Nancy Gallagher

MEDICINE AND MODERNITY IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA

In recent decades historians specializing in the Middle East and North Africa have studied endemic and epidemic diseases as well as evolving medical and public health knowledge and policy to better understand major historical transformations. The study of gender and empire, class and ethnicity, and civil society and government in the determination of medical and public health policy has yielded new insights into questions of state power, colonialism, imperialism, nationalism, modernity, and globalization. Historians have asked why, when, and how Western medicine took root in Muslim societies, which had their own complex and longstanding medical traditions.

Amnesty International and the Idea of Muslim Women's Human Rights

nphe death of Peter Benenson, the founder of Amnesty International (AI), X on February 25, 2005, calls for an assessment of Als contributions to the international movement for womens human rights. For many years, AI was behind other human rights organizations in advancing womens rights as human rights, but this changed dramatically in the 1990s. How did a small circle of volunteers who campaigned on behalf of mostly male political prisoners become an international movement that campaigned against gender apartheid, female genital mutilation, and honor killings? This brief historical report will discuss key events leading to this transformation and its significance in the creation of a new international consensus on womens human rights. AI based its work on the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration

Gender and Violence in the Middle East by David Ghanim

David Ghanim, a senior lecturer and researcher in Middle Eastern studies at the School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, argues that violence against women is an integral aspect of the patriarchal social hierarchy of the Middle East. Violence against women leads directly to the lack of democracy and to political authoritarianism, which represses and oppresses men and women alike. Family violence is fundamental to the functioning of the patriarchal gender structure that governs daily life in Middle Eastern societies. The cover of Ghanim’s book depicts detached photos of two young men, one leering, the other behind him in the shadow, and in the foreground a young girl who looks downcast and sad. She has been badly beaten. Ghanim, who is from Iraq and has taught in Algeria, discuses at length the many well-known forms of violence against women and notes that women are complicit in maintaining the high levels of family violence in the region. Like many researchers before him, he observes that mothers-inlaw, in order to maintain their own roles, goad their sons to violently control their daughters-in-law. He traces the oppressive family conditions not only to the repressive political and social structures but also to the phenomena of male and female suicide bombers and the culture of martyrdom. The book is based mostly on selective readings of secondary sources, nearly all English language. Among many others, he cites Fatima Müge Göcek, Shiva Balaghi, Nikki Keddie, Carla Makhlouf, Ziba Mir-Hosseini, Diane Singerman, Marnia Lazreg, Erika Friedl, Nawal Saadawi, Anika Rahman, Nahid Toubia, Bouthaina Shaaban, Fatima Mernissi, Suad Joseph, Lila Abu-Lughod, Cynthia Nelson, Denise Spellberg, Valentine Moghadam, Haleh Afshar, Deniz Kandioti, Homa Hoodfar, Soraya al-Torki, and Nayereh Tohidi. He also cites Qasim Amin, Simon de Beauvoir, and Michel Foucault. He refers to reports from the United Nations and Human Rights Watch. All these sources lead the reader to expect a comprehensive and nuanced treatment of the topic. Despite his extensive use of wide-ranging sources, Ghanim makes several generalizations. The reader is left wondering if there is any variation in societies from Morocco to Iran, from Turkey to Sudan, from rural to urban, upper class to working class, rich to poor nations. Perhaps a discussion on