Book summary “Nine Parts of Desire”: summary

Introduction

You often view the lives of women in Muslim-majority societies through polarized Western stereotypes of either passive oppression or exotic mystery.

Geraldine Brooks explores the complex realities, legal contradictions, and daily lives of women across the Islamic world.

You struggle to separate authentic religious tenets from centuries of patriarchal custom. The book examines scripture, political power, and domestic existence to reveal how women navigate these conflicting pressures.

You will find answers to several persistent questions as you read:

• How did a faith that initially granted women unprecedented property and legal rights evolve into strict modern subjection?
• What role do garments like the hijab play in political resistance versus religious devotion?
• How do legal frameworks regarding marriage, divorce, and child custody operate in daily practice?
• In what ways do women exercise hidden leverage within male-dominated societies?

1. Scriptural Roots and the Global Variations of Islamic Dress

The hijab originated as a specific curtain for the Prophet's wives, yet today its interpretation and enforcement vary wildly across the Muslim world.

Scriptural Origins of the Veil

The literal meaning of hijab is a curtain. Its original scriptural application in the Koran was restricted specifically to the wives of the Prophet Muhammad.

The revelation of hijab followed a community uproar over Muhammad's marriage to Zeinab, his adopted son's divorced wife. While the Koran instructed the prophet's wives to speak from behind a curtain for protection against scandal, general instructions for other women focused on general modesty rather than total hair and body coverage. When you argue with Sahar in Cairo about the Koran making no reference to covering hair, she will insist on looking to the sunnah for guidance.

Global Variations and Political Acts

Across the Muslim world, interpretations of Islamic dress vary wildly from loose regional garments and face masks to complete black shrouds and even male veiling. Muslim women wear diverse interpretations ranging from Pakistani salivar kameez and Saudi gauzy face veils to Emirati birdlike masks and Algerian Tuareg customs. Notably, among the nomadic Tuareg, men are the ones who veil their faces after puberty while women go completely barefaced.

In the Algerian Sahara, Tuareg men cover all but their eyes with indigo cloth while women enjoy considerable sexual freedom and go unveiled.

State-mandated forced unveiling by Reza Shah in 1935 caused deep psychological trauma and social isolation for traditional women who viewed the edict as tyrannical imprisonment. Reza Shah banned the chador to modernize Iran, forbidding veiled women from using public transport, entering stores, or attending school. This forced many traditional women to sequester themselves indoors for years, making simple tasks like visiting local bathhouses impossible and turning the veil into a powerful symbol of resistance. Sattareh Farman Farmaian's mother wept with rage and imprisoned herself in her bedroom when forced to go out unveiled in a small French cloche.

For young Iranian intellectuals and revolutionaries, donning the chador served as a powerful anti-imperialist political act symbolizing liberation rather than oppression.

Intellectuals like Ali Shariati combined Marxist critique with Shiite rebellion, framing Western fashion as capitalist exploitation that turned women into dependent consumers. Young women adopted the chador to reject Western imperialism and assert their revolutionary identity. Hamideh Marefat, a middle-class student, put on the chador a year before the 1978 revolution and wore it as a flag while occupying the U.S. Embassy for 444 days after the 1979 event.

While state laws and social pressure brutally enforce modesty and veiling on women, equivalent Islamic dress codes for men are widely ignored. While the Koran and sunnah mandate that men cover the area from navel to knee with loose clothing, men routinely flout these rules by wearing tight jeans, thigh-high shorts, or athletic jockstraps in public and on television without facing social sanction or state punishment. Chador-wearing Iranian women could not take their sons to soccer matches because male players competed in thigh-high shorts violating Islamic dress codes.

Behind public modesty requirements, Islamic teachings encourage women to maintain meticulous bodily grooming and beauty behind closed doors for their husbands. While public spaces enforce strict concealment of the female body, Islamic traditions prescribe specific hygiene and beauty routines for private marital life. This includes the complete removal of body hair and adherence to specific beauty norms. Hezbollah women who wore severe black garb in public opened their suite doors dressed in silk negligees and blonde wigs, explaining that Islam encourages beauty for husbands.

2. Sexuality, Marriage Contracts, and Extrajudicial Punishments

Islamic texts affirm female sexual pleasure and allow protective marriage contracts, while patriarchal customs still enforce harsh penalties and honor killings.

