About Prejudices and Other Errors

More than 16 years ago I married into a real Arabic family and had to eliminate a pile of prejudices first.

Actually my husband was supposed to marry his first grade cousin, as it is still practiced a lot in the Middle East. This way the money stays in the family and the members know each other well to spare them from unpleasant surprises.

But family plans did not work out, because firstly, their son had to study abroad, in England, where many young men were sent to obtain a good qualification to become a much needed doctor, engineer, architect or accountant that this region lacks and because of which they still import so many foreign workers and specialists into the Middle East.

As it might be expected of someone studying abroad in a place where many international students gathered together, the son, on whom all family hopes were laid, met and fell in love with a European lady, me. Long story cut short, after a few years it became evident (meanwhile I had converted to Islam through my Arabic studies) that he wanted to marry me and to live in his home country in the Middle East. I said yes.

First of all he returned home alone to prepare his family, which ended in a family drama. The disappointed uncle whose daughter he would not marry got upset and no longer supported his nephew's studies. The mother broke out in tears; her mean sisters-in-law would make fun of the young man's mad choice; his father began chain-smoking, while the female family members tried to change his mind by offering to arrange a marriage with a beautiful local girl showing him daily pictures of willing ladies as per the traditional marriage mediation procedures. But all their efforts were in vain, even though they had done everything to argue him out of his foolish decision, knowing that women from the West were usually "easy" girls, not to be trusted as wives, and that the "Englies", as all foreigners from the West would be called (i.e. the English), were not very clean but stinky, because they did not use water after they had been to the toilet to wash the relevant body part with lots of water. They also had their doubts if a young woman from the West knew how to cook and she probably was not very talented in housekeeping either. Moreover they did not know anything about my descent. Family is important in the Middle East; if you get married, you marry the whole lot.

But despite all protests, my future husband would not change his mind. After the initial temper had calmed down and my fiancé's family elders had traveled all the way to Europe to 'examine' the bride a date for the wedding was set and I flew to my new home, a small island in the middle of Arabia. Only the closest family members were invited to our wedding, roughly 250 people, because of the embarrassment that the son of a traditional and well recognized family would marry a foreigner, even though a Muslim. I didn't mind the "small" number of guests, besides I did not understand a lot of the local dialect. I had spent a year in Egypt and the dialect I knew was not the same, but at least I spoke some Arabic.

After a few days the tension subsided as I had a lot of experience from my stay in Egypt in how to deal with people's fear and apprehension of strangers. I knew that I had to meet my new family with understanding and empathy. I also knew that in the opposite case people would react similar or worse if, let's say, my brother would want to marry a girl from a totally different culture who had never lived in Europe before. I understood why the family was worried. Thus, in the coming days I spent a lot of time with my new mother-in-law helping her in the kitchen and around the house in order to break down the emotional boundaries and to get to know each other. My mother-in-law, on the other hand, noticed with satisfaction that I knew how to take care of a household, which I owed to my experience as an au-pair girl in London. We finally got to know each other much better while picking rice, which proved to be an excellent language learning opportunity for me. I owe my fluency in colloquial Arabic to her.

Within a few days the ice was broken and my mother-in-law took me into her heart. To show me her affection she would throw a piece of meat from her side of the huge plate with rice and lamb at which we all sat on the floor eating with our hands, of course. The other family members stopped breathing to see how I would react to this old local custom that might be fairly unappetizing for a European. I thanked her with a smile and ate. There were many other incidents about which we often laugh today and which we fondly remember. I have since become one of the favourite family members and enjoy everyone's full respect.

By the way, the children of the two sisters-in-laws of my husband's mother, who had made mischievous and sneering comments before our marriage, got also married since; one of them has a daughter-in-law from the Far East and the other one a European son-in-law. Well, how does the proverb go? Do as you would be done.

The Head Scarf Controversy

The controversy about the head scarf in some European countries has become a point of discussion in the Middle East. As a German Muslim wearing the head scarf I have to consider both sides.

When I converted to Islam almost 18 years ago in London, where I had started to study Arabic and Politics, I also decided to wear the head scarf in public. It was my free decision and I had my own personal reasons. For me it was a natural decision although I was well aware of the consequences and possible reactions of my non-Muslim friends and family. As I had expected they were quite surprised and some thought I had gone totally mad.

