Text and Performance Quarterly i J RoutledgeVol. 24, No. 3/4, July/Qctober 2004, pp. 212-232 « » T.,ior6.F,,nci>c,oup

Performing In/Outside Islam: Musicand Gendered Cultural Politics in theMiddle East and North AfricaLaura Lengel

Women performers, particularly those in theatre, music, dance, and performance art,frequently experience inequitable treatment in Islamic societies. This study investigatesthe lived experience of women musicians in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA),with particular focus on the resistance discourse in Tunisian women's music. Based ona year-long ethnography situated primarily in the North African Tunisia's capital ofTunis, this study critiques the intersections of religion, sexuality, politics, and power forwomen in the MENA. It examines the restrictive legislation of Qur'anic verses thatcompel women to refrain from nushuz (rebellion) and tabarruj (strutting about/display-ing of charms). It looks at how this legislation is applied to women public performersthrough the interlocking hegemonic discourses of religious, governmental, familial, andother institutions. It examines how resistant discursive space(s) articulate subversive andsexual messages through song. Finally, the study addresses the sociocultural andhistorical roots of a specific imagined woman, the musical performer as a sexualizedOther and encoded under the dominant ideology of the region as resisting the tenets ofIslam.

Keywords: Islam; Middle East and North Africa Region; Resistance; Sexuality;Women's Music

Laura Lengel is Associate Professor in the School of Communication Studies at Bowling Green StateUniversity. She received grants from the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, the AmericanInstitute of Maghribi Studies, and the Ohio University John Houk Memorial Foundation to conduct theyear-long field research in North African Tunisia (1993-1994) that forms the basis for this paper. The songlyrics and some of the interview narratives in this paper were originally presented in her doctoral dissertation(Drs. Jenny Nelson and Karin Sandell, Ohio University, advisors) and in a competitively selected paper onfeminist ethnography presented in the Feminist and Women's Studies Division of the 1996 NCA convention(Dwight Conquergood, respondent). The focus on Islam and performance is new and developed solely for thissubmission. She thanks Dwight Conquergood, Frederick Corey, Thomas Nakayama, Jenny Nelson, KarinSandell, and John T. Warren for their guidance, Victoria Newsom for her careful reading of this manuscript,Monia Hejaiej for her song translation, and above all the Tunisian women respondents for sharing their songslife stories. Correspondence to: Laura Lengel, School of Communication Studies, Bowling Creen StateUniversity, 302 West Hall, Bowling Green, OH 43403. Email: lengell@bgnet.bgsu.edu

ISSN 1046-2937 (print)/ISSN 1479-5760 (online) © 2004 National Communication AssociationDOI: 10.1080/1046293042000312742

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Amati [Slave Woman]Why do you have to feel jealous?Do you think I'm your slave?Don't follow me around.I don't want to be connected to you,I don't want to be related to you.And so go away, leave me alone. (Srarfi "Amati")'

This song passes from mothers to daughters to granddaughters. They sit on lowcushioned benches around the large communal family space. Here in the traditionalsitting room, hand-knotted wool rugs in rich reds, yellows, and greens lay at thegirls' and women's bare feet. The green colors in the room are most sharp. Hadra(green), too, is significant in the nation—the beloved epithet for Tunisia, a greensemi-arid Mediterranean nation amidst others in the Maghreb (Western-most NorthAfrica) that lack the lushness, the verdure that this land enjoys.

It is a special event, the lutiyya, one of the gatherings in the week-long Tunisianwedding celebration where women members of the bride's family perform the ritualof inscribing hennah on her hands and feet. As they mix the hennah, plan the design,and painstakingly apply the detailed pattern on the bride, the women laugh, tellstories, and sing songs. Elsewhere in the room, the young girls and I observe morethan participate, drinking in the joy in the faces of the mothers, aunts, andgrandmothers. The girls and I, we're learning this ritual. As we take in the details ofthis moment, we are lulled by this particular song, a song that—for us, the learnersin the community—is startling.

I don't want you, you're a jealous man.I don't want to marry a jealous man.You always accuse me.I'm not promiscuous. (Srarfi "Amati")

How interesting that this song is sung while preparing the bride for her marriage, Ithink as I take in this performance. What of the groom? Is he a jealous man? Seemsthere are lot of them around this place. Not this place exactly, not this room. Theyare outside, in the man's world, the medina. The room is hot, but not nearly asstifling as the 117 degree fever of the medina.

Men are in charge of/[are guardians of/

are superior to/have authority over]

women{al-rijalu qawwamuna 'ala l-nisa').(Sura 4:34, qtd. in Stowasser 32)^

The medina, the ancient walled city of Tunis, has sweated in this fever for over twomillennia. Men sit at makeshift cafes, little rooms nestled in the tiny alleyways, somelit by a single fluorescent bulb overhead, others lit only by the streams of sunlight

214 I . Lengel

coming in through the narrow gaps between the ancient buildings that make up themedina. They smoke and drink mint tea out of little glasses that look like shotglasses. They appear to be professional "hangers out," sitting for hours. In front ofthe cafe areas children play in the alleys. A cat with one eye sealed shut and half atail creeps by the walls. A young couple, fashionably dressed urbanites, walk quicklydown the lane. He squints at her, consumed with anger, the heat, and the hate. Shelooks down, trying to avoid the moist areas where the shopkeepers wash the rottedvegetables down to the ancient drainage system, trying not to fall. He accuses her ofalready having fallen:

because God has endowed one with more[because God has preferred some of them over others]

(wa-bi-ma 'anfaqu min amwalihim) ...therefore the righteous women are obedient,

guarding in secret that which God has guarded.(Sura 4:34, qtd. in Stowasser 32)

You're always accusing me, suspecting,accusing me of having affairs with so and so.I'm not promiscuous.I will never marry you if you ask for my hand,because you are jealous.And even if you put all your father's fortuneinto marrying me, I will never accept. (Srarfi "Amati")

The bride laughs as the song ends. She has accepted the marriage proposal. But shedid so with her eyes open. She'll cherish this moment of camaraderie and take theselyrics with her into her marriage. She'll pass them on to her daughters andgranddaughters. She'll let them know that there are options; there is possibility to resistthe hegemonic norms inherent in the Muslim world, to reject men's qiwama (beingin charge of) over women, to rebel against a traditionalist interpretation of Islam andthe cultures that embrace it.

