007 while visiting family in Libya.

Exploring Women's Voices in Saudi Arabia

In May 1994, Saddeka Arebi published an important book called Women and Words in Saudi Arabia: The Politics of Literary Discourse. In this book, she looked closely at the writings of nine modern Saudi women authors. She wanted to understand how their work influenced Arabic culture and discussions.

Based on her interviews and analysis of their texts, her study showed that women writers played a big part in shaping how history, religion, and traditions were understood in Saudi Arabia. This was true even with the cultural, political, and religious challenges they faced as women and writers.

Arebi's research was groundbreaking. She used both ethnographic (studying people and cultures) and literary evidence to show how unique Saudi women writers were. She wrote that these women "emerged not only as a subject of discourse but also as generators of discourse producing their own texts and forming their own concepts for comprehending the universe." This means they weren't just talked about; they were doing the talking and creating their own ideas. She noted that since the late 1970s, despite many challenges, "women's words were unrelenting and daring in their challenge."

She mentioned a fatwa (a religious legal opinion) from 1978 by Shaikh Abd-al-Aziz ibn Abd-Allah ibn Baaz. This opinion showed a very traditional view of women, which the women writers were trying to change. The opinion said that questioning men's roles over women was against God's law. This shows the kind of strong opinions these writers were up against.

Arebi's book aimed to answer a key question:

How do women themselves use words as a means to counter the language of power, and aesthetics as a political strategy for revisions of concepts, ideas, and institutions that are used to control them?

She explored how women used writing to challenge powerful ideas and systems that tried to control them.

However, Arebi also pointed out that these writers didn't always agree with Western feminist ideas of resistance or their definitions of patriarchy (a system where men hold most of the power). In an earlier work, Arebi made an important point about Muslim women:

There are three reasons why Muslim women may generally find it difficult to adopt a western model of feminism predicated on premises deemed universally applicable. First, Muslim women do not perceive `family ties and kinship ties [as] a hindrance to women's liberation'; secondly, there is a resentment of `the West's identification of the "problem" of Muslim women as a religious problem'; and thirdly, wages have not necessarily functioned as a `liberating force' in the sense advocated by western feminists.

This means Muslim women might see family connections differently, dislike how the West views their issues as only religious, and not always see earning money as the only way to be free, unlike some Western feminist ideas.

About the Book: Women and Words

In her book, Saddeka Arebi used the idea of "discourse" (how ideas and power are communicated) from Michel Foucault. She used this to understand how Saudi women writers saw their place in society and how their writing helped challenge the "verbal machinery" that defined women's roles. She described the different writing styles these women used. They tried to both oppose some parts of society and support important cultural values.

Arebi believed that understanding these approaches was key to seeing how Saudi women writers entered the world of cultural politics. They offered their own views on Islam, gender relationships, and women's possible roles in society. She explained that:

writers are always disseminators of a culture if not its creators, in the Saudi society they are expected to be gatekeepers, advocates, protectors of the canons, and interpreters all at the same time. The purpose of writing, as defined by the centers of power, is to produce a perception of reality congruent with and guided by the ideas of these power centers.

This means writers in Saudi society were expected to uphold traditions, but these women were also creating new ideas.

Writers and Their Ideas

• Chapter 1: Women's Opportunities & the Social Organization of Writing looked at how literature was organized and how women writers gained the right to write.
• Chapter 2: History of the Present and the Presence of History focused on three writers:
  • Poet Fowziyha Abu-Khalid explored the link between literature and religion. She believed everyone should have the right to discuss ideas and that change comes from ordinary people, not just experts.
  • Ruqayya Ash-Shabib, a short story writer, focused on everyday women who made a big difference in history, like Sheherazade and Balqees (the Queen of Sheba). She thought the problem wasn't male control, but women giving up their power.
  • Raja'a Alem, a pioneering playwright, believed literature's main goal was to help individuals feel free.
• Chapter 3: Victimization Literature looked at three short story authors:
  • Sharifa As-Shamlan often wrote stories based on the real lives of women she met as a social worker, especially those in prison.
  • Khayriyya As-Saggaf wrote stories that needed careful thought, not quick reads.
  • Najwa Hashim's stories often showed women struggling with the difference between how things are and how they should be.
• Chapter 4: Redefining the Issues examined three widely read Saudi women essayists:
  • Juhayer Al-Musa'ed was skilled at asking important questions without always giving answers.
  • Fatna Shaker believed societal problems needed to be understood in bigger terms, looking at their root causes.
  • Sohaila Zain Al-Abedin was seen as aligning with the more traditional views.