Only two years earlier I myself commented the answer of the first male Muslim I had personally met to his country of origin with the remark that he came from a region where women were suppressed. Right away he invited me to his home country in order to prove to me the opposite. Today I live in Arabia and know that reality in the Middle East is often very different to the prejudices we have in the West about these countries, their people and lives. Before I had ever met any people of the Middle East I thought I knew better. I had forgotten my first conscious encounter with Turkish Muslims when I was still a child. During a picnic with my elder sister on a very hot summer's day we saw a group of busily chatting female Muslim Turks wearing head scarves. I remarked that they must be dying of heat, but my sister replied differently than I had expected. To my surprise she said that according to an old saying everything that is good against the cold is also good against the heat. If there is any truth to that or not was not the point at the time, but I think my sister (intentionally or unintentionally) wanted to convey a message to me. I remember that I evaluated my quick comment and thought I should be more tolerant with others and not to be judgmental before I ever got to know these people.

Many years later during my studies in London I had close contact to Arabic and Persian Muslims who lived there, many of them were wearing the head scarf, but they were so different from the Turkish Muslims I had seen at home. As a world metropolis London offers total freedom of religion to people of all faiths and the head scarf was never a subject of controversy as long as I lived there. That was not a surprise as Hindu policemen may replace the traditional "bobby" helmet of the royal police force with a turban of the same color. I do not think this would be possible in Germany, where I come from!

Yet, I also experienced how difficult it could be for young Muslim girls to go to school with a head scarf, especially if they were the only one. One close Muslim friend whose daughter was the only girl wearing a head scarf at the time in her school asked for my advice, what she could do if her daughter came home crying after she had been teased by the other children because of her head scarf. This problem was to be expected, because children do not like to stand out of the crowd but they wish to blend in with their peers. The only advice I could give her at the time, as I knew that her religious convictions would not allow her daughter to go to school without the head scarf, that she should talk to her daughter and allow her to speak about her painful experience at school and her frustrations without the fear to be criticized from her strict parents or worse to doubt their love. The parents had to show compassion for their daughter's situation. I didn't have a better advice then, but my experience made me confront this subject already before I had a daughter on my own one day.

Many years later one event reminded me of this subject, but this time from a different angle. I was working as English teacher in a private school in the Middle East when a girl came into the teachers' room crying because she had forgotten her head scarf at home, which she only had started wearing recently. This time she was teased by the other children for not wearing a head scarf – opposite worlds but with a similar problem and similar insensitive reactions. My Danish Christian colleague of all teachers would help this poor girl without hesitation by taking off her neck scarf with the remark that the girl did not have to worry at all nor cry because something like that could happen to anyone and this didn't make her a bad person. She did not try to convince this girl of her own personal opinion that the head scarf was unnecessary, which would not have helped to console the girl at that moment anyway, but rather would have made matters worse. I was surprised about the understanding and empathy with which the teacher was able to help this girl, whose relieved smile I cannot forget. Especially children and young people should not be teased or discriminated against because of their appearance. They cannot and most of all are not yet allowed to decide for themselves and therefore become easily victimized. I wanted to avoid that for my own children. As German mother of (by now) two daughters I knew very well that I could never force my own girls to wear a head scarf and had never wanted to. This is why I had to grapple myself with this subject critically and find an acceptable solution for everyone involved.

Children need an environment in which they are able to practice their religion freely if it is practiced by their families intensively. They have to understand their religion and should be able to adopt it with their hearts and reason, if they wish to do so, without compulsion. Because sooner or later compulsion causes problems and we will achieve the opposite of what we originally wanted to accomplish. Scared off by compulsion many people neglect or even hate their religion even though they don't really know it that well. As for me, being a German Muslim woman and based on my own circumstances, it is a must that I may voluntarily follow the rules and rituals of a religion. However, for children who are born into a religion, unfortunately, this is mostly not possible. As one of my university colleagues remarked once, too many Muslims reduce religion to a set of dos and don'ts with which they often threaten to suffocate their own children instead of helping them to spiritually and mentally grow and develop through their religion. Sadly, many don't allow this interpretation of Islam in daily life for themselves.

