This unique volume offers unprecedented insight into the typical day, interests, and familial, social, and cultural lives of Middle Eastern teens. Each chapter includes a resource guide to teach teens more about the 11 profiled countries: Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Palestinian territories, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Numerous photos accompany the text. This book provides teen readers in the West with a window into the everyday lives of their counterparts in the East, fostering a better understanding of both their similarities and differences. The current population of the Middle East is young, and their future is critical in our worldview. Teen life in the Middle East is marked by extremes. In some countries, especially those that are Westernized, teens share the benefits of globalization with material and social comforts such as private schooling and vacations abroad. In other countries, political instability, religious and cultural repression, war and occupation, earthquakes, and poverty are ongoing crises. Many teenagers must endure a difficult, and sometimes nearly impossible, path to adulthood.
Iran is often a hotspot in the news, and the Muslim state is usually negatively portrayed in the West. Culture and Customs of Iran rejects facile stereotyping and presents the rich, age-old Persian culture that struggles with pressures of the modern world. This is the first volume in English to reveal the important sociocultural facets of Iran today for a general audience in an objective fashion. Authoritative, substantive narrative chapters cover the gamut of topics, from religion and religious thought to Iranian cuisine and festivals.
In the run-up to war in Iraq, the Bush administration assured the world that America's interest was in liberation—especially for women. The first book to examine how Iraqi women have fared since the invasion, What Kind of Liberation? reports from the heart of the war zone with dire news of scarce resources, growing unemployment, violence, and seclusion. Moreover, the book exposes the gap between rhetoric that placed women center stage and the present reality of their diminishing roles in the "new Iraq." Based on interviews with Iraqi women's rights activists, international policy makers, and NGO workers and illustrated with photographs taken by Iraqi women, What Kind of Liberation? speaks through an astonishing array of voices. Nadje Al-Ali and Nicola Pratt correct the widespread view that the country's violence, sectarianism, and systematic erosion of women's rights come from something inherent in Muslim, Middle Eastern, or Iraqi culture. They also demonstrate how in spite of competing political agendas, Iraqi women activists are resolutely pressing to be part of the political transition, reconstruction, and shaping of the new Iraq.
The war in Iraq has put the condition of Iraqi women firmly on the global agenda. For years, their lives have been framed by state oppression, economic sanctions and three wars. Now they must play a seminal role in reshaping their country's future for the twenty-first century. Nadje Al-Ali challenges the myths and misconceptions which have dominated debates about Iraqi women, bringing a much needed gender perspective to bear on the central political issue of our time. Based on life stories and oral histories of Iraqi women, she traces the history of Iraq from post-colonial independence, to the emergence of a women's movement in the 1950s, Saddam Hussein's early policy of state feminism to the turn towards greater social conservatism triggered by war and sanctions. Yet, the book also shows that, far from being passive victims, Iraqi women have been, and continue to be, key social and political actors. Following the invasion, Al-Ali analyses the impact of occupation and Islamist movements on women's lives and argues that US-led calls for liberation has led to a greater backlash against Iraqi women.
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