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Muslim Women: Between Cliché and Reality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Wijdan Ali
Wijdan Ali*
Affiliation:
University of Jordan
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Extract

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Clichés about the Orient and Oriental women, which imposed themselves with considerable force on the popular imagination, have been perpetuated in Europe since the Middle Ages. The projection of evil onto marginal or ineffectual groups within a society has always been an easy and useful method for making scapegoats. Jews in Medieval Europe were stereotyped and tried for a number of fictitious crimes such as poisoning wells, killing children for their blood and crucifying and cannibalizing their victims. Along the same lines women were associated with the devil and regarded as enemies of the Church, hence the witch-hunts that tried women for sexual voraciousness, cannibalism and consorting with evil spirits. The projection of evil onto an alien culture was also a distinctive aspect of medieval Europe's intolerance, due to its ignorance of such cultures.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 50 , Issue 3: Identities, Beliefs, Images , August 2003 , pp. 77 - 87
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2003

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