Originally published in Colonize This!: Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism (Seal Press, 2002) Thanks to Daisy Hernandez and Susan Muaddi Darraj for letting us reprint!

"I see no reason to say that the Arab woman is less intelligent and energetic and sincere than the Western Woman."
~Ghada Samman, 1961

My father is a feminist, although he would probably never admit it. It is difficult to even write the two words "father" and "feminist" next to each other in the same sentence (despite the nice alliterative sound). I can imagine him hearing it and shrinking away from the word, shaking his head vehemently and saying, in his thick Middle Eastern accent that all my girlfriends find so charming, "No, no, no, not me, thank you." And yet, despite his denial, my father helped me form my own unique feminist identity more than that other F-word- Friedan.

I remember sitting in a feminist theory class in graduate school, feeling strangely unmoved by the words of Betty Friedan and the second-wave feminist writers. I understood their struggles and respected their courage- there was not a doubt in my mind that it took a lot of courage to resist Western patriarchal demands on women's lives. But these were not representative feminists. In The Feminine Mystique, Friedan expounds on the woes of being a mere housewife, but it seemed there was a certain level of class privilege that accompanied her position. The role of "housewife" usually developed when there was a man to support the family, when he could do it on his own salary. Although my mother swept the floor and cooked most of our meals, I realized that housework was not her only "work." She also worked full-time in the business that she and my father ran together.

Sitting in that class, with other women who expounded on the oppression of housework, I dared once to ask, "Who will do the housework then?" Seventeen pairs of eyes turned to me, and I continued: "If men don't do it and women don't do it, who will? It has to be done. Do you propose that we hire other women to come and do it? Other women who clean people's homes because they have the opportunity to do nothing else?"

Silence greeted my question, as I had expected. I realized then that most of the women in the class were upper-middle and middle-class white women- and I felt like a complete outsider. Perhaps they could understand Friedan because her brand of feminism spoke directly to their experience. But it didn't speak to mine. I didn't view housework as a mark of oppression. There was a certain sense of pride placed on a clean, welcoming home, and both my parents had always placed value on it. That was why my father spent his weekends trimming the lawn and sweeping the walkways and why my mother mopped the kitchen floor and wiped the windows until they sparkled. It was why my brothers and I were marched off to various rooms every Saturday morning, armed with furniture polish and dust rags. We all did housework. No, this version of feminism did not appeal to me. But then again, what version did? For a long time I thought that this was the only brand of feminism that existed. If that was true, I certainly wasn't a card-carrying member.

Furthermore, I didn't like the way this feminism viewed people like my mother and grandmothers and aunts- and me, for that matter. I was tired of turning on the evening news, eager to learn news of the Middle East, and seeing women clad in heavy, black robes, their eyes lowered but barely visible behind the slits in their face veils as they scurried past the television cameras. I have been to the Middle East. I am an Arab Christian, and I know many Arab Christian and Muslim women. Some- but definitely not all- of my Muslim friends veil themselves, as do a few of the older, conservative Christian women, especially before entering a church. Why did Americans equate Muslim women with veils so completely, and why did the cameras seem to pick out only these women?

The answer was an uncomplicated one: because this was the quaint vision of the Middle East with which America felt comfortable. This vision included heavily robed and mustachioed sheiks, belly dancers, tents, camels and- of course- veiled women. This vision was, to use an orientalist cliché, a desert mirage, concocted by the same Hollywood producers who created Rudolph Valentino (The Sheik).

American feminists, like the rest of the nation and the Western world, had accepted the flawed image of the Middle East and Middle Eastern women without question. "Of course, they [meek and silent Arab women] are oppressed; we [liberated, assertive Western women with voices] must help them." I have heard similar statements (with the notions in the brackets implied) from white American feminists who wanted to save their Arab sisters but not to understand them. They wanted to save them from the burden of their families and religion but not from the war, hunger, unemployment, political persecution and oppression that marked their daily lives and that left them with only their families and religion as sole sources of comfort. The tone of white Western feminism- with its books about "lifting the veil on Arab women" and Arab women "lifting the veil of silence"- was that Arab feminism was nothing greater than an amusing oxymoron.