Muslim parents who live in Europe must begin to understand what they might do to their children if they raise them in a foreign culture while rejecting that they identify themselves with the same culture they live in, in other words with what they see in their environment every single day at school, with their non-Muslim friends, on TV, or during festive seasons. For me personally there was no other alternative but to raise my daughters in an Islamic country, to send them to gender segregated government schools where they wouldn't be picked at because of their head scarves so that they could enjoy their childhood feeling normal without having to suffer the consequences of a culture or religion clash.

Children deserve to be loved and parents love their children because they think that their children resemble them and they recognize themselves in their children. Small children identify themselves with their parents and do everything in order to avoid disappointing their parents. Muslim girls that go to school in Germany or France, for example, are constantly given the feeling that they are wrong not only through the public fuzzy discussion about the head scarf but (what is worse) through a lot of inconsiderate behaviour and rejecting reactions by their fellow non-Muslim residents even through a quick disapproving look. At home, on the one hand, they are made to understand that they are wrong if they copy local behaviour patterns or likings that, on the other hand, the culture they live in would like them to accept. These children will not be able, despite all their efforts in their already strained situation between two cultures and religions, to satisfy the impossible expectations of being correct and respected from everyone.

I don't think the ideal solution is to segregate government schools according to religion or gender. However, we must admit that as long as the head scarf issue is met with such prejudice, and as long as the mistrust between the cultures involved grows, and as long as possible changes of society frighten so many people on both sides, and as long as children cannot be accepted as they look (which I admit is not always their choice), so long will these girls suffer and so long will we burden them with our immaturity. The children most likely cannot understand the connection between their traditions and religion; leave alone the political background of the flurry in Germany or France, two societies that are based on secularism in which equality and freedom for all should be guaranteed, for both the one who wants and the one who does not want to practice religion.


I have always discussed the head scarf issue with my daughters and the problems they might get when wearing it during our trips to Europe. But despite their given choice they never wanted to take it off because it is part of their identity and the society they live in. This is important because the head scarf is not automatically part of the identity of Muslim girls that live or were born in Western countries. In addition people often lack religious tolerance in secular states, because of the right of choice is considered fundamental. One solution might be better integration policies but they cannot be implemented from one side only. Muslims who live in Western countries need to inform others about their religion and accept to reflect about possible drawbacks in their behaviour patterns instead of wishing the "unbelievers" always to hell. One has to admit that the lack of sensitivity from the population of the immigration country, on the one hand, and the sensitivity of the Muslims with regard to their religion, on the other hand, do not make this task any easier. Naturally, Muslims do not want non-Muslims to interfere in their religion and vice versa Europeans do not want Islam to influence their secular state and laws. Who would not understand this? Nevertheless, if we want to improve the situation, both sides need to get to know each other better and stop feeling to be superior to the other. The head scarf has a long history and belongs also to Judaism and early Christianity. If Jewish girls/teachers or catholic nuns were wearing the head scarf in German or French schools, would they be equally discriminated against? I hope not.

Justice or reality-satire?

Overthrowing Saddam Hussein was one of the major reasons for starting the war against Iraq. On Arabic TV channels one is able to witness live the court case of Iraq's former dictator; if one has the guts.

Even though the news of increasing violence and terror in Iraq seem to have brushed aside the attention of one of the major causes this war was started in the first place, the court case of the former Iraqi president and dictator is broadcasted live since its beginning on several Arabic TV channels. Saddam Hussein is sitting together with his closest associates of his former government, of whom some are his direct relatives, in front of the judge on the defense chairs with a wooden hip-high railing around them. Their defense lawyers are placed at the side of the court room and come from different Arabic countries. One lawyer for instance, comes from Bahrain, my place of living since 1991. The judge is a white-haired man who looks quite grumpy at times. That is because his court room often resembles a theater play of reality-satire, in which the people personally responsible for the past horrors in Iraq have become the main actors in this sinister play that they seem to present to the audience.

