Getting God's Ear: Women, Islam, and Healing in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf

Eleanor Doumato begins her well-documented and readable book by asking why "women's behavior is so much more restricted in Saudi Arabia than in any other place in the Middle East where I had lived or traveled...?" Using missionary letters and adventurers' travel literature from Arabia and the Gulf during the early 19th century, we learn how women, kept separate from the mosque's more efficacious public worship (men's domain), created a spiritual space for themselves. Especially interesting is the Zar healing ritual where women gathered--ostensibly "to obtain relief from the symptoms of [spirit] possession." Zar ceremonies were elaborate affairs involving feasting, music, chanting, and sacrifices. Missionary Minnie Dykstra noted that "there does not seem to be the least desire or effort on the part of those possessed to be freed...[Zar] provides them with a great deal of fun and excitement, and gives them distinction and authority which otherwise they would not have."Doumato brilliantly connects the unfamiliar with the familiar as she describes agents used in healing. When we read that women collected "the spittle of the men who have just finished their prayers for their sick ones [to ingest] at home," the author reminds us that Jesus healed a blind man by spitting into the man's eyes. Saliva from a holy person or saliva from a man who had just recited holy words was believed to have curative powers.Doumato contends that the Wahhabi movement (began mid-eighteenth century) squelched not just women's gatherings but all unorthodox worship. "...Wahhabis denigrated techniques of personal and spiritual empowerment in contradiction to orthodox standards that were available to women and condemned communal rituals that applealed to women's needs." Again, Doumato connects the unfamiliar to the familiar as she shows the effects of the Wahhabi movement (censoring women accused of witchcraft, condemning music and dancing) as similar to the Protestant thrust in Europe and America after the Reformation--something that shrank women's spiritual space as well. Women seem to have always struggled for a space within relgious communities--a space often precariously enjoyed--depending on the benevolence of a male-dominated hierachy. The difference between Saudi Arabia and other countries is only one of degree.

Doumato explores the issues of women and society in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf region. Covers the aspect of beliefts, religion, culture, tradition and society.Includes the dilemma facing a traditional Gulf society where women's gender roles have been predetermine for centuries. The most interesting aspect about this book is that it discusses the power women had in the areas of healing and the way these women identify with their spritual self. Overall, a refreshing insight into the lives of women in the Gulf region.