The apparent hypocrisy and condescension that white Western feminists held for Arab women confused me. I felt betrayed by a movement that claimed to create a global sisterhood of women; it seemed that the Arab woman was the poor and downtrodden stepsister in this family.

Where was my feminism?

It was my father who first taught me "feminism," who told me that I could do anything I wanted- achieve any goal, reach any height- and that he would support me in that climb. I don't remember ever feeling that my culture- and in my mind my father embodied that culture almost completely- stood in my way, although others thought my culture was a jungle of patriarchal pitfalls.

One day my father told me a story that rocked my world. It was that of Jamila Bouhereid, the Algerian woman who had played an instrumental role in the Algerian resistance against the colonial French forces. It was one of those stories that he and his generation had heard about while growing up in Palestine, nations away from Algeria, though the story stirred them nonetheless. Bouhereid had been captured by the French and tortured in unspeakable ways, but she refused to divulge essential information about the resistance. The torture continued until it finally killed her. He told me the story during one of our many marathon conversations that usually lasted through the night, while we sat at the kitchen table, sipping coffee and eating oranges. I became obsessed with Bouhereid's story and tried to find out everything I could about her. Unfortunately, there was very little information about her- or Arab women in general- available in English.

My futile search was not a complete failure, however, only the opening of a new door. I came across the names of other Arab women whose names I had heard: Huda Sha'rawi, the founder of the Egyptian Feminist Union, who had called for the ban of the veil at the beginning of the twentieth century; Mai Ziyyadah, a feminist writer and a contemporary of Sha'rawi, who called for men to free women in order to free themselves; even Khadijah, the first wife of the Prophet Muhammad, who had financed his travels, owned a lucrative business and been the first convert to Islam. I searched the Internet for information on more modern Arab women: Hanan Ashrawi, a chief spokesperson for the Palestinians; Leila Ahmed, a feminist and scholar who wrote about Arab women with accuracy, honesty and pages of solid research; and Fatima Mernissi, who sought to rediscover Islam's valuation of women.

I also searched for something that neither the Internet nor the library's shelves could offer me: a real, hard, searing look at the lives of modern, everyday Arab women. I saved my pennies and, armed with my notebooks and pens, traveled to Egypt, Jordan and Palestine over the course of a few years. I met women in my family and made some new friends. One summer, I spent three months in the West Bank, in the city of Ramallah, and studied at Birzeit University. Ramallah and Birzeit were a mere half-hour taxicab ride away from Taybeh, the small village where my parents grew up and where my grandmother and several aunts, cousins and uncles lived. Although I was thrilled to spend time with my relatives, I also wanted to meet and interact with Palestinian college women, and I met quite a few and listened to their stories. At many points and on many occasions I felt like I was looking into a mirror, at what I would have been like had my father and mother never left the political oppression and insecurities of Palestine.

One woman, a twenty-four year old student, told me how it was a struggle to get to the university every day, not because her father wouldn't permit it (for he actually encouraged her), but because she had to take a multi-passenger taxi in which she had been groped many times by the male passengers. Another woman, also in her mid-twenties, described how her parents were proud that she had been accepted at the university, but she often skipped semesters because money usually ran low. It often was a choice of buying textbooks, or letting her younger siblings go without meat for several months. She estimated that at that rate it would take another six years to finish her bachelor's degree. Another woman, who veiled herself, explained to me how as a religious person she felt compelled to educate herself for her own betterment and for that of her family.

It struck me that many of these women whom I met could be considered feminists, perhaps not by the standards of the white Western feminism that I had encountered in my feminist theory class, but by the standards of a different feminism- one that allowed women to retain their culture, to have pride in their traditions and to still vocalize the gender issues of their community. These were women whom I considered feminists because they believed in the dignity and potential for upward mobility of every woman; they wanted to erase class lines between women; they worked so that they could have choices in their lives and not be channeled into one way of life.

I realized upon my return to the United States that fall that, more than ever, I longed for a feminism that would express who I was and what my experiences were as an Arab-American woman. That feminism was within my grasp, but I discerned several obstacles that blocked my path. The chief one was the seeming universality of white Western feminism, which appears to leave no room for other visions. This caused various conflicts within me. Another obstacle to voicing my own feminism to white Western feminists was that the various traditions in my Arabic culture were indeed the markings of a patriarchal culture. Many feminist texts and discourses on the Middle East highlighted such traditions, although most modern-day societies, including that of the United States, can be described as patriarchal.

