So how does S.A. deal with Israeli-born Arabs? Do they deny them entry for having Israeli passports/entry stamps? Seems counterintuitive.
For the record, in most of the region – in which I live and work – you can bloody well wear what you want.
You want to wear a halter top and shorty shorts, well go right ahead. It’s not illegal, per se. I recall seeing a troop of nubile black American girls visiting the Pyramids in just such clothing.
However, as in all places, where clothing that goes against the local mores, there are consequences. People draw conclusions from the degree to which you dress according to station, role and the like. Dress like a disrespectful slut and you will be treated like a disrespectful slut. Period.
I might add that I can not, as much as I would like to sometimes, come to work wearing a Qandarah and Serwal. Nope, must wear my nice fancy suits to work, even when it hits 45.
As to the actual practicalities for women travelling in areas where hijab (head covering) is required – no one expects foreign women to wear the niqab – it seems fairly simple, throw a shawl over your hair. Really not as complicated and putting upon as all that. In most of the region there is not even that requirement.
On the slacks question: it is very difficult to generalize. When wearing them, women are clearly making a statement on choosing but it all depends. Certainly the strictest folks do not like the idea, but that in part seems to be attached to jeans more than simple slacks per se.
On Jews and SA: I have heard from informed sources that the Saudis frown on givng visas to Jews, but it is not clear this is in fact a formal policy versus non-official prejudices and just general Saudi pain in the assedness towards everyone. The only place I have heard of wear diplomatic status people have trouble with entry.
On Muslim Israeli Arabs, interesting question. It occurs to me I have never heard anything about this.
On Israel and travel: for people doing business with Israel and the region, it is advisable to have two passports. Just have to ask.
This is a very good point. Regarding the US female commissioned officer who hit the news for refusing to wear it: it wasn’t a local law, but rather a completely illegal and misguided order from her superior officer.
I would imagine Israeli Muslims could get a visa for the pilgrimmage to Mecca.
I do know that people of Jewish ancestry who were not practicing Jews have worked in S.A. It depends, in part, on how you define “Jewish” - is it a religion, ethnicity, or citizenship?
S.A. considers Israel an enemy, so it’s not totally bizarre they’d excercise greater control over entry from that country than from others, and since quite a few Jews are pro-Israel they probably have concerns about, for lack of a better term, "enemy sympathizers’. Nor is it surprising they’d allow entry to people who have demonstrated they are anti-Isreal somehow, whether they are Jewish or not.
Is it really any different than any other country exercising greater scrutiny of citizens of countries they’re at odds with, or people who belong to groups that might have bad intentions towards that country? All during the cold war is was nigh-impossible to get a visa between the Soviet Union and the United States - you had to show you had a reason, weren’t a threat or a spy, and were closely watched while there. But a few people did go back and forth the whole time. And a certain number defected and were welcomed into the country they defected to.
Why can’t you walk down the street buck naked in Chicago in the middle of July? It’s certainly warm enough.
There are certain standards of dress/modesty/behavior in any culture. To ignore them is, at best, rude to your fellow citizens and may invite criticism of several levels of severity.
I don’t know why people have a problem understanding this.
From what I’ve heard from talking to people who have been there, and seen through various sources, western/non-Muslim women are not required to adopt native dress, only to cover up enough to conform with local rules of modesty and decency. Nor is this confined solely to women. MEN are not permitted to show bare arms or legs, either, or wear tight clothing, in many of these countries. In other words, western women aren’t expected to wear veils, abayas, or burqas - they are expected to cover their arms and legs and head, and perhaps wear skirts and dresses rather than pants. While I am happy to run around in a halter top and short-shorts in my own home territory on hot days. I would also have no problem wearing a loose blouse, long loose skirt, and head scarf if visiting somewhere that was appropriate attire. I’m sure our ME experts will correct me if I’m wrong, but such an outfit would conform in any part of the ME I’m likely to go.
Or maybe I don’t have a need to somehow prove something through how little clothing I can get away with wearing.