As to those from whom you fear rebellion,admonish them and banish them to separate beds,

and beat them.{Sura 4:34, qtd. in Stowasser 32)

The lyrics resonate defiance to the gendered politics of culture in the Islamic nationwhere the song is performed. In her work on gender issues and contemporaryQur'anic interpretation, Barbara Freyer Stowasser suggests that rebellion {nushuz)against hegemonic Islamic values and norms "is interpreted to mean female appro-priation of superiority over the husband, undue freedom of movement, objection tosexual contact when desired by the husband, and other acts of defiance" (30). Byengaging in nushuz through song, however, a performance of resistance goes largelyunnoticed. Fathers and husbands normally avoid encroaching upon the all-women'sspaces where this, and similar songs, are performed. If men might happen tooverhear the music emerging from the women's gatherings, they do not take themessage seriously. The music, dance, and performances are for women only; they are

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largely irrelevant to the male-dominated cultures that make up much of the Muslimworld.

It is not just men who are unwelcome in these performance spaces. The womenwho support these men most passionately—their mothers—are often excluded. Thesongs are subversive texts that allow women to insult mothers-in-law, talk of leavingtheir husbands or taking on a lover, and ignore what a "good Muslim girl" shoulddo, should be. Enunciating such themes through spoken words in Islamic culturescould carry grave ramifications. A woman does not ask "Do you think I'm yourslave?" with words. The interrogation is too strong, too harsh, too dangerous toarticulate. With song, however, she has more freedom. While painting hennah on thebrides' hands during the lutiyya ceremony, washing laundry in a communal familycourtyard, or tidying up the kitchen, the performed texts constitute more subversiveacts than the spoken words.

Then if they obey you,seek not a way against them.

For God is Exalted, Great.{Sura 4:34, qtd. in Stowasser 32)

All women's spaces in Islamic cultures generally, and in North African Tunisiaspecifically, give women the power of poetic license. Monia Hejaiej, a scholar ofTunisian women's performance of folk narratives, calls the spaces "a door or awindow open." These spaces were then, and remain today, a safe domain for womento perform their stories, share their struggles, seek comfort, and resist expectationsplaced upon them by the dominant ideological structures and discourses of theMuslim world. Through history, the open windows, private stages, and comfortingwomen's spaces have encouraged women to create, perform, and pass on storiesthrough song. The problems occur when women venture out of the protectedwomen's sphere into the public eye and ear, that sees and hears women performersas problematic at best, as an 'ahira (prostitute) at worst.'

Arelene MacLeod, writing of hegemonic relations and gender resistance in MiddleEast and North African (MENA) cultures, suggests that a look behind the myths ofIslamic oppression of women reveals the influential location of women; they are"behind-the-scenes-but-truly-powerful" (533). If this is so, perhaps Tunisian womenmusicians, who are no doubt "behind-the-scenes" in terms of manifest social power,also exercise some subtle infiuence on female identity and gender relations inTunisian culture. This article, emerging from a year-long ethnography in Tunisia,**examines the interplay between Islam and women performers in Tunisia, or whattranspires when women step out from "behind-the-scenes" onto public performancestages. It explores the resistant discursive spaces in which subversive and sexualmessages are articulated through song. It critiques how public performers negotiatetwo central, subject positions of women in Islamic cultures: first, the submissive andveiled "good Muslim," a wife and mother (or a virgin awaiting marriage), one whoserves her husband and his male heir to the family lineage; and second, the Otherwho is marginalized through sexualized objectification and feminized "taming."'

216 L. Lengel

Foucault argues the body is sexed through social practice and discourse. Hislocation of the body as a strategic target of power illuminates how women's bodies(and minds) are subject to social control, in this case of the dual positions ofobjectification and taming.* Studies of women and the body (see, for instance,Butler; Grosz) suggest girls and women are taught culture-specific bodily position-ing. As Borisoff and Merrill note, "there are frequently severe social penalties forthose who act in violation of their culture's accepted gender 'script'" (287). Islamicfeminisms, transnational feminisms, performance studies, and cultural studies inter-rogate the gender "script" and the constitution of the body as a site of struggle anda political entity (Lengel, Resistance; Warren and Lengel). Feminist musicology, too,considers the body as a site of struggle and politics, specifically in the engagementof the body through music (DeChaine; Holman Jones; McClary). Writing on theembodied understanding of music, DeChaine contends "musical experience forcesan encounter between mind and body, clearing a liminal space that is simultaneouslycharged with affect and fraught with tension" (81). The tensions for MENA womenmusicians stem from the two central, subject positions of the submissive wife andmother and the sexualized Other. Women resist these subject positions in the faceof unremitting negotiation with family and social pressure.

Nissah Nadif

The women who are married that come, they've got husbands who are less conserva-tive than others. Real conservative men would not [let them perform with the choir].You know, they would consider that losing his time and his wife's time and hischildren's time. No, no, no. The husbands of these women have got to have a certainlittle bit more open mind than others. If not, they could not sing. And still, onewoman [in the choir] brings her child here because [her husband says,] "if you wantto go you can go, but you take your child with you." I mean, they say this, your child,as if he's not theirs. (Marzouki, personal interview)

A young girl, about nine years old, plays with a toddler boy in the adjacent courtyardof the old Tunis dar (house) that serves as a music-education center and therehearsal space for El 'Azifet, the first all-women's orchestra in the MENA. As Iwatch the children running around the jasmine vines, I shift my mind from thecourtyard to the ancient medina, to the Club Tahar Haddad, known for housing LeClub d'Etude de la Condition de la Femme, the historical roots of the Tunisianfeminist movement. Ilhem Marzouki, member of the Club Tahar Haddad choir andcofounder of Le Club d'Etude, made the previous comment during our meeting inthe medina space that honors Tahar Haddad, an early twentieth-century women'srights activist. If a mother wishes to perform in a community, musical organization,she faces opposition ("take your child with you"). While Tunisian women enjoy oneof the strongest legal frameworks in the Mushm world, dominant governmental,religious, and mediated discourses about women's equahty contrasts the livedexperience of women.