Sexuality and Legal Loopholes

Mainstream Islamic texts explicitly affirm women's right to sexual pleasure within marriage. Unlike many Western religious traditions, Islamic jurisprudence permits diverse sexual approaches.

Muhammad rebuked a companion named Othman who was too busy praying to tend to his wife. He stated that Allah sent him with a straight law that includes intimate relations with wives. According to Ali, one part of sexual desire was given to men and ten parts to women.

Shiite Islam utilizes temporary marriage contracts to legally permit sexual relations and companionship outside of permanent wedlock. Known as sigheh or muta, these contracts can last from a few minutes to ninety-nine years. They are sanctioned by a cleric.

• Agree upon the duration and financial terms between the man and woman.
• Go before a cleric to record the temporary marriage contract.

In Iran, former leader Rafsanjani encouraged the use of sigheh after the Iran-Iraq War. The goal was to provide material support and sexual satisfaction for young war widows and unmarried men.

Islamic law enforces extreme penalties for extramarital sex and homosexuality, but convictions require strict evidence. Adultery and homosexual acts carry punishments including stoning, lashing, or death. A conviction requires confession or the direct testimony of four male eyewitnesses to the actual act of penetration. Accusers who fail to provide the required witnesses face a sentence of eighty lashes. Unmarried adulterers or homosexual sodomizers face a mandatory punishment of a hundred stripes or lashes.

A wealthy Saudi executive hosted an underground party with forbidden alcohol and dancing. He remained safe behind high walls because local evidentiary rules make prosecution nearly impossible without direct witnesses.

Honor Killings and Marriage Contracts

Extrajudicial killings of women by family members to cleanse perceived family shame occur across various communities. These honor killings target women suspected of premarital or extramarital sex. Perpetrators often face lenient social consequences or are viewed as local heroes.

Forty Palestinian women die annually at the hands of male relatives in honor killings. During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, 156,000 Palestinians stayed.

Tamam Fahiliya and her feminist group Al Fanar organized protests in Nazareth and distributed flyers. They took action after a pregnant nineteen-year-old was found murdered in a burned-out car by her father.

The Islamic marriage contract, or aqd, serves as a crucial legal tool that can protect women's rights. A well-crafted aqd allows women to legally stipulate their right to work and continue education.

• Include a clause known as the esma granting the wife the right to initiate divorce.
• Add a narrower stipulation allowing divorce if the husband takes a second wife.

In Baghdad, couples signed contracts detailing bride prices and divorce compensations. Saddam Hussein encouraged this wedding boom to repair demographic damage.

3. Historical Precedents and the Lives of Wives in Power

Early Islamic history, exemplified by figures like Aisha, shapes modern debates, while royal consorts often serve as lightning rods for political dissent.

Sunnis revere Aisha as Muhammad's favorite wife and a heroic teacher of Islam. Shiites view her as a jealous schemer whose actions contributed to the factional bloodletting that permanently divided the Muslim nation. Among Shiites, "You Aisha!" is used as a term of aspiration and abuse when a girl misbehaves. In 1366 after Hegira, a Tehran radio interviewer asked about role models, demonstrating how the year 622, marking the first year of Hegira, still echoes in modern consciousness through 2210 hadith originally attributed to Aisha and the 174 hadith kept by ninth-century scholars after dismissing most of her accounts.

The Koranic rule requiring the seclusion of women and the use of a curtain originated as specific etiquette for the prophet's household but was later generalized. The revelation regarding hijab was triggered by guests lingering too long after Muhammad's wedding feast with Zeinab, causing the prophet discomfort. Although initially limited to the prophet's wives, this rule eventually came to apply to all Muslim women. On Zeinab's wedding night, Muhammad recited the verse commanding believers not to linger for conversation and to ask the prophet's wives for anything from behind a curtain.

A false accusation of adultery against Aisha led to a major Koranic ruling that permanently established strict witness requirements for such charges. After Aisha was left behind during a desert march and returned to camp escorted by a young soldier, a scandal erupted. A subsequent divine revelation cleared her name and established the legal requirement of four witnesses for adultery charges. Aisha's return with the young soldier Safwan sparked month-long gossip, ending only when Muhammad announced a revelation exonerating her.

• Require four witnesses to sustain a charge of adultery.
• Scourge those who commit adultery with an hundred stripes.
• Scourge those who accuse reputable women of whoredom without four witnesses with fourscore stripes and deny their testimony forever.