As interested viewer of an historic court case we had to witness some time ago how one of the accused sat unwashed and still in his creased pyjama like a stubborn child on the floor facing the judge with his back, placing his elbows on his knees and his hands brushing through his untidy hair. The reason for this scene was that the defendant was brought from his prison cell to the court room against his will. (I thought that Michael Jackson who ones appeared at court in his pyjama trousers and slippers already seemed quite bizarre.)

If one has the patience to observe the reoccurring fits of rage of the accused, who constantly and intentionally interrupt the judge with their rude insults, then one will become witness of a cynical performance by the defendants, who listen emotionless and with a contemptuous look in their faces to the testimonies of their former victims who suffered so indescribably during their reign of Iraq. What is more, these witnesses have to hear insults that are sworn at them by the accused during their ordeal of recalling their torture and sufferings.

For their protection the witnesses sit behind thick curtains speaking into a microphone that changes their voices electronically beyond recognition. They accept this ordeal in order to bear witness against their former rulers, a testimony of cruel persecution, unimaginable torture and extreme human rights violations. The evidence they are giving is, regrettably, not unheard of, but for the first time for most of us we are hearing it from the victims themselves. Unfortunately, even though understandable, the victims remain anonymous and the electronically changed voices bestow an anxious unreality on these scenes.

Saddam and his gang are obviously unmoved by these testimonies but they are able to repeatedly interrupt the court or even cause impertinent chaos while the viewer would like to explode with anger feeling the blood boiling in our veins. The last judge has resigned some time ago because he could not become in control of his court room. Saddam was and still is a cunning fox, who up to this day considers himself to be the rightful and most of all just president of Iraq. His distorted view will not be changed by the shocking victims' testimonies and their evidence. The accused know themselves too well how they reigned over Iraq and with what methods they terrorized their population. For them the purpose sanctifies the methods.

It is well-known that Saddam now and then killed opponents with his own hands and did not even spare two of his sons-in-law. He also demonstrated to his sons some convincing and practical methods of becoming strong rulers with a box of mice. When his sons were still young he had a box full of mice thrown out in front of them and ordered his sons to catch them again, alone. Although they tried their utmost out of fear to be punished in case of failure and as they knew they could not disappoint their strict father, they were not able to catch these mice again. Saddam, however, would show them how. He took the box full of mice and shook it vigorously before releasing the mice. This time his sons were able to catch all those mice without much effort. The father closed his demonstration with the remark that in order to control the people and to be a successful, strong ruler they would have to do the same with their subjects. So much with regard to the government know-how tips of a dictator.

It is hard to believe with respect to the testimonies heard so far and my history knowledge of the Middle East that this court case will be of much use to the Iraqi people, especially with regard to the escalating violence and terror in Iraq. The new Iraqi president, Dschalal Talabani, has already announced that he will not sign the death penalty for Saddam, knowing very well that he would sign his own at the same time. Sadly, justice probably will not and cannot be done to the victims, but I fear that these victims and Iraq will not find any peace as long as Saddam is still alive. What is more, just like after the break down of the Nazi regime in Germany, many responsible helpers and supporters of the former dictator will escape by leaving their scenes of action in order to continue their lives somewhere else where they are able to hide their infamous past.

Nowadays, I change the channel when Saddam's court case is shown on TV and wish that he would have had a similar fate like the Romanian dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu.

My Arabic Children

As German mother of three half-Arabic children it is one of my major tasks to build a bridge between the cultures - a balancing act.

When I met my husband in Watford College, England, 20 years ago I would have laughed if someone had told me then that one day I will marry a non-European foreigner. However, love is without control and my love led me to an unexpected destiny.

As a typically correct and A-level educated young German I sought counseling on the legal issues before marriage from an advisory bureau in Hamburg. They sent me a detailed brochure about the laws with regard to marriage between a German and an Arab. As precaution, the consultant had written a note at the beginning of the brochure, advising me to better check if my future husband did not already have one or more wives waiting for him in his home country. I guess, the consultant had meant well, sure due to experience, but my fiancee did not have another wife in his harem. I was and still am the only one.