Now, the whole thing about women not being able to drive in SA - that really bugs me. Forget the clothing issues - I want freedom of movement! Although if I went there I’d respect their rules. Obviously, there are some real clashes between our two cultures.
What if I 'm gay? Can I wear a veil and bat my eyes to get men?
On a more serious note: what do the young gay lovers of men wear? I know in Afgh. at least, some of the higher up military locals had teenage men as lovers since men rarely see a woman. The NYTimes did an article on this. I recall also hearing that some fresh-faced British lads were invited to a party with a leader and were surprised when they got some advances. 
On homosexuality: men do not do drag in the Middle East. (Which is to say, not in public)(*). Afghanistan is a strange and frankly disfunctional place, so don’t extrapolate from there to the MENA region per se.
On Dress: Western women can indeed wear pants, but its more advisable to wear loose billowy ones and not tight ones. I should emphasize that in most of the region even the head scarf/hijab is entirely optional outside of mosques. Indeed I think in places like urban Morocco, Lebanon, Jordan or Egypt they would find it positively odd for a Western non-Muslim woman to wear a hijab. Outside urban areas is of course a diff. matter.
(*: There is an odd exception in Oman which I have heard about but not seen directly re a quasi institutionalized ‘third sex’ in Oman of guys who adopt a woman’s life, sometimes temporarily. Frankly I wish I knew more, but I can simply report that it exists.)
Cecil has done a column on something similar in India:
**
What about, say, a Muslim Indian or Pakistani woman? Are they OK wearing something like a salwar kameez, which is about as modest an outfit as I can think of? Or is it frowned upon for a Muslim woman to wear anything even resembling pants?
Salwar Qamiz is native dress, so that would fall by my read into cross dressing as a man, which for both religions, hindu and muslim, is a no no.
Wearing Western styled clothes puts one in an ambiguous space.
I note re the Indian hijras that the word seems to be an Arabic one. Odd that.
I might add here in the Arab world I have seen plenty of “muhajibat” – the hijab wearing women – wearing flowy pant-suit type deals, so even in moderate conservative circles it’s not pants that are haram, it is the style. If you image oversized body concealing pant-suits, you get the picture. now of course, no one is going to mistake this for a man’s garb, and that fulfils the basic Islamic precept on the matter.
[hijack]
Is this still true? I thought all such local laws etc. were considered unenforceable unless it were equally illegal for men to go topless on the same beaches. (Private beaches would of course be a different matter, as they can make their own rules).
[/hijack]
Yeah, like Ontario.
A bump to bring this up and to thank everyone for the info. I (now) have absolutely no desire to go to any one of these arab/muslim/whatever places, and I cant think of why any American woman would want to.
Susanann, your comment does not belong in GQ nor does my reply which I have correctly posted in the pit.
It might be not quite the same style as the men’s one, but women and men here both wear salwar qamizes.
Even among indian women, it seems to be more popular than the sari (I tend to see saris on much older women).
The women’s salwar qamiz is trousers - often looseish but not always excessively baggy - with a long tunic-dress type thing over the top, that passes the knees. It has sleeves, often they are short sleeves. So almost like a dress + trousers. Then it also comes with this matching scarf thing, that does not cover the head, but just wraps round the neck and shoulders.
This photo will show you the men’s and women’s versions.
I would love you guys to see the Saudi work experience girl we currently have in the office. Some of the (other arab) lads have labelled her the “strip tease girl.” Her hijab - if one can even describe it as such - is a transparent, miniscule wisp of fabric balanced at the back of her head, covering no hair, and always slipping down. She wears the tightest clothes I have ever seen, rivalling even the Beirut princesses/general Shakira types. Make up indescribable - tarantula style eyelashes, and lipstick so thick that if you scraped it off would cover 100 women’s lips for a month.
One day she wore this “abaya” thing - that I shit you not - was a stretchy woollen mesh. Imagine an overcoat made of fishnet tights, and you’ve just about got it.
