Women in Fundamentalism: Modesty, Marriage, and Motherhood

Abstract

Maxine Margolis’s Women in Fundamentalism: Modesty, Marriage, and Motherhood delivers a comparative examination of gender organization in three forms of religious fundamentalism in distinct communities. Based on the three dominant religions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, these communities impose strict codes of domesticity, modesty, and fertility on women. They are (1) the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of LatterDay Saints (FLDS), who for the most part live in Utah, Arizona, and Texas, (2) the Satmar Hasidism of Williamsburg, Brooklyn and the Kiryas Joel of New York, and (3) the Islamic fundamentalism practiced by the Pashtun ethnic group in Afghanistan and northern areas of Pakistan. Margolis delivers a detailed and fluent examination of each community’s history of fundamentalist orientation and, particularly, their evolution in recent times. Margolis starts by posing this question: how similar between the cases are the treatment of women and ideas about girls’ bodies and souls, and how have these codes evolved independently in each case? What contributes ‘‘to this intricate and strikingly similar behavioral and ideological repertoire’’ (p. 2)? Her response to the question derives from each community’s emphasis on women’s reproductive ability and power. It is the control of women’s reproductive capacity— their status as, she calls it, broodmares—that gives rise to strict sex segregation and imposition of exacting rules of modesty on women and girls. Margolis provides an accessible description of codes of modesty and fertility among each group. The cultural marker for the Satmar is tznius, in Hebrew, which delineates complex aspects of female modesty from clothing to laughing in public. The female obligation and code of tznius separates kosher behavior from non-kosher and the consequences for men’s honor. The hallmark of Pashtuns’ gender codes is tribal and family honor. While men’s actions can harm family honor, it is women’s behavior and even attitudes that can damage the collective honorof the clan. The FLDS’ gender codes bear a striking resemblance to the codes mentioned above. Among this group, it is the polygamy that further exaggerates women and children’s harms. The FLDS’ almost obsessive emphasis on polygamy cost them rejection from the mainstream Mormon Church. Therefore, they see this as the raison d’être of their distinct community and their ideological extremism. Margolis uses extensive secondary sources, drawing from different disciplines such as her own anthropological background and from women’s and comparative cultural studies to examine how these codes are imposed and how deviation is punished. She underlines that among these groups controlling uncontrollable male sexual desire is a woman’s responsibility. For each group, women’s modesty is at the heart of men’s honor. A woman’s indiscretions bring shame to the men of the community. Each group takes some aspects of the original theological doctrine and applies and modifies them based on changing circumstances and male leadership. These codes of modesty and segregation usually become tighter and more ritualized depending on the perception of threat from the outside. To contextualize the experiences of women in these distinct communities, Margolis focuses on three interrelated cultural foundations: male honor, female modesty, and the importance of high fertility. Their commonality is about women’s true nature and male sexuality. An interesting but less explored consequence of restricting women’s sexuality and strict ritualized control of sexual pleasure in marriage is ‘‘seeking sex outside.’’ Here Margolis compares the Satmar and Pashtun men’s search for sexual gratification outside marriage. In the case of the Pashtun, ‘‘bacha bazi’’ is the exploitation of young boys for the sexual gratification of affluent men, while Satmar men engage in homosexual activities as well as seeking sex at brothels or on the streets. Pashtun men’s ‘‘bacha bazi’’ was, until recently, an accepted social practice. But in the Satmar communities, rabbis and 250 Reviews