Performing In/Outside Islam 2t7

As the children play outside, Feyriel Imran shows me her 'oud (Andalusian lute).She tells me its name derives from Arabic for wood, referring to the strips of woodused to make its rounded body. She turns the 'oud, revealing the 19 staves of varioustones of olive wood on the back of the instrument. Turning it again, she draws thefingers of her right hand over the patterned strips of Mother of Pearl. Nearby, othernissah (women) in the orchestra adjust the tuning of their instruments, 'ouds,violins, and other strings. They tap on their darbukas, the one-skinned, hollowdrums central to MENA music. They lower the height of their music stands so thatthey can discuss particular musical passages with those seated in rows ahead orbehind them. They practice a phrase or two of the Amati song. This rehearsal, likemost of El 'Azifet's practice sessions and performances, begins immediately afterbusiness hours so that the women can return home at or just after sundown.

Imran tells the story of how she was "allowed" to join El ^Azifet only after herfamily scrutinized the orchestra's activities and its members' lives. DeChaine's notionof the embodied nature of musical experience and the liminal space of musicalperformance, "simultaneously charged with affect and fraught with tension," in-forms Imran's comment on women who are nadif (a literal term for "clean"):

It was really only my mother who was against the idea, the rest of the family allencouraged me and I stuck to my [musical] interest. The rest of the family thensupported me and tried to convince my mother. They said that the level of the musicwas good, that the people were nadif, that they were good people I was with. And somy mother was convinced and she encouraged me as well ... [it was] understood thatall these women had come together for pleasure of music, that they were good people.(Imran)

Like her nissah counterparts in the orchestra, she is nadif, but the tension sheexperienced from her mother's rejection nearly kept her from pursuing her musicalcareer. Her family approved the opportunity for Imran to perform publicly onlyafter actually checking out the "cleanliness" of the group.

Being "clean" is imperative in many Islamic cultures. It is widely believed thatwomen are "unclean" while menstruating and should not pray, fast, or have sexualintercourse with their husbands. Women must be "clean" until marrying; bloodiedsheets often are displayed to prove she lost her virginity on her wedding night,portraying a Foucauldian "symbolics of blood" (History 148). This ritual is merelyone act monitored in the "constant surveillance" of marriage (History 37). Thenecessity of performing rituals of a pure body in Tunisia, and the surveillance of thebody in the marriage institution, has given rise to a cottage industry of medicalpractitioners who re-sew women's hymens before their wedding day.

God wishes but to put all filthiness away from you.People of the House [ahla l-bayt],

and to cleanse you with a cleansing.{Sura 33:33, qtd. in Stowasser 97)

Women go to great lengths to be nadif, clean, covered, pure, to "put all filthinessaway" from them.*" Some scholars in the Muslim world suggest that male dominanceof religious discourses and practices stem from the restrictive nature of Islam (see.

218 I . Lengel

for instance, Largueche and Largueche; Mernissi). A woman is nadif ii she is marriedand stays married; she cannot perform the hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) if she is in thestate of iddat (recently divorced). During the jamillya (pagan, pre-Islamic era),however, women in what is now the MENA region were sexually exploited,committed to servitude and menial labor, and considered a possession allotted to aman's successors upon his death (Aii 80). Women often are reminded of the jamillyaand the more respected identity they enjoy under Islam.

Western women also are reminded of a century past when the embodied natureof music was problematic. For instance, in Victorian Europe women pianistsexperienced some level of validation resulting from the piano's connection with thehome. Women playing less "ladylike" instruments, however, were highly criticizedby the public discourse (Green). The image of a woman working with her instru-ment, intensely and bodily, ran counter to the received ideas of femininity as passiveand playful. Although this image has changed, contemporary women continue to bemarginalized in musical activities, continue to bear the stereotypes about woman-ap-propriate musical instruments, are objectified by the industries of both serious andpopular music, and continue to lack recognition for composing music in traditionaland popular musics (Harbach).

While women musicians in the MENA are marginalized through several interlock-ing hegemonic discourses, they perform in a liminal space—a space that implies animpetus for change. As Victor Turner explains, "In other words, in liminality people'play' with the elements of the familiar and defamiliarize them" (7). Womenperformers can use the liminal moment to engage in nushuz (rebellion) and changetheir oppressed circumstances into freedom. The moment of the performance isboth liminal and transformed: both betwixt and between the hegemonic, normative,familiar, elements of their cultural restriction and an imagined alternative and atransformative space where they can be, for the moment of the performance, free ofthose cultural restrictions.

Women performers confront the interlocking system of hegemonic discourse thatpermeates all levels of Muslim life, what one performer calls the "complicity ofhypocrisy" (Azouz-Soltani). The immediacy of music and the possible transcendenceof hegemony make music a site for understanding women's agency, power, andability to engage in nushuz. It also makes music a site for understanding women'sconsciousness in Muslim societies. Creative practice, Raymond Williams argues, "canbe the long and difficult remaking of an inherited (determined) practical conscious-ness" (212). This consciousness, Williams notes, is in practice a "struggle at the rootsof the mind—not casting off an ideology, or learning phrases about it, butconfronting a hegemony in the fibres of the self and in hard practical substance ofeffective and continuing relationships" (212).

De Certeau, too, examines how performance and creative practice can confronthegemony, engage in resistance, and bring to bear agency within existing systems ofpower. He locates everyday creative practice as contestatory acts in active resistancerather than in the manipulation of cultural material. Barthes, who interrogated the"carnal stereophony" (Pleasure 66) of music, the embodied understanding of music

Performing In/Outside Islam 219

and texts, and the meanings of cultural artifacts and practices, also informs thisdebate. Examining Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) music and dancethrough his critiques of cultural practice, we see how performativity can challengewhat Barthes calls the "naturalness" of practices, particularly those everyday practicesthat one tends to take for granted (Mythologies). Barthes resents "seeing Nature andHistory confused at every turn, and I wanted to track down, in the decorative displayof what-goes-without-saying, the ideological abuse which, in my view, is hiddenthere" {Mythologies 11).