One such tradition is that Arab parents are usually referred to by the name of their eldest son. Thus, a couple whose eldest son is named Abdallah would be referred to socially as Im Abdallah (mother of Abdallah) and Abu Abdallah (father of Abdallah). I am the eldest child in my family, but my parents are called by the name of my brother, who is a year younger. There is generally an emphasis on having at least one male child in Arab families, and the boys are often named after their grandfathers; my brother Abdallah was given the name of my grandfather Abdallah. As a woman, this certainly bothers me, and it strikes a sour note with many Arab women. After all, why the big deal about boys? What is so disappointing about girls? It seems to me that American feminists overly criticize this tradition, however, while forgetting that it is no different than American boys being named David, Jr. or Jonathan So-and-So, III. As far as I can remember, American girls aren't dubbed Michelle, Jr. and Jennifer IV, unless they are European monarchs, but this point does not occupy chapters in Arab feminist texts on the West.

Another unfairly beleaguered custom is that of the traditional Arabic marriage, which has wrinkled many a conversation with my American feminist friends. In the Middle East and among Middle Easterners living in other parts of the world, when a couple decides to get married, it is expected that a toulbeh take place. During the toulbeh the potential bridegroom arrives at the home of the potential bride, escorted by several members of the family. The bride's family waits, and members of her extended family wait with them. The eldest male of the groom's family requests the bride's hand from the eldest male in her family. When the expected "yes" is announced (because the question is a formality, after all), the two families celebrate their upcoming union. Of course, this is a patriarchal tradition, one in which a woman is viewed as a person who should not answer for herself. Again, is it different than in American culture, where it is considered a sweet gesture and a romantic leftover from traditional times for a man to ask for the bride's hand from her father? And don't fathers still walk their daughters down the aisle and "give them away?" The endless explanations of Arab wedding customs that I had to offer my American feminist friends, however, would have led one to think that it was utterly barbaric.

In the aftermath of September 11, the same stilted media coverage would make anyone think that every Middle Eastern woman saw the world from between the peepholes of her burqa's face netting. These traditions are usually used as examples that create a picture of the Arab world as a 1,001 Nights-like land of wicked and despotic sultans and silenced and imprisoned harem girls- women who need the West to enlighten, educate and save them (But Scheherazade, a Muslim Arab woman and the heroine of 1,001 Nights, saved herself and her countrywomen, so it doesn't make sense to me why Arab culture is attacked as anti-woman, as if no other culture has gender-oppressive traditions of which to be ashamed).

These naming and wedding traditions, and others like them, made me second-guess my professed need to find a feminism that suited me. After all, on one level I liked these traditions- they were deeply embedded in my culture and in myself as a person. When I got married, my husband's eldest uncle asked for my hand from my eldest uncle. Did that mean that I wasn't a feminist? Some of my friends, upon hearing this, wrinkled their noses in disgust and shook their heads sadly at me as if to say, "Poor thing! She's just condemned herself to a lifetime of constant pregnancies, Little League games and soap operas." My God, I thought, was I being kicked out of the club before I even officially joined?

This experience- feeling emotionally torn between my culture and what white Western feminism told me I had to be- relates almost inversely to another conflict that obstructed the recognition of my feminist identity: America's exoticism of Arab women. Although we were considered veiled and meek, we were simultaneously and ironically considered sultry, sexual and "different." People, especially white feminists, were often intrigued by my "exoticness" and asked me silly questions, like whether Arab women knew how to belly-dance or whether I knew of any women who lived in harems. I was also frequently mistaken as a Muslim, because many people couldn't conceive of an Arab Christian (although Arab Christians and Muslims have long allied themselves against the pervasive stereotypes that threaten to categorize us both). They wanted to know if I had ever ridden a camel and if I would have an arranged marriage and would my husband be taking other wives as well? If this was how little people in general, and feminists in particular, knew of my culture, what was the hope that I would be seriously received as a feminist?

