Getting God's Ear (Book Review): 1184
Abstract
WOMEN Getting God's Ear: Women, Islam and Healing in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, by Eleanor A. Doumato. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. Illust. xii + 233 pages. Append. to p. 243. Notes to p. 283. Bibl. to p. 303. Index to p. 312. $45 cloth; $18.50 paper. Reviewed by Soraya Altorki Eleanor Doumato, a historian and adjunct professor at Brown University, has commendably brought together historical sources of true significance for the history of Arabia, and specifically for women's medical practices and spiritual rituals. In the book under review, Doumato examines the relationships between women, religion, and healing practices in Najd and the Gulf during the first half of the 20th century by analyzing the ways women structure their spiritual lives in opposition to male-defined orthodoxy (p. 31), under Wahhabi cultural hegemony. The author's thesis is that women, historically deprived of access to learning and to public places of worship-and thus unable to discharge their religious duties in the scripturally commended manner- tried to meet their obligations by inhabiting private spaces, and in particular, through unsanctioned rituals and healing practices, such as wearing amulets, dhikr, fortune telling, and geomancy. Women participated in the public sphere before, though not after the onset of Wahhabism. Women endorsed their own exclusion from public arenas but resorted to marginal spaces in compensation. By comparing women's roles in Najd and elsewhere in the Gulf,…
Read the paper
Related studies
- Lathyrism-induced alterations in collagen cross-links influence the mechanical properties of bone material without affecting the mineral
- High-Resolution SPECT-CT/MR Molecular Imaging of Angiogenesis in the Vx2 Model
- Severely impaired bone material quality in Chihuahua zebrafish resembles classical dominant human osteogenesis imperfecta
- Small-animal SPECT and SPECT/CT: application in cardiovascular research
- Intravital imaging of osteocytes in mouse calvaria using third harmonic generation microscopy
- Techniques and Evaluation From a Cross-Platform Imaging Comparison of Quantitative Ultrasound Parameters in an In Vivo Rodent Fibroadenoma Model
Go deeper in Evidence Hub
Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.