Ultimately, Barthes argues, gender differences come to play in the confusion ofNature and History. So, too, does sexuality play a role in history. In his work onperforming sexualities, Erederick Corey recognizes that "performative identity is notahistorical. The cultural production of sexuality and social constructs of desire areconnected deeply to their past discourses" (148). Dwight Conquergood, too, suggeststhat performance needs to be both refiective and constitutive of history. Barthes'critiques of nature and history, and of the reaffirmation of traditional gender roles,reveals this issue of "naturalness" of women's place in the home and the unnatural-ness of women who resist traditional gender performances. This "naturalness" isreinforced by the historical discourse about women's role under Islam, their place inthe home, and the penalties for engaging in public activity. MENA women who resisttraditional gender performances through their creative practice, who reject a femi-nized and tamed role, who take their bodies out of the domestic space, and whoperform nushuz through songs like Amati (Slave Woman), challenge these subjectpositions. These acts, however, face opposition by an interlocking system of dis-courses—religious, governmental, mediated, and social—that constitute women asrejecting their Islamic faith.

Islam, Interpretation, and Gendered Cultural Politics

'ba 'du-kum ba'd [you proceed from each other], (qtd. in Wadud 100)

The rudiments of Islam—including the scripture, the Qur'an and the expressionsand acts of the Prophet Mohammed, most notably 'ba 'du-kum ba'd—affirmequality for both women and men. However, similar to the holy scripture of manyreligions, the Qur'an is open to interpretation. Rights granted to Muslim women bythe Qur'an, thought to be the Word of God, and by the Prophet Muhammad, whoreceived and spread the Word, are said to be far more favorable to those prior to theadvent of Islam. Eatima Mernissi, arguably the premier feminist scholar in NorthAfrica, has examined Islam, interpretations of the prophet Muhammad, and Muslimwomen's lived experience. After the death of the Prophet, who did not know howto read or write, women's equality to men under Islam was obstructed by severalfactors: a lack of stable text of the Qur'an for decades after the Prophet's death andthe hadith or Qur'anic interpretations, that falsified and poorly recounted theProphet's work and ideas. Mernissi contends that several hadith, still used inarguments against women's political equality (such as "Women are naturally.

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morally and religiously defective," recorded by al-Bukhari), were "remembered" byreligious leaders under questionable circumstances and manipulated to increase theirpower (29).

Along with the hadith, the fiqh, or Islamic law, emerged from male Muslim"experts" on the Qur'an. Mernissi suggests the fiqh and the hadith historically wereused as political weapons among Muslim leaders that used storytellers and poets tospread patriarchal ideology under the auspices of the hadith (49). The role andcredibility of Muslim women were devalued in instances where it did not suit thosein power (Mernissi 47). The hadith and the fiqh opened up spaces for marginalizingMuslim women. The hadith, for example, describe the lives of the Prophet's wives,positioning them as models for all Muslim women to follow. Stowasser notes,however, that the identities of the wives are fiuid and confiicting: "On the one hand,they emerge as perfect examples of their sex regarding virtue and righteousness. Onthe other hand, they are portrayed as embodiments of female emotionalism,irrationality, greed, and rebelliousness" (106).

Mernissi argues contemporary Muslims need to rethink the validity of Islamictraditions and the gender oppression resulting from them. More than a thousandyears after the Prophet's death, those in power still use the hadith to oppress women.It is evident in legislation; Mernissi notes the Moroccan Code of Personal Statusopposes the UN Declaration of Human Rights by requiring the wife in a marriageto live "under the direction of the husband" (23).' It is evident in education, religion,and government discourse. It is evident in daily life, in cultural production, and inthe interpretation of performed texts.

Nissah Mish Nadif

The idea that "Women are naturally, morally and religiously defective" contributesto the fight for Muslim women to rise above the status of nissah mish nadif ("undeanwomen"). She is unclean if she resists the Qur'anic call to women to stay "in yourhouses." Women perform nadif in the face of the beliefs that Muslim women'ssexuality is a threat to society. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, writing on Islam andgender, suggests, "Muslims have always believed that female sexuality is potent witha predilection to create havoc and chaos in the male" (16). Eollowers of Islam, thus,must engage in controlling women with a view to preserving order and societalwell-being (Haddad 17). Haddad interprets Muhammad 'Alam al-Din's work thatargues men should also perform, guided by the teachings of the sharia (Islamic law):The sharia, al-Din reminds us, restricts sexual instincts to halal (that which ispermissible under Islam). Al-Din "recommends keeping one's gaze cast down so asnot to get desire going in oneself. Casting down the eyes keeps one from looking atthings that arouse; it is like charging wires with electricity. When the eyes are castdown the current is cut off" (80).

Public performers are electric. They evoke passionate responses about sexuality,honor, and respectability in Muslim audiences. A Muslim woman performs nadifbecause she constantly confronts the hadith that claims she is "naturally, morally and

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religiously defective." She also confronts a lack of understanding about her perform-ing, both in the popular press and scholarly investigation. Work on music in ArabIslamic nations reveals that the literature focuses almost exclusively on male music,with few exceptions (Brandes; Jones). The late JaFran Jones, one of the rare scholarson MENA women musicians, followed the tradition from the ancient qayna (slavegirl) origin to contemporary professional artists and compared the slave-girl tra-dition with the development of the serious, respectable domain of male music. Joneswrites that men's music "has not yet shed its holy robes, its air of erudition, thedignity of the shaykh" (80). By contrast, the women's music "has descended directlyfrom the pleasure palaces of the golden past, from the slave harem, from thelibidinous dream world of the Thousand-and-One-Nights, or from the more sordidpublic tavern, and she has not yet succeeded in shedding the diaphanous veils, thewistful perfumes of the odalisque" (Jones 80).