These rules set 100 stripes for those guilty of adultery and 80 stripes for false accusations of whoredom without four witnesses.

Royalty and Political Scapegoating

Rulers' wives in the Middle East frequently serve as scapegoats and lightning rods for public dissent during economic crises. When economic pressures mount and citizens cannot directly criticize the monarch or authorities, they target the queen or empress instead. Foreign wives, especially those who do not wear the veil or maintain traditional lifestyles, become prime targets for xenophobic and misogynistic anxieties regarding western influence, sexuality, and emancipation. During the 1989 bread and gas riots in Maan, protestors shouted slogans demanding that King Hussein divorce his American-born wife, Queen Noor, accusing her of extravagance, CIA ties, and western values. At the time of the 1989 riots, King Hussein was 54 years old and had ruled for 38 years.

King Hussein maintained his ultimate political survival by actively engaging his rural and Bedouin base rather than relying solely on Western-style diplomacy. While foreign observers viewed King Hussein through the lens of Western diplomacy and elite schooling, his domestic legitimacy stemmed from his role as a tribal patriarch, prayer leader, and direct descendant of the Prophet. When threatened by unrest, he would personally travel to remote desert settlements to participate in traditional rituals, accept petitions, and mend political rifts. Following the 1989 riots, King Hussein piloted a Black Hawk helicopter to remote desert towns, plunging into volatile crowds, participating in traditional camel sacrifice rituals, and drinking coffee from local tribesmen to prove it was unpoisoned. His lineage stretched back through 1951, when he inherited the throne after his grandfather's assassination and his father's abdication, through the loss of the West Bank to Israel in 1967, and the crushing of the armed Palestinian insurrection in 1970 during Black September.

4. Education, Employment, and the Continuity of Patriarchy

Despite expanding educational and professional opportunities, women face severe legal restrictions, guardianship laws, and deep-seated patriarchal attitudes.

Education and Segregation

Women's formal education in Saudi Arabia was initially established under religious pretenses and remains voluntary rather than compulsory. Education for girls was never made compulsory if their fathers disapproved. This reflected the pervasive belief that educating women threatens traditional family structures.

King Faisal's wife, Queen Iffat, opened the country's first girls' school in Jeddah in 1956 by disguising it as an orphanage to satisfy religious requirements. Queen Iffat founded Dar al Hanan, the House of Affection, as an orphanage in 1956 before revealing its true educational purpose a year later. In Burayda in 1963, King Faisal had to deploy the National Guard to keep the town's first girls' school open against violent protests by conservative men.

By 1960, the ulema grudgingly agreed to the spread of girls' schools. By 1980, only 55 percent of Saudi girls attended primary school, 23 percent enrolled in secondary education, and 38 percent of women were literate compared to 62 percent of men.

Even Western-educated Arab men who champion modern professional lives often retain deeply patriarchal attitudes when the personal autonomy of their own wives and daughters is concerned. You discover a striking continuity between older traditional figures and young, cosmopolitan professionals. Men who have studied at elite Western universities, navigated global business centers, and revel in critiquing political orthodoxy still enforce strict seclusion for immediate family members.

Brooks's Saudi friend, an urbane professional with a Western education who traveled between London, Washington, and Riyadh, admitted that educating his own mathematically gifted daughter as a modern physicist would present a profound problem that he would simply have to solve when it happened, matching the fatalistic resignation of his traditionalist uncle.

Legal Restrictions and Employment

In Saudi Arabia, women who work outside the home face intense social risks, rigid segregation rules, and the constant threat of the religious police. In 1986, 4 percent of the paid work force were women. The ruling family funded the mutawain to appease fundamentalists and prevent an Iranian-style overthrow.

Journalist Faiza Ambah worked in an unsegregated office at the Arab News in Jeddah, risking raids by the mutawain, who enforced segregation and dress codes. Faiza Ambah risked arrest by working in a newsroom alongside men, while other women faced harassment from the mutawain for uncovered faces.

Saudi women are legally infantilized throughout their lives, requiring written permission from a responsible male relative to travel. Regardless of age, a Saudi woman cannot travel within her own country without a signed permission slip from her husband, son, or grandson. Once married, only a husband's permission counts, leaving widowed grandmothers dependent on younger male relatives. Faiza Ambah was trapped in Jeddah without her travel permit because her husband was traveling and unreachable.