Some of us have an unfortunate tendency to lump all “Arab” or “Muslim” countries together. I find it quite interesting to compare istara’s description of the attire worn by a Saudi woman in his (I assume) UAE locale with EvaLuna’s description last Thursday of the returning Iranian woman who was chastised even though she was wearing the correct all-covering clothing, but apparently walked a bit too freely.
Question: If the young woman in your office had dressed in that manner at home in Saudi Arabia, would this have been acceptable there? You mentioned that the young Arab men called her the “strip tease girl.” Do they otherwise show her normal respect?
When I was in India, I noticed that some Muslim Indian women wore something like a chador; IIRC married women wore black, unmarried women wore white. However, this was out in the rural areas of Madhya Pradesh, where people tend to be more conservative generally. I didn’t notice the same thing in Delhi. Here at home, I’ve seen Pakistani women wearing the salwar kameez and dupatta (the scarf), but these tend to be in neutral or soft colors, whereas Hindu women often wear salwar kameez that are quite vivid in color and have designs in the fabric. They do typically have short sleeves, but it wouldn’t be hard to get a tailor to whip one together with long sleeves, if you wanted it that way. And they are EXTREMELY comfortable… I think if I needed to travel in the Middle East I would consider bringing a few salwar suits along, at least as casual wear. (They are pretty easy to find here in the US, available online if you don’t have an Indian neighborhood nearby to shop in.)
I would assume that the word was introduced during Moghul rule of India (late 1400s to 1730s). Urdu and Hindi are mutually intelligible, but Urdu reflects the Arabic influence in its vocabulary (e.g., shukriya instead of dhanyavad for “thank you”), and is written in Arabic script rather than Devanagari.
Not a problem at all. I live a couple of miles from Devon Ave., the main Indian/Pakistani neighborhood in Chicago, and grocery shop there regularly. It’s great fun to walk west down Devon Ave. on a Sunday, when everyone is doing errands decked out in whatever their traditional dress is: first you cross through Assyria, then India/Palkistan, then the former Soviet Union (mostly Slavic/Jewish soul food stuff, but there is a Georgian bakery that is to die for, plus a great Israeli/Moroccan restaurant that serves a garlic eggplant dish which could kill a vampire at 100 paces), with some of the old Orthodox Jewish neighborhood mixed in. Great fun for grocery shopping, if you’re like me and love to undertake random culinary experimentation.
Oddly enough, although South Asian women in salwar kameez are everywhere, you almost never see guys decked out in parallel attire. Now why is that? (Although the guys do tend to wear sandals in far colder weather than I would think prudent.)
When I was younger and tended to dress rather more experimentally than I do now, I though about buying a salwar kameez. They looked so comfy for summer, nice and gauzy, with none of the worries about proper sitting position that you have when wearing a skirt, but more dressed-up than regular pants…I would have bought one, had I not been linguistically hampered in dealing with the sslaeslady.
Pardon my weird spelling, please…the Benadryl is kicking in. Time to stop fighting the drugs and go to sleep…
Sorry - I was referring to the Indian and Pakistani women here, subcontinental expats are actually the majority population here, there are more of them than Emiratis.
And the young Saudi woman - I imagine absolutely no way at all. I think she is making the most of her work experience over in this more liberal country to push the boundaries. All the men show her respect as they do to all women (these are quite westernised guys that work here, or at least world-exposed guys) though some will laugh with her and at her.
To be honest, it’s not even her clothes so much as her behaviour. She speaks with a high, baby voice, is endless giggles and blushes and pouts and flirts - and has told one of the guys that she likes another guy, who is married as she well knows. Fine to have a schoolgirl crush if you are fifteen, but she is twenty-five!
I think coming from Saudi and having little exposure to men/mixed workplaces, she has little understanding of at what level to pitch her flirtation, so she ends up being a very over-the-top, comic figure. She is extremely beautiful, I should point out. She has some photos of herself, and looks like you would imagine an arabic MTV presenter to look.