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Book Review: New Spaces and Old Frontiers: Women, Social Space, and Islamization in Sudan

Nageeb’s book examines how women are constructing their social lives in the context of politically suspect traditions and the new political movement of Islamization in Sudan. To illustrate her thesis that women can and do play an active role in the new Islamic state, Nageeb uses short biographies describing how four, mostly young, women in Khartoum are using strategies that imaginatively combine traditional and politicized Islamic rules to achieve their personal goals. These biographies show how Muslim traditions such as harem (the social isolation of women) and women’s attire and behavior are being redefined by Islamization and how the very process of redefinition by the state opens the opportunity for women to press for their own goals as they negotiate ethnicity, social class, marital status, age, religion, tradition, and gender. One thing we see throughout the biographies is that although women are able to manipulate the system to meet some of their goals, including reducing oppressive male dominance in their lives, to do so, they must buy into the system. Thus, Hiba, a 28-year-old graduate of an Islamic university, insisted on following Islamic rules, which led to isolating herself in inaccessible parts of her home, covering her body, and avoiding public places. Doing this, in her mind, minimized any focus on her social class or ethnicity and established her personal space as pure, allowing her to aspire to become a missionary and to do good works in the name of Islam. Although this path reinforces male domination and female isolation, it allowed her to create a valued new space in which to act and to refute the traditional relevance of race/ethnicity and class. Similarly, 30-year-old Nana, a divorcée recently returned with her daughter to live in her father’s home, wanted to continue to claim adult/married woman status so that she had more leeway to pursue her social life. At the same time, as a single woman, she had to practice behavioral expectations for (usually never-married) women living in their fathers’homes. Nana became expert in submitting to regulations of dress, timing, and guardianship to gain access to the nonsubmissive, self-directed spaces in which she wanted to act. What Nageeb illustrates well is the kinds of trade-offs Sudanese women make to meet their goals. For instance, Dahlia, a 45-year-old, upper-class woman who was active in a women’s Qu’ranic group, was seen as a religious role model by those who knew her, in part because she engaged actively in redefining traditional activities as religious activities. Her strategy was to learn so much about Islam that she could become an authority and use religion to exercise the symbolic and social capital she acquired to pursue her interests without having to argue for them from the position of a woman. To do this, she followed many of the behaviors and dress requirements imposed on women, allowing the interpretation of them as a sign of her acceptance of modern Islam. Thus, by continuing to follow rules that put her at a disadvantage in some ways, she was frequently able to exert authority over both men and women who were less knowledgeable than she.