Some Muslim women see no contradiction between feminism and Islam. In her book Palestinian Women: Patriarchy and Resistance in the West Bank, Cheryl Rubenberg studies Palestinian women who live in camps and villages of the West Bank and highlights the phenomenon of the Muslim Sisters (Ikhwat al-musilmat). Sometimes called "Islamist feminists," the Muslim Sisters believe that Islam gives women full rights but that the religion has been corrupted by men to suit their patriarchal agenda. One Muslim Sister whom Rubenberg interviewed said that their mission is to bring people back to the true Islam, which historically allowed women the right to be educated, to work, to participate in public life and to own property. According to the Sisters, however, Islam has been perverted by men's patriarchal ambitions in the centuries since the Prophet Muhammad's death. Because of anti-Muslim sentiments (which are inextricably linked to anti-Arab sentiments) and the general misconceptions of Islam in the West (that all Muslim men are terrorists with long beards and all Muslim women are battered and wear veils), it would be difficult for a Western, non-Muslim person to understand the desire of Arab Muslim women to retain both their religion and their sense of feminism.

Another conflict that threatened my development of a feminist voice was my split vision- my ability to thrive in American culture but to also appreciate Arab culture. Further, it was my frustration with white Western feminists who took up issues like keeping one's name after marriage but who sniffed at Arab women, who had always kept their names and whose biggest problem was how to afford bread for dinner. I was living in America, land of the free and home of the brave, while cousins in the West Bank were throwing stones at Israeli tanks and working extra jobs to help my aunts and uncles pay the bills. While I was hopping in my car to work every day, perhaps stopping at a Starbucks for my morning coffee, they were walking to the taxi stop to see if a car was available and willing to drive them around the roadblocks that the Israelis had set up- all just to get to class on time for a final exam. Even worse, it was U.S. money and foreign aid to Israel that kept Palestinians locked in a seemingly hopeless situation that robbed them of their futures.

I think that I had a guilt complex as a result of this split vision: I loathed having to write papers on the "Angel of the House" theory and imagery of women trapped behind wallpaper, while Arab women were dealing with issues of physical survival. Although I admired the work of white feminists and respected the ways in which they surpassed their own obstacles, those were not my obstacles. I could not focus on the complexities of white Western feminist theory when I knew that Arab women faced very different issues.

And I returned once again to my initial question: Where did I fit into all this?

A few years ago, through a strange set of coincidences, I found an answer. I had started reading the work of Black feminists, such as bell hooks, who took on Betty Friedan full force. She challenged the relevance of Friedan's ideas about housewives to Black women, who had always had to work. Her work led me to Gloria Anzaldua, who led me to Barbara Smith, and the list grew. I was heartened by the fact that Black women and other women of color had the courage to carve a feminism of their own out of the monolithic block that was generally accepted as "feminism."

About this time I caught up with a friend of mine, an assertive and lively Arab woman from San Francisco, who was visiting when I lived in Philadelphia. I was twenty-four. It was a gloriously sunny day in the city, and we decided to go out. We sat in a coffee shop on Philadelphia's hip South Street section and talked about the way that we both felt locked out of feminism and the lack of relevance that feminism seemed to have for our lives. We also talked about the way that analyses of Arab women's issues seemed to be largely conducted by white Western women.

"But it's white Western feminism that doesn't relate to my life," I interjected.

"True," she agreed. "There is actually a group of Arab women who deal with gender issues- their association is called AWSA, the Arab Women's Solidarity Association."

"Arab feminists?" I asked, unbelieving.

"Yeah. I think that you can call them feminists." She gave me the Web site information, and I checked it out immediately upon my return home. I found out that AWSA is a network for Arab women, meant to provide support and to serve as the basis for the Arab women's movement. It was founded by Nawal el-Saadawi, an Egyptian doctor and leading feminist. That sunny Philadelphia afternoon initiated my awareness of AWSA members, who were scholars, artists, writers and everyday women who felt that gender issues in the Arab world and among Arab countries should be discussed and diagnosed by a circle that included Arab women themselves.