Meanwhile more than 16 years have passed, my husband and I are still happily married and our whole pride is our three children, two girls and one boy. All three speak fluently Arabic, German and English, which I admit to owe in great part to the technical invention of satellite TV. Our religion is Islam and we are striving to open both cultures to our children, often proving to be a balancing act, which is time and again due to the lack of tolerance from people in both cultures. Nevertheless, we are flying to Germany every year to visit grandpa and grandma and my family regularly comes to visit us here in Bahrain. Keeping contact is most important and thus the two cultures are approaching each other quite a bit, not only because the love between children, parents and grandparents, but also because of the intensive process of getting to know each other, which extremely supports mutual understanding and sympathy.

My family often clarifies old prejudice such as the suppression of women in Islam and Islamic fanatics when the discussion arises in Germany. We cannot and do not want to deny that such circumstances exist, but they are not the general truth. We also like to joke about the usual cliches of both cultures and Grandpa is all smiles when his grandchildren taunt him with a wrinkled nose about his pork sausages, he still enjoys eating them and we don't mind him. The children have learned very early to deal with the differences in culture and religion and also not to insist on commenting and judging everything. Hence, my family and friends in Germany forego alcoholic drinks during shared meals without any problem, while we spoil them with our Arabic cookery. Mutual approach is the motto for us. Our headscarves have never been a subject of argument, we all know and like each other as we are, with or without a head scarf that does not matter at all. Equally we take care that any lady visitor not wearing the head scarf in Bahrain is treated with respect and courtesy, we do not tolerate any discrimination.

Due to the fact that I come from a different culture I cannot smooth talk the existing disadvantages of neither their father's culture nor mine, and I cannot deny any real shortcomings. We often discuss the problem subject such as religious extremism and racism. It is easy in a family whose members come from the same culture and religion to criticize or malign another one. This is not possible in our family without running down the people we love. Despite our children's young age (14, 11 and 6) they have learned many things about religion and traditions from both the Arabic and German sides. The mere knowledge reduces the fear of cultural or religious differences, because the fear of value and identity loss is often based on one's own uncertainness and fear of the unknown. Knowledge is power and in this case it replaces the swooning feeling of ignorance, which troubles the people in both parts of the world and because of which the people from different cultures often reject each other.

However, it is not as easy as it seems or one would wish, because there is at least one major obstacle to the rapprochement and understanding between the two cultures, namely their drawbacks, which is on the one hand the confusion of traditions and customs with religious morals, and on the other hand the estrangement and rejection of religious values (may be an important subject for another article). Nevertheless, I believe where there is a will there is a way. There are reasoandund backgrounds for every behaviour that need to be known and viewed from different perspectives in order to explain and understand it, which is not the same as uncritically accepting. May be, people from bi-cultural backgrounds (like my children) are one day able to help building a bridge between the cultures and to dismantle prejudice and fear. They may do so not by changing the cultures and religions from scratch, but by creating understanding and tolerance through their natural cultural bridging.

Unacceptable Criticism

A study about German mothers who quit their job to have more time for their children showed that most mothers were using this time for their own recreation instead. This caused a German tabloid paper to label them as "lazy mothers", which resulted in a heated public discussion about motherhood and the lack of either mother care or respect for women's personal needs. As for people in the Arabian Gulf, they would probably never have such a discussion in the first place.

Many things have changed since I moved to Bahrain more than 16 years ago. The culture shock that I had initially expected as a typical German was relatively mild, because Bahrain turned out to be quite a wealthy and well developed country. Furthermore, soaring economic developments (with its highlight of the arrival of Formula 1 have made the assimilation to Western standards firmly established in this small kingdom island.

The living standard of the middle class is quite remarkable. The number of family homes that are much bigger and more luxurious here than in Germany, for instance, has risen dramatically. Usually, the inhabiting marriage partners drive each their own car. While the number of working women and mothers is on the increase, the number of children per family is reducing with each generation. The average number of children per family used to be six to eight children two generations ago, but young mothers these days would like to have three or four children at maximum, some are even content with only two, although children these days are a lot less work intensive for mothers, at least in this region. How come?

The relative low population rate in this part of the world makes it necessary to hire workers from abroad. Most of these foreign workers come from the Third World, because their salary expectations are very low compared to the local labor market and they are easily recruited due to the lack of complicated labor laws. Among those foreign workers are also cheap housemaids who only demand a fraction of the salary that a local worker would work for. Consequently, almost every household starting from the lower middle class is able to afford a housemaid and/or nanny, who will take care of the house and children.