The sexualized Other, the odalisque, and the sordid historical image fuels thetension for contemporary performers. This imagined woman of the past lives in theminds of the majority of women performers with whom I spoke, with whom I lived,from whom I learned during my field research in Tunisia and Morocco. During theethnographic experience, I heard women performers' words, watched them engagein the embodied experience of music and dance, saw how they engaged in nushuz(rebellion) of social pressure, and even participated and performed with them. Theseexperiences provide a space to examine power, social change, feminist thought, andthe creative process. They also provide a space to explore what James Scott calls the"hidden transcript," which he characterizes as "discourse that takes place 'offstage,'beyond direct observation by powerholders" (4). Women performers engage in thehidden transcript both onstage and off. They write, dance, and sing this hiddentranscript to enact nushuz against hegemonic Islamic values and norms. Scott notes:

paying close attention to political acts that are disguised or offstage helps us to mapa realm of possible dissent. Here, I believe, we will typically find the social andnormative basis for practical forms of resistance ... as well as the values that might, ifconditions permitted, sustain more dramatic forms of rebellion. The point is thatneither everyday forms of resistance nor the occasional insurrection can be understoodwithout reference to the sequestered social sites at which such resistance can benurtured and given meaning. (20)

It is the disguised or offstage political acts, singing Amati or other songs withrebellious messages that illuminate MENA women's resistance. It is in song that, asScott writes, "resistance can be nurtured and given meaning" (20), where seeminglysmall moments of nushuz can give meaning to larger, more enduring political acts.

Nushuz by "Giving Birth to Our Own Words"

Oh women of the Prophet,you are not like any of the women.

If you fear God, do not surrender in speech[or, be complaisant of speech].

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so that he in whose heart is a disease should desire,but speak with conventional

[or, befitting, good] speech[qawlan ma'rufan].

{Sura 33:32, qtd. in Stowasser 97)

Feminist oral historians Kathryn Anderson and Dana Jack state that oral historyprovides the opportunity for women to tell stories in their own terms (11). One ofthese terms is musical text. Amati opens up a discursive space for women to takecontrol over their lives, over others that wish to control them. In the nineteenthcentury, when this song was first performed, a woman could not seize the agency toresist her father if he arranged for her to marry the jealous man. Even today, resistingparents' suggestions for marriage still has grave consequences (Lengel, Researching).The "women of the Prophet" in Sura 33:32 referred to the wives of Muhammed, theMothers of the Believers. However, as the Qur'anic texts on women do notspecifically name the Prophet's wives, the subject position of "women of theProphet" in many Qur'anic tasfir (exegeis or textual interpretation) suggest that thisSura, among others, refers to all Muslim women.

"Women of the Prophet... speak good speech" they do not rebel in their speech."I don't want to marry this man," is a speech act a Muslim woman could notperform over a century ago, when Amati was first performed. A woman articulatedthe resistant idea in song. Through the musical act, she could express her rejectionof a male controlling figure.

And stay in your houses[wa-qarna fi buyutikunna],

and do not strut about[or, display your charms]

[wa-la tabarrajna]in the manner of the former

[or, first or foremost]Jahiliyya

[tabarruja l-jahiliyyati l-'ula],and perform the prayer and give the alms,

and obey God and His Prophet.{Sura 33:33, qtd. in Stowasser 98)

The restrictive legislation in Sura 33:33 weighs most heavily on women perform-ers. Here, the "Mothers of the Believers," or all Muslim women depending on thetasfir, are required to stay in their houses and refrain from tabarruj, what Stowasserindicates could mean "strutting about," or "swaggering," or "displaying of charms,"or "decking oneself out" (97). Further, Stowasser explains, "While the exactdefinition of what constitutes tabarruj has varied over the ages, its condemnation bythe custodians of communal morality has always included the Qur'anic referencethat it is un-Islamic, a matter of jahiliyya (adoption of pagan practices of thepre-Islamic era) (33:33) and thus a threat to Islamic society. Applied to all women,tabarruj thus came to signify the very antithesis of hijab in the latter's extendedmeaning of a concealing garment worn outside the house" (98).

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Public performance is tabarruj, subject to critique by Islamic traditionalists. Themusical act is an act of resistance, a political act requiring courage, carrying risk.Stacy Holman Jones argues, "women's music is a political performance practiceenacted in and through the body" (217). Under Islam, women's embodied publicperformance is restricted, as it is a threat. Women's resistance of the restrictivelegislation in Sura 33:33-34 places their virtue in question.

Consider two Tunisian performers, each named Amina. Amina Srarfi is thedaughter of a famous violinist and director of the all-women's orchestra El 'Azifet.She directs a group that performs traditional music; during performances theorchestra members wear long traditional gowns and remain seated at their musicstands. The orchestra performs music as well as diplomacy while on internationaltours. All aspects of the orchestra's performance suggest respectability, decorum. Thegroup is nadif (clean). El 'Azifet is validated by several interlocking hegemonicdiscourses, primarily governmental and religious. It is positioned as a fine exampleof women's development, advancement, and achievement.

Another Amina, Amina Fakhet, a singer from a formerly poor rural family, isconsidered a "bad girl," "Tunisia's Madonna." Although trained in traditional ArabIslamic musical style and performance, the Qther Amina has chosen popular musicas her medium and has opted not to conform to the restrictive codes of femalesexuality. Her performance dresses are cut low at the chest, high at the knee. Shedances provocatively. She "struts about," or "swaggers," or "displays her charms,"and "decks herself out" during every performance. She epitomizes tabarruj. Althoughshe is very popular and people adore her outstanding vocal talents, the Other Aminais considered problematic, a prostitute. Fathers say they are "happy that she's not mydaughter" (Emsour). The Other Amina, and her tabarruj, is a threat to Islam.

Sura 33:34, with its restrictions on tabarruj, subjects women public performers tothe test of honor and virtue that they never quite pass. While religious hegemonyenforces this test, women also are subject to other tests by the male-dominated,Tunisian popular-music industry. Nationally known singer Najet Attia says:

It's not your talent that gets you a contract.It's your beauty.C'est le premier pas(It is the first step).And your body,if you give it to them [the managers],c'est le deuxiime pas(it is the second step).That is all.That is all they want. (Attia)

There is yet another set of "tests," invigilated by the family. Recall Feyriel Imran'sfamily that examined the members of El 'Azifet to determine if they were nadif(clean). Lamia Ben Ghanmi, who performs with both the respected Andalusiangroup, la Rachidia, and sings backup vocals for some of the musical nujum (stars)of the nation, is carefully "patrolled" at home by her brother who is, ironically, a

224 L. Lengel

police officer. After performances (which often start at 10 or 11 p.m.), she returnsto her medina home to find her brother awake and upset with her late-nightactivities. "He is afraid that the neighbors will think I am, you know, a prostitute"(Ben Ghanmi). Nabiha Karaowlee, a superstar singer, experienced "many objections"from her family and rural community concerning her desire to pursue a musicalcareer. The pressure was so great, she stopped singing for three years during her earlymusical training. Her mother, Karaowlee says, she thought that her career "might bea problem for the name of the family, the conservative views of the community." Shesays, "I can understand why families object to women singers because of thehistorical background [of the imagined performer/prostitute]" (Karaowlee).

