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Women Lose Ground in the New Iraq
Zahra Khalid, 30, left, shops in Baghdad on her first outing in two months. With Islamic fundamentalism and sectarian warfare on the rise in Iraq, more and more women live in fear.
(Photos By Andrea Bruce -- The Washington Post)
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Muna Nouri, 52, a high school teacher, doesn't want to leave, even if it means having to abide by rules she does not believe in.
As a college student in 1974, Nouri showed off her long black hair. She wore short skirts. She walked around campus with friends who happened to be boys.
As an adult, she and her two daughters -- one is 20, the other 17 -- took walks around their neighborhood in the Hadra district, wearing whatever they wanted.
"I consider myself and my daughters liberated women," she said. "We go out and walk in the street. That was last year even. But this year, it's more difficult. Every day, it's worse than the day before."
The wife of one of the security guards at the mosque across the street, an impoverished woman to whom Nouri had given money, urged her to wear a head scarf for her own good, she recalled.
The day after sectarian violence erupted in Sadr City late last month, Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr instructed women to continue wearing their hijabs.
"There are some voices being heard against the hijab, from inside and outside Islam," Sadr said. "I say it will remain a protection for our women and call on our sisters to be patient, not to listen to these voices."
Nouri considers herself a religious woman. She prays and reads the Koran. The Islam she knows does not oppress women, she said.
"I think Islam is more liberated than that," she said.
This year, more than 300 teachers and Education Ministry employees have been killed, according to government reports. Nouri does not want to make herself a target at the all-girls' high school where she teaches. So she wears long skirts and a head scarf to work.
"I don't like it, because I think the women here are very beautiful," she said, speaking by phone because she did not want her neighbors to see a stranger visiting her home. "This scarf is not beautiful."
Like Nouri, Bushra Shimirya, 42, had considered herself an independent woman. That changed dramatically in just a few months, she said. She knew things were bad when she could no longer drive her car.