Traditional Islamic perspectives permit a wife to work under specific conditions, granting the husband broad rights to terminate her employment. Religious editors and legal norms dictate that while husbands must provide, a couple may both work if income is low and the wife agrees. Adela took a low-level clerical job in a girls' school because her husband deemed it suitable and permitted it.

• The husband has the right to terminate a wife's working whenever he deems it necessary.
• He has the right to object to any job if he feels that it would expose his wife to any harm, seduction or humiliation.
• The wife has the right to discontinue working whenever she pleases.

5. Political Resistance, Military Roles, and Cultural Expression

Women have actively participated in guerrilla combat and political reform, while enduring fundamentalist crackdowns on arts and cultural traditions.

Jihad and Guerrilla Warfare

When conservative authorities argued that jihad was obligatory only for men and that women's service was fulfilled through obedience to husbands, reformers countered with historical evidence of women like Nusaybah bint Kaab and Safiyah defending the Prophet and fighting in battle.

Nusaybah bint Kaab received thirteen wounds while shielding the Prophet's body during the battle of Uhud, and Safiyah became the first Muslim woman to kill an enemy in battle.

Following democratic elections in Iraqi Kurdistan, women parliamentarians campaigned to alter Sharia-based laws regarding polygamy and inheritance. While restrictions on polygamy found some theological flexibility within Koranic texts, demands to equalize inheritance shares between sons and daughters faced insurmountable legal and cultural hurdles.

Hero Ahmed, a former guerrilla fighter and psychologist, was elected to the 105-seat Kurdish parliament in May 1992 and led efforts alongside other women MPs to collect tens of thousands of signatures for legal reform petitions.

• 105 seats: The total number of seats in the Kurdish parliament.
• 7 women: The number of women elected to the Kurdish parliament in May 1992.
• 3,000 to 30,000: The growth in petition signatures gathered by women reformers between August 1992 and a year later.

Arts, Fundamentalism, and Activism

When prominent, highly educated Saudi women staged a driving protest in Riyadh to challenge the ban on driving, initial legal rulings found no civil or religious violations. Nevertheless, intense public backlash and religious edicts forced the government to suspend the women, confiscate their passports, and formally cement the driving ban into law.

On a Tuesday afternoon in November 1990, 47 women converged on a Riyadh supermarket parking lot, dismissed their drivers, and drove in convoy before being intercepted by the religious police and traffic authorities.

• 300,000: The number of full-time private chauffeurs in Saudi Arabia.
• 47 women: The number who took part in the Riyadh driving protest.
• 80 lashes: The Koranic sentence for anyone who impugns a woman's reputation.

Supported by televangelists and rumored funding from wealthy foreign sources, numerous prominent female performers retired at the height of their fame, denouncing show business as un-Islamic and buying up the copyrights to their past films to suppress them.

Soheir el-Babli, a top box-office draw and the star of Attiya, the Terrorist Woman, suddenly quit show business in July 1993 to adopt the Islamic veil.

10 Key Ideas

1. Geraldine Brooks explores the complex realities, legal contradictions, and daily lives of women across the Islamic world as they navigate conflicting patriarchal and religious pressures.
2. The hijab originated as a specific curtain for the Prophet's wives, yet today its interpretation and enforcement vary wildly across the Muslim world.
3. For young Iranian intellectuals and revolutionaries, donning the chador served as a powerful anti-imperialist political act symbolizing liberation rather than oppression.
4. Islamic texts affirm female sexual pleasure and allow protective marriage contracts, while patriarchal customs still enforce harsh penalties and honor killings.
5. Early Islamic history, exemplified by figures like Aisha, shapes modern debates, while royal consorts often serve as lightning rods for political dissent.
6. King Hussein maintained his ultimate political survival by actively engaging his rural and Bedouin base rather than relying solely on Western-style diplomacy.
7. Despite expanding educational and professional opportunities, women face severe legal restrictions, guardianship laws, and deep-seated patriarchal attitudes.
8. Saudi women are legally infantilized throughout their lives, requiring written permission from a responsible male relative to travel.
9. Women have actively participated in guerrilla combat and political reform, while enduring fundamentalist crackdowns on arts and cultural traditions.
10. Supported by televangelists and rumored funding from wealthy foreign sources, numerous prominent female performers retired at the height of their fame, denouncing show business as un-Islamic.