And there are tests by husbands. Women fail these more miserably than any other.Consider Zikra, a Tunisian singer based in Cairo. Her husband, business magnateEl-Sweidi, was reported to be a jealous man who tried to forbid Zikra from touring.He also allegedly tried to stop her musical career. Mehanna, the composer whodiscovered Zikra in 1992, said El-Sweidi "once told me that he had paid his previouswives $5,000 a month to quit their jobs and did not understand why Zikra wasdifferent" (qtd. in Shehab, par. 4). This past November, El-Sweidi accused Zikra ofadultery. Again, he attempted to force his wife to quit her career. He succeeded, butonly after riddUng her body with 25 bullets.'

Nushuz through Passion/Pleasure/Performance

Zikra enacted nushuz by refusing to quit her musical career for her husband. Shefought to keep her performing alive because it was her greatest passion. Thenarrators informing my research embodied an intense passion about their music, nomatter if they were amateurs in an unknown group or some of the nujum (stars) ofthe music industry. Their passion leads them to create supportive, pleasurable spacesto create and perform, spaces where they can celebrate how "music is a shared skin"(Engh 74). Feminist musicologists note that women's musical organizations havedeveloped out of the marginalization of women, "yet women making music togethermanifest dynamic and empowering realities" (Edwards 104). Members of theall-women's orchestras. El 'Azifet and Taqassim, express that their groups provideempowering spaces and powerful possibilities.'" Women in both groups regard theirtime performing music together as a time apart from their regularly scheduled lives,apart from their "real jobs," and apart from husbands and extended families.

We arrived at the performance venue near dusk. Stage comprised of plywood boardsheld up by large garbage cans. Percussionist Fouzia jumped up and down on the stagelaughing wildly, waiting for it to crash to the stony ground below. No stage lightswhatsoever, merely two bare bulbs. Samira seemed embarrassed, apologizing to methat I had to see them perform in such a wreck of a performance space. Rest of thegroup made light of the situation. Fouzia and Aziza laughed throughout the prepara-tions for performance. We danced to the Tunisian and Egyptian popular music blaringfrom the loudspeaker overhead. (From my fieldnotes recorded while touring withTaqassim) (Waddad).

Performing In/Outside Islam 225

Performing in all-women's ensembles not only provides women an escape fromprofessional and personal pressures, but also gives them a sense of confidence notfound elsewhere in their lives. Amina Srarfi, director of El 'Azifet, recognizes thepower the women's orchestra and all of her musical experiences have had on herself-assurance and outlook on life. It is the power of the orchestra that led her torevive the resistance songs, to share the notion that women can be transformed bythe stories in those songs. Amati, performed by El 'Azifet, let nineteenth-centuryNorth African women know that they could reject a jealous man. Another songrevived and performed by El 'Azifet focuses on a woman taking control over hersexuality, despite family and fatherly rule. The main character and the voice of thestory is, again, a woman. She is having a relationship with a man and, initially, wasnot overly concerned about the secrecy of the situation. As time progressed, shedesired to keep the relationship out of her father's eyes. One day she and her manare walking in the street. Seeing her father walking nearby, she says to her man:

Go away.Pretend you don't know me.Don't follow me, because he's coming over.And if he does find out, there will be big problems for both of us.(Srarfi "Go Away")"

Through this song, women learn that relationships outside of marriage are possible.In what Hejaiej calls "open discourse," there would be no discussion of a women'srelationship outside marriage (although men share details about their relationshipswith their mistresses to other men); adultery is forbidden under Islam.

In songs, folk tales, oral histories, women's nushuz is documented. Hejaiej notesthis resistance exists "side-by-side" with the traditional position of Tunisian women.Superstar vocalist Nabiha Karaowlee sings about demanding a divorce from her lazy,abusive husband who tries to change her mind through money and presents. Despiteher husband's persuasion, she continues with the divorce proceedings. Another songmade popular by Karaowlee is Trig es-Salem. The title of song could be interpretedas a warm bid of farewell. Through the lyrical structure of the song, however,Karaowlee turns the message upside down, instead saying "so long sucker" to thelazy, abusive man. She sings the song with a smile on her face, portraying herself-confidence and her conviction in removing herself from an abusive situation.

Nacira Sdiri, a would-be singer in Tunis, says that she is influenced by themessages in these types of songs and she thinks there are many others who wouldbe similarly influenced. Sdiri notices there are now fewer songs about womencommitting suicide over lost love and failed marriages than in previous decades.Contemporary women have more options, articulated in songs like Karaowlee's Triges-Salem, that suggest if men are not willing to be equal partners, women will lookelsewhere rather than maintain a submissive role. These messages encourage womento look at their lives differently and make changes they previously thought wereimpossible.

226 L. Lengel

In traditional musical genres, women find more respect playing an 'oud, ratherthan singing for large audiences. Women's musical performance, when strictlyadhering to genres such as traditional Andalusian music, is gaining respect andvalidation. In cultures that have a historical tradition of gendered separatism andmale domination, as in Tunisia, women can find encouragement and strengthamong each other. All-women's orchestras El 'Azifet and Taqassim are nationally andinternationally known. Some women in the Club Tahar Haddad choir were alsofounding members of the Le Club d'Etude de la Condition de la Femme, the historicalroots of the feminist movement. They created a safe place for women's musicalperformance and discussion of women's issues (Marzouki).