Conclusion of the Book

In the final chapter, Arebi thought about what the role of these women writers meant for their culture. She asked if their efforts could be seen as a form of resistance, since they both challenged and supported important cultural values.

How She Did Her Research

It took Saddeka Arebi three years to get a visa to do her field research in Saudi Arabia. She finally got one for three months in early 1989. During those three years, she read extensively to find and identify most Saudi women writers. Once she was in Saudi Arabia, she gathered most of her information through personal interviews with current writers, and also with women who had written occasionally or stopped writing.

The writers she interviewed were also curious about her.

Although their perceptions of me are difficult to assess, I think they saw me as not far removed from themselves ... We had many points of identity in common – my being a woman, a writer, an Arab and a Muslim, all equally important. But most important, we identified with one another as people who were placed in the middle, between two worlds, whose effects have forever become part of our existence.

She felt they saw her as similar to them. They shared many things: being women, writers, Arabs, and Muslims. Most importantly, they connected as people living "between two worlds." The writers often asked her how she dealt with Western culture and how she stayed true to herself without "selling out" to it. This question showed their own deep concern about how the West and East could connect without fear or conflict.

Why She Wrote the Book

Saddeka Arebi dedicated her book to her parents, especially her father, Mohamed Al-Soghayyer Arebi. She said their strong belief in Allah taught their family that fairness, hard work, moderation, and tolerance lead to understanding and a fuller human experience. From them, she learned an important Islamic idea called "middleness" (wasaţ). This meant that being in the middle doesn't have to mean being torn or unsure. Instead, it can be a strong position from which you can see both sides more clearly. Arebi explained that this positive idea of wasaţ also applied to her scholarly work, helping her bridge two different discussions and two civilizations. Her goal was to help these two worlds understand each other better.

Public Talks and Lectures

Saddeka Arebi was a popular speaker at many conferences about Islam and women in the Arab World.

• On October 4, 1997, she spoke at a conference hosted by the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC. This event brought together over 400 journalists, diplomats, business people, and academics.
• She often lectured at events for Muslim Students Associations. For example, in 1998, she gave a talk at Stanford University called "Politics of misrepresentation; Women and power in Islamic societies."
• On February 22, 2007, she gave a public lecture at UC Berkeley about understanding Islam.
• In one of her last public appearances, on March 1, 2007, she spoke about her experiences during Hajj (the pilgrimage to Mecca) at Santa Clara University.

Her Published Works

• Women and Words in Saudi Arabia: The Politics of Literary Discourse, Columbia University Press (May 1994) ISBN: 0-231-08421-8 ISBN: 978-0231084215
• "Gender Anthropology in the Middle East: The Politics of Muslim Women's Misrepresentation". American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences (1991)
• "Waging War, Waging Peace: The Poetics and Politics of Women and Words in Contemporary Arabia". Thesis (Ph.D. in Anthropology)- University of California, Berkeley, (May 1991).
• "Powerful Mothers, Powerless Daughters: Libyan Women and the Bitter Fruits of Change." Unpublished paper, Department of Anthropology, U.C. Berkeley (1984)
• "The Changing Role and Status of Women in Libyan Society An Anthropological Perspective". Thesis (M.A. Anthropology) - California State University, Sacramento (1983).