Religion

What was most surprising with regard to the importance of religion in people's lives? I want to draw out this distinction, because clearly in Latin America there are a lot of religious folks in the Christian and Catholic faith, but you're suggesting something else, and I think it's something that comes out in what you write about India, which of course is mainly Hindu and not Islamic, although there are a large number of Muslims in India. Talk a little more about that. Maybe give us a concrete example of what you're trying to suggest.

Latin America is more like that United States in the sense that most people are at least nominally religious, they belong to a faith. Most people in Latin America are Roman Catholic but it doesn't mean that they wake up every morning thinking, "I'm a Roman Catholic." It means that maybe if you're an older woman, you might go to mass a couple of mornings a week, if you're a man maybe you'll go once a month, if you're a teenager you might not go at all. It's something that shapes your beliefs but does not affect your daily life particularly.

In the Muslim world you live and breathe Islam all the time, and I'm not speaking about fanaticism, I'm not speaking about al Qaeda. I'm speaking about the things you think and feel every day that inform your actions. Many, many people do pray five times a day, or at least twice. You've got to close your shop, you've got to skip class, you've got to get your kid out of school.

Islam is very inconvenient, and it's deliberately inconvenient. If you've ever lived through a Ramadan, you would know. If you've really ever observed a real Ramadan -- I've done it twice now. I've been in many Ramadans but I've only observed it twice, I mean, the whole thing. It's a pain in the neck. You have to get up at three o'clock in the morning and cook, and then after that you don't eat until sundown by which time everybody is ravenous, and God forbid you should be in a traffic jam when it gets to be 4:57 and it's time to eat. People stop their cars in the middle of the street and go try to find a McDonald's. It's a mess, deliberately so.

The purpose of Ramadan is to remind us what it's like to go hungry and to make us appreciate -- to put a higher priority on our faith than on what's convenient for our lives. It makes you think about that. We in the West make our holidays work around weekends. If there's a holiday on a Wednesday, we make it on a Friday so we can have a long weekend. Think of Islam as the opposite. If it were on a Friday, they'd make it on a Wednesday. They really try hard to make it be a religion that makes you think and feel your faith.

There's a big debate now in many Muslim societies about the constraints and taboos that govern people's lives, to what extent are they religious and to what extent are they cultural. It's a hard thing to prise apart. But for example, if you talk about the restrictions on women, arranged marriages, the right to divorce, the right for men to have multiple wives, all these issues -- you can find arguments in the Koran for and against all of them. The Koran is this big, amorphous, multiply interpreted and wide open to interpretation text, as well as the Haddith and other things around it.

I'm not convinced, and a lot of people I know are not convinced, that Islam is all that restrictive on the behavior of women and the actions of women. However, many, many, many Muslims, especially men, especially in traditional rural societies, are convinced of this and behave as if it were true, when in fact, it's really the dictates of their tribal and cultural imperative. So, it's a little bit apples-and-oranges sometimes, but the bottom line is that as a result of this culture and very traditional interpretations of Islam, you have situations in which women are very restricted in what they can do.

Where does it say in the Koran that a woman has to be covered in a veil before she leaves her front door? I don't think it's there. This is something else. This is tribal culture, pre-literate tribal culture. But there it is. It's very difficult to get anything done. I know, because I've tried. Twice I've tried to do my job wearing a full veil. It is very difficult. You cannot see, you can't wear eyeglasses because of course, why would a woman need eyeglasses anyway? You can't see, you can't hear, you can't walk. How can you take notes? How can you take photographs? It's not possible to do my job and wear a full veil. So, we're talking about incredible strictures on activity and behavior and it's always in the back of your mind, all the time. You can't say, "I'm going to wait 'til Sunday to do this."

You're suggesting that there may be power relations within Islam that preclude exposure to the diversity that may actually be possible within Islamic text. Is that true?

Yes, and it's true even within countries. Egypt is a good example, Pakistan is a good example. In Karachi there are nightclubs. In Karachi you see girls in jeans and very ultra-modern clothing. Women are engineers and doctors and lawyers. People go to discos. But in a little village in Pakistan, you can be murdered for flirting. Not only can you be murdered for flirting, but no judge or policeman would ever arrest [the murderer] for that. It's part of the culture.

There's a very famous case right now that's still going through the courts in Pakistan of a woman who was gang-raped on the orders of a tribal council as vengeance for the fact that a young cousin of hers had been seen flirting with another girl in a field. The tribal council ordered that sentence upon her. It was carried out by five guys and nobody did a thing -- everybody knew about it -- until the press found out. Now it's gone through the courts and it's very controversial because in tribal culture this is the norm, this is what's accepted.

[Similarly,] people drink like fish in Pakistan, but alcohol is very much verboten and there're no bars, you cannot buy a drink in Pakistan. There's a lot of hypocrisy, a lot of hypocrisy.

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