Not only do Tunisian women musicians find confidence and pleasure in makingmusic, but women find strength in listening to popular music lyrics (Jones),particularly based on the historical tradition of women creating and singing songs inprivate, all-women's spaces. Music, like the folk tales and other narratives analyzedby Lila Abu-Lughod, provides women with a resistant discursive space to articulatesubversive and sexual messages through poems and song. She writes, "Formularenders content impersonal or non-individual, allowing people to dissociate them-selves from the sentiments they express, if revealed to the wrong audience, byclaiming that 'it was just a song'" (239). These songs celebrate women's strength andsexuality and the clever ways in which women negotiate a male-dominated world.

Double Effort

(double punishment/double reward for the Prophet's wives;

their peerlessness;injunction against their complaisant speech;

command that they stay in their houses,avoid "tabarruj"

be pious,obedient).

{Sura 33:30-34, qtd. in Stowasser 97-98)

Men and women can only move forward together.Women must convince men that they are people like men.They must do this in the right wayso their value is recognized by men,so that men recognize them.Life is difficult for both men and women,but it is more difficult for women.Women have to make double the effort. (Hafsia)

Jamila Hafsia, director of a performance space in Carthage, Tunis, and one of theoriginal members of the feminist group Le Club d'Etude de la Condition de la Femme,announces that women have to make "the double effort" to negotiate the "big stepforward" for women entering the performing arts. Examining this "double effort,"and the unique negotiations of the double effort throughout Islamic cultures, reveals

Performing In/Outside Islam 111

the many ways women seize power and enact change. Women performers in MENAknow that it is up to them to seek solutions and enact changes in their society.

Women are stepping past the "tricky steps" of beauty and body to enact change.Hessah Najad, a university professor who sings with some small musical groups,argues "people's conceptions, people viewing the music has changed from how itused to be seen in the past." Living with these conceptions, however, she knows thatsuch change does not emerge without women's effort. Women know better than towait for hegemonic institutions and entrenched power to adapt to women's desiredroles in the Muslim public sphere. One singer announced that women musiciansmust "shatter the image" of the sexualized Other (Najad). Although Najad wasforbidden to sing as a young woman, eight years later her younger sister was allowedto pursue a musical career. Her desire to sing set a stage of encouragement for heryounger sister's singing career. Najad considers herself to be an innovator within herfamily and within the community of women musicians: "I did break some taboos,you know, singing. Even though I didn't go that far, but still, I was the first in myfamily, maybe, to stand up and sing. So, maybe I belong to this generationof—between two eras" [emphasis added].

MENA women performers are situated squarely between the two eras, historicaland contemporary. They also are positioned in a more fluid space, the range ofcultural codes and constructions that exists somewhere in between the bipolaropposites of "East"/"West," historical/contemporary, oppressed/empowered underIslam. What is important for both international feminisms and for performancestudies is to break down the ends of these reductionist spectra. To do so, we canlearn from women's complex contexts in the MBNA region and acknowledge andexplore the spaces in between. The subject position in between is difficult for Islamicwomen performers to negotiate. They are confused by what Bhabha called an "inter"or "in-betweenedness" of culture, cultural identity, and cultural practices (209). Theidentities that are constituted through performance and creativity are complex, fluidand ever-changing. Butler argues, "Identifications are never fully and finally made;they are incessantly reconstituted ... constantly marshalled, consolidated, retrenched,contested and, on occasion, compelled to give way" (105). Understanding thecomplexity and the "in-betweenedness" of culture and cultural identity in creativepractice requires an understanding that one's identity is a multifaceted, ever-evolvingand fluid entity. In the liminal state, at once there is feeling of helplessness andagency, location and dislocation.

The Arab-Islamic woman performer's body is the site of struggle in the "in-be-tweenedness" of identity. Her body is a political entity, rebelling against interlockinghegemonic power structures of religion, family, and State in the MENA. DeChainesuggests that "musical experience forces an encounter between mind and body,clearing a liminal space that is simultaneously charged with affect and fraught withtension" (81). The tension of which DeChaine speaks is consistently present forMENA women. They perform in a liminal space—a space that implies an impetusfor change, but this space is tense, dangerous, even deadly; a woman was murderedin Cairo because she would not stop her singing career (Shehab).

228 I . Lengel

Performance studies has a great deal to learn from women performers that risk somuch to engage their bodies in acts of creative practice. MENA women's nushuzemerges from the liminal spaces where they change circumstances of oppression intofreedom. The moment of the Arab-Islamic performing body is both liminal andtransformed: both betwixt and between the hegemonic structures of restriction anda nushuz against these restricting forces. The pubhc performance space is a transfor-mative space where women can be, at least for the moment of the performance, freeof cultural confines. This transformative space is also a space that upholds theQur'an verse: 'ba 'du-kum ba'd, that Islamic studies scholar Amina Wadud interpretsas "you proceed from each other," a space where men and women are "of the samehuman status" (100). It is a space that Nancy Love calls a "musical democracy"where "citizens would recognize multiple expressions of their 'voice/s' and challengethe tendency of public discourse to dichotomize, essentialize, and/or objectify'otherness'" (22).

Scholars of performance studies would be well-served to engage in dialogue withMuslim women performers. Hearing their words and seeing their actions willchallenge the "otherness" and the subject position of the subservient, veiled, andsilent woman constituted by the West. Examining how MENA women performersmake changes in their lives, resist restrictive legislation of Islam, and create a newtradition of women's musical communities might be taken to reflect a location ofmany women in the region, from similar subject positions.

It is important, too, to understand differing notions of nushuz and agency. In theWest, rebelhous and resistant performances are often bold and overt. In the MENA,and other Islamic nations, nushuz is a subtle enterprise, one that is fraught withobstacles and conflicts. In her fieldwork on gender, resistance, and Shi'a women'srituals, Mary Hegland observed:

These women nurtured resilience in the face of repeated reminders of their religiousdependency and lack of agency. They appropriated rituals for their own spiritual,religious, and social meanings. Their energizing ritual performances allowed them tobuild up, within a protected framework, characteristics and abilities which they maylater, depending on surrounding conditions, be able to apply more overtly forinfluence, self-advancement, and loosening strict gender controls. (411)

More explorations of women's words and creative practices in MENA, and otherMuslim nations, will lead to the discovery of how women are negotiating lack ofagency, how they encroach on traditionally male Muslim public spaces, how theirnushuz is interpreted, and how their songs will be embraced by their daughters andgranddaughters. These songs will help those daughters and granddaughters under-stand that there are options for their futures, that there are opportunities to resisthegemonic normative structures that simultaneously feminize and tame women, andthat they can reject individuals and institutions in power that attempt to seize theposition of qiwama (being in charge) over women.