Another life-changing event occurred around this time: I met the man I eventually married. As an Arab woman, romance had never been easy because of the strong cultural taboo on dating. I often watched movies and television shows in which girlfriends chatted with each other (usually while doing each other's hair at slumber parties) about the good looks of a new boyfriend, the disappointment of a blind date, the elation over a romantic dinner or the pain of a breakup. I could never chat so easily about romance because it was a distant, remote experience, one that I knew only vicariously through television, films and books. Furthermore, it was difficult to meet American men who were not entranced by my "exoticness" (probably the most ridiculous comment I've ever heard) and the aspects of my culture that they didn't understand (such as not showing someone the bottom of my shoes or genuinely enjoying time with my family, etc.). I also met some Arab men who, ironically, thought I was too "Americanized": my unaccented, perfect English littered with slang; my tendency to wear boots and blue jeans; and my refusal to spend more than three minutes on my hair and makeup testified to that, I suppose, not to mention my vocalized interest in pursuing my career and my (equally vocalized) lack of desire to have children for a long time.

But meeting my future husband was an eye-opening experience. I felt that I finally had met someone who could understand and even relate to my split vision. Not only was he kind and caring, but he respected my intellect, my career goals and my opinions. In other words, he allowed me to be myself- and comfortably so. When, over dinner, I mentioned to him the topic of feminism- a word I had uttered to few men, save my father- he said that I didn't strike him as a feminist. I asked why not, and he offered me an interesting response: "Well, I guess I'm thinking of 'feminists' as what I see here in the States. And they seem largely self-involved. But you care about all kinds of issues, not just the ones that affect you. And I think that you consider the concept of family to be above that of the individual."

I pointed out that women have traditionally been reared to ignore and neglect themselves for the sake of others (children, husbands, in-laws, etc). This included Arab women. Women in general had also never had the opportunity to focus on their own development and their own goals. But I also realized that he was thinking of traditional, American, white feminism when he said that, and I explained that I felt that there might be another kind of feminism out there, one that appealed more to women like me, who wanted to be feminists and spouses and mothers.

I could see that he was intrigued by what I was saying, and he admitted that this conversation had redefined feminism for him. "Besides," he asked casually, "Why does there have to be a choice between feminism and family? I think a woman can have both."

He was right.

I knew at that point that with the recent riveting conglomeration of coincidental events in my life- my interest in Black feminism, AWSA and the discovery of a possible Arab feminism, and meeting my future husband- that something exciting was happening. My feminist self- my own version of feminism- was emerging.

It required no great sacrifice of my Arab heritage, no shame at my close ties to my family and no compromise of my own needs. It involved two of the most important men in my life- my father and my husband- unlike the ways in which I saw American feminism making a conscious split from male influence (I should also mention here that although my father and husband are the two best men that I personally know, they are not rare examples of Arab men- their mentalities are not unusual in the Arab world, despite what CNN says). There was no need to define independence as living in isolation from my family and making decisions without their support and advice. There was no imperative to shake my head at the thought of having my own family and being a mother. I could be a feminist in a way that suited my life, not in a feminism that would mold me to its ideal shape. After all, wasn't feminism supposed to be about making my own choices?

So here I am- an Arab-American feminist. I am happily married. I work. I write. I plan to have children in a few years. I read the newspaper every day. I call my congressperson about U.S. foreign policy issues that negatively affect Arab women. I follow the news in Palestine and Israel religiously, on both American and Arab news channels (thanks to satellite technology). I cringe first and take action second whenever I come across hackneyed "exotic" portrayals of Arab women. I eagerly read the ever-growing body of work being produced about Arab women. This lifestyle is what feminism means to me now, although I once thought that I would never use this word to describe myself.

Most important, once I realized my own version of feminism, I found myself better able to understand white Western feminism and the many outer storms and internal divisions it has had to weather. Now that I have my own foundation, I see the need for a cross-cultural feminist dialogue, especially after September 11 attacks on the United States, which have led to an intensified interest on the part of Americans to understand Islam in general. As that interest expands to include the issues of Muslim women and Arab women, it should be clarified that any resulting dialogues must be inclusive of Arab voices in order to be successful. I applaud American feminism for attempting to bridge an intimidating wide gap, but that bridge must be rooted in firm ground at both ends of the divide. It should no longer be possible to write about Arab women with any aura of expertise or authority without first knowing what Arab women need and want.

To learn more about Susan visit her website: susanmuaddidarraj.com