CHAPTER I - OVERVIEW
To paraphrase Carl Poirier quoted by Pascal Ménoret 1 ( * ) , the Middle East is located "an imagination away". The author was referring to Saudi Arabia but his phrase sheds light on how Americans and Europeans perceive all the countries in that part of the world.
What accounts for our difficulty in understanding the region's societies, our lack of empathy, ethnocentric rejection of their cultures, all-too-frequent indifference to their misfortunes, quiet acceptance of their repression by predatory republican or monarchical dictatorships and resulting lag in human development?
The first hypothesis is our forgetfulness about the nature of relations between Europe (and then the United States) and the Middle East in the 19 th and 20 th centuries. We have forgotten that "colonization and imperialism have brutalized societies" 2 ( * ) : the Egyptian campaign, the French and English intervention to weaken the Ottoman Empire and the dismantling of that empire in the 1920s, the drawing of arbitrary borders disregarding the will of the peoples concerned--Iraq, Syria separated from Lebanon, Jordan as a consolation prize for the Hashemites, Arabia offered to the Saud family--and all of those countries in subjugated positions as official (Iraq-Syria) or unofficial (Jordan-Arabia) protectorates. We have forgotten gunboat diplomacy and yet it has never ended. The Iraq war is the latest episode. We have lost sight of a past that is still a burning memory in the Middle East and, as Henry Laurens says, resurges as soon as governments and non-governmental groups instrumentalize it to shore up public opinion.
Another hypothesis is the lack of knowledge about the realities of Middle East societies. With the exception of Yemen, the region's peoples have never been younger and more literate nor their elites so highly skilled. Never have so many women been so educated and had access to universities and prestigious careers--a source of power on the Arabian Peninsula as well as in Egypt.
A third hypothesis involves our essentialist conception of Islam and the Middle East, leading us to mistakenly reduce that religion to certain archaic practices and that part of the world to its religious dimension. That is explained by the Arab regimes' nearly systematic manipulation of religion and the presence of extremists. But we should be able to make distinctions. Islam cannot be reduced to the Taliban or Iran's mullahs any more than Catholicism can be confused with the Inquisition, Protestantism with pastors sentencing "witches" to burning at the stake in the 17 th century or today's creationists. It is a source of spiritual elevation for some, a dreadful excuse for the cruelest wars for others. Like every religion, Islam is what people make of it.
In the West, experts on the region are familiar with the traits common to the Middle East countries that we are about to recall but remain unknown to the general public. How can we comprehend the crises making the top stories on daily newscasts for a few bloody seconds without referring to that background?
Pictures on our TV screens strengthen Western stereotypes of backwardness, violence and irreducible strangeness. Before describing the Middle East's evolution, let us recall some sociological, historical and economic facts with the aim of making the Orient, which seems so complicated to us because it is poorly known, more intelligible to Western eyes.
I. FAST-CHANGING SOCIETIES
A. THE DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION HAS STARTED EVERYWHERE AND ENDED NOWHERE
1. The demographic transition in the Middle East
The term "demographic transition" refers to a stage in a society's life when couples start controlling births. 3 ( * )
The Middle East has entered that phase. The fertility rate fell from 6.8 children per woman in 1975 to 3.7 in 2005, heralding a tectonic shift in the traditional balance of relationships to authority in civil and political society. The turning point comes when the first generation with a literate majority reaches adulthood. That is happening in the Middle East. Birth control is spreading throughout society, causing disorientation and often weakening political authority. The period of literacy and contraception often coincides with revolution.
2. Social upheavals
In general, the more powerful family traditions are, the stronger the social upheavals. The Middle East is no exception. The patriarchal family is more an expression of solidarity between brothers and sisters and male and female cousins than of the dictatorship of a pater familias . Literacy, the rural exodus and birth control have thrust individuals into a new, modern framework that is more conducive to personal fulfillment but so destabilizing it triggers nostalgia. Obsession with the status of women and the conspicuousness of once-private religious practices are symptoms of that disorientation. In the Middle East the patriarchal family offers individuals strong protection in exchange for accepting its constraints. The elimination of illiteracy, the rural exodus and birth control have destroyed those safeguards and the patriarchy at the same time, hence the rise of anxiety.
3. Putting things into perspective
Modernization, literacy and changes in sexual behavior have rocked the traditional family, shaken relationships with authority and threatened male domination. Those revolutionary patterns, typical in periods of demographic transition, are not specific to the Middle East. In 1649 the Puritan Revolution that led to the 1689 Bill of Rights broke out in England just after it crossed the threshold of 50% literacy. In 1730s France, where most men between the ages of 20 and 24 could read and write and fertility started dropping, an ideological and political crisis began that spawned the 1789 Revolution.
B. WOMEN BETWEEN ASCENSION AND CONSERVATISM
1. Contradictory trends
Contradictory trends determine the situation of women in the Middle East. Some point to ascension and emancipation. The part women played in Iran's presidential election is one example but there are others, such as the increase in the number of businesswomen in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. Other indicators suggest a regression in the status of women, marked by conservative precepts that they subconsciously pass on to future generations. It is hard to say whether the Middle East is moving towards more or less freedom for women.
2. The schooling of girls
The transformation of the status of women has led to an increase in the number of girls in school, which has risen to an average of 50% of the female population. With the growth of universities and unprecedented enrollment in institutions of higher learning, the level of women's professional skills has considerably risen in the past three decades and the region underwent the world's fastest growth in female participation in economic activities between 1990 and 2003 (19% compared to 3% globally). Schools and universities for girls and young women, as well as legislative strides, such as the right to vote and run for office (Oman and Qatar in 2003, Kuwait in 2005) have changed everything for women under 50.
The qualitative and quantitative metamorphosis of the role of women has also triggered a widespread reaction: the return of conservative ideas that try to limit women to being "guardians of tradition" 4 ( * ) .
Oddly, the return of the Muslim veil shows that the most conservative social circles agree to let their wives and daughters study, have a career and leave the home. The veil and abaya , which women in the modern bourgeoisie consider a step backwards, are tools of liberation for most of the rest.
3. Feminism and salafism
The feminist movement has coincided with the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and the spread of salafism (from salaf: ancestor). Women from society's lower ranks joined Islamist movements more easily because, unlike their parents, they learned how to read the Koran and their intellectual level predisposed them to a literal interpretation of the text. That trend affects both women and men. Like many of their Western counterparts, Muslim women still pass on by their example the values of male hegemony that work against them and their daughters.
The status of women, between ascension and conservatism, seems to be the indicator of how far changing societies have come.
* 1 Pascal Ménoret - L'énigme saoudienne - La Découverte 2003
* 2 Henry Laurens - L'Orient arabe à l'heure américaine - Pluriel
* 3 See Youssef Courbage and Emmanuel Todd - Le rendez-vous des civilisations - Seuil 2007
* 4 See Hélé Béji's remarkable book Une force qui demeure , Arléa, 2006.