Performing In/Outside Islam 229

Notes

[1] I thank Amina Srarfi, director of £/ 'Azifet, the first all-women's orchestra in the Arab world,for sharing the Arabic lyrics of this song, performed during their 1993-94 concert season. Ialso extend special thanks to Monia Hejaiej for her translation assistance of this song duringour meetings in Tunis, August, 1994.

[2] This passage, which is split into four sections in this article, is an interpretation of Sura 4:34,what Barbara Freyer Stowasser calls the "pivotal Quranic verse on gender relations" (32). Itincludes interpretations by Tabari (d. 923) and Baydawi (d. 1286?). Baydawi, Stowassernotes, whose interpretation of "men's 'guardianship of or 'superiority over' women asrevealed in Sura 4:34 is likened to that of rulers over their subjects" (33). The term suraindicates one of the 114 sections (or chapters) in the Qur'an.

[3] Elsewhere I have analyzed the historical significance of the public performer and the sexedbody in the MENA (Lengel, Resisting). As early as the eighteenth century, European travelerswrote about two distinct women musicians in Egypt, the 'awdlim, a learned group of womenmusical scholars that both composed and performed music, and the ghaw&zi, who performedunveiled, in the streets, and in front of coffee houses (van Nieuwkerk). From that time untilthe early twentieth century, it was assumed that the accepted road to women's musicalsuccess and fame in the region involved not talent, but exploitation and objectification,resulting from the so-called qayna (slave-girl) and 'ahira (prostitute) performing music inthe public sphere, in men's caf6s. Feminist academicians and performers alike in the regionunderstand that the historical, imagined performer/prostitute was not only the creation ofArab men but, in the Magreb (the Western part of North Africa), by the objectification ofthe Other by French colonial power. Because this colonial gaze was unaware of the culturalnuances of women's music and dance performance, women were often assumed to beprostitutes by the colonial gaze or the foreign eye generally (Danielson 292).

[4] My fieldwork includes a year-long field research experience in North African Tunisia(1993-1994) funded by the I. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, the AmericanInstitute of Maghribi Studies, and the Ohio University John Houk Memorial Foundation. Ihave since engaged in two field experiences in Morocco (1995, 1997), which were funded bygrants from the American Institute of Maghribi Studies and Richmond American Inter-national University in London, and a brief field research experience in Tunisia (2004).Research included feminist ethnographic participation-observation and over 100 in-depthinterviews with women musicians: professional and amateur; internationally/nationallyknown and those who perform only privately; women with differing marital and familybackgrounds; women challenged by differing physical abilities; women who have spent theirlives in Tunis and others who moved to Tunis to further their careers; and women who havebeen encouraged to perform and those forbidden to so do. I focused my ethnographicparticipant-observation with El 'Azifet and Taqassim, the first two widely recognizedall-women's orchestras in the Arab world.

[5] Within the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, another form of "taming," bynon-Muslims also has occurred. The colonial enterprise positioned both men and womenwithin the second possibility, feminized and tamed, to gain and maintain control over thecolonized Other (Sinha). This controlling feminization, juxtaposed with the construction ofthe woman as sexualized Other, constitutes the subordination of Muslim women.

[6] Foucault moved from Paris to the village of Sidi Bou Said, on the outskirts of Tunis, in 1966,where he lived until 1968. There, he witnessed Tunisians being imprisoned for politicalopposition that influenced his writing of Discipline and Punish (Martin et al.).

[7] Much has been written about harem (seclusion), the politics of the hijab, and the inscriptionof covering dresses on the Muslim woman's body (see, for instance, Ahmed; Badran; Chater;MacLeod). This term hijab is widely used to refer to the Islamic headcovering. However, amore exact definition constitutes hijab as an act of obedience to Allah involving iffah

230 L. Lengel

(modesty), tahara (purity), sitr (shielding; covering), taqwah (righteousness), eemaan (beliefor faith), and haya' (bashfulness). In urban Tunis, while a few younger women are nowwearing hijab, the covering that one mainly sees is the sifsari, worn by women in their late40s and older. The sifsari is an ivory garment that resembles a sheet, worn loosely like a shawlover their heads and often grasped around the head by women's teeth. Please see my article{Resisting) for a discussion of postcolonial modernization and the politics surrounding thelack of hijab in Tunisia. Veiling is not a focus of this article as none of the women performerswith whom I interacted wore either hijab or sifsari.

[8] As this manuscript was being completed the Association Democratique des Femmes duMaroc announced the Moroccan government adopted a new landmark Family Law support-ing women's equality and granting them new rights in marriage and divorce, such as wivesare no longer legally obliged to obey their husbands among others and adult woman areentitled to self-guardianship. H.M. King Mohammed VI proclaimed that the new Family Lawwas consistent with the tolerant spirit of Islam (Women's Learning Partnership). In Tunisia,too, the legal framework is far more favorable to women than that of other Arab states. In1956, following French colonial rule, the Tunisian government—under then-President HabibBourguiba—implemented a national Code du Statut Personnel, replacing Qu'ranic law andforegrounding, at least discursively, women's rights in all arenas, including family, work, andeducation. Government officials and Tunisian feminist scholars (see Ben Aba; Chamari;Ghanmi; Marzouki Le Mouvement, Zamiti-Horchani) alike agree that the Code has enhancedwomen's lives profoundly in both urban and rural areas of Tunisia.

[9] E-Sweidi also murdered his business manager Amr El-Kholi and El-Kholi's wife KhadijaSalaheddin, with a total of 35 bullets, before turning a gun on himself (Shehab).

[10] However, some women in El 'Azifet thought that their director was enacting the same kindsof power plays for which male directors were well known. They broke off to create thesecond all-women's orchestra, Taqassim, with a more democratic structure of direction andgovernance.

[11] Like Amati, this song also was revived by El 'Azifet. I thank Monia Hejaiej for assisting inthe translation of this song.

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