As a result, more women are able to find a job and at the same time have children, if they choose to do so. More than in Western societies, children are almost exclusively the job of the woman. Further, maternity leave in the Gulf region is only 45 days, which means that already 6 weeks after childbirth working mothers usually go back to their job, many leaving their baby in the care of their housemaids. Even if a woman chooses to stay at home as housewife, most households still have a housemaid as the houses here are very big and difficult to manage on one's own. Besides, why should a woman struggle to cope alone with such a big house if her husband can afford to provide her with a housemaid and/or nanny?

It has to be mentioned at this point that these "nannies" are hardly trained but mostly unskilled young foreign women with little or no English or Arabic language knowledge from a poor African or Asian country. Their only "qualification" might be having children on their own. Further, the local working conditions of these domestic workers often resemble those of slaves in the old times that enable Arabic working mothers or housewives with well-earning husbands to enjoy more leisure time without having to look after their children themselves. Higher living standards combined with changed views on the necessary effort investment of mothers in times of wealth and increased personal demands are important here, which perhaps have led the Arabic society to accept such child care situations as inevitable side effects of modernization and development.

The human species is a habitual being and thus most women have become so accustomed to their housemaid and nanny services that they cannot imagine a life without the comforts they enjoy through their domestic servants' work. Mothers and their children depend on themselves only during the dreaded time between departed housemaids that have finished their working contract and the arrival of the new servant girl, which may well be the cause of a variety of serious domestic crisis in some families. The children, of course, are also very used to these housemaids, so that they often have become spoiled, because the housemaid is the one who tidies up their room and toys, cleans up any of their mess and takes care of all sorts of other unacceptable or even labor rights violating services.

It happens that some children do not see their mothers very often whether they go out for work or not. As a former teacher in a private school I often witnessed the results of such lack of contact time between mother and child. In one of my English lessons I wanted to elicit the word "mother" from my first grade students with the following questions: Who takes care of you at home by helping you to prepare your school bag, or washing your clothes, or cooking your lunch? The answer was quite clear, it was the housemaid not the mother who would do all those jobs alone. One of my students, however, informed me that his mother who was a housewife could not do all of these jobs because she had to sleep till noon and go shopping in the afternoon. Well, so much for my intention to use what I considered the traditional mother role in my language lesson.

Nevertheless, this experience made me think. Is it only the woman who neglects her role as mother because of her convenient substitute in a wealthy and modern society? Does not also the lack of commitment from the father, withdrawing himself from the daily energy-consuming and exhausting childcare, contribute to this situation? On the one hand, childcare seems to be everywhere the expected priority of women. On the other hand, traditional expectations and task distributions are not easily adjustable to the development of a modern society. This is also true for modern Arabia despite traditions or conventional mother role expectations. Nannies are not employed to watch TV all day and they are part of the status symbol in wealthy Arabia. Therefore, it might be high time to redefine the mother's as well as the father's role and their new relating tasks. Luxury and wealth come at a price, which often has to be paid by the children, who should consider themselves lucky if they see their parents for an hour or two a day.

However, such tabloid headlines as seen in Germany of so called "lazy mothers" are absolutely unthinkable in this part of the world. Even though if the childcare situation in modern Arabia may one day result in a public discussion for the sake of the children and not least for society as a whole (if not for some poor domestic workers), such harsh open criticism seems not acceptable in this part of the world. Reflecting about how the German Press (rightly or wrongly) dealt with the "mother-subject" in such a provocative and argumentative writing style, I often get the impression that self-criticism is not yet considered part of modern development in Arabia.

Creativity is a Gift from God

Well, at least this is what is says in Julia Cameron's book "The Artist's Way". So, I want to express my creativity in writing about life in the Middle East, about different issues and stories, giving the passer by an insight into a world s/he might not know and, may be, never will, seeing beyond familiar horizons and view points in order to build a bridge of understanding between cultures and people.

When I came to the small island kingdom of Bahrain in the Persian Gulf more than 16 years ago I wanted to become a writer. So many years have passed and so much has happened, and I think it's high time to finally start writing after all. Welcome to Stories from the Middle East.