Faced with a dilemma whether to enter temporary marriage or not with her partner, Ali, Juliet A. Williams was 'committed to finding a point of entry for exploring the social meaning and possibilities of temporary marriage that would not lead inexorably to a recapitulation of stereotyped judgments about the sexual oppression of women in Islamic societies.' (615) 'As a self-proclaimed feminist and a professor of women's studies trained in the tradition of Western liberal egalitarianism' (615) Williams makes significant note of the association between the West and the project of modernity itself in effect of orientalist discourses in relation to normative liberal discourse that place orientalism at the center of cross-cultural analysis that create the depiction of non-Western women as well as the West itself. Contrary, Williams takes note of how difficult it can be for those located in the West to disengage not just from orientalist constructions of the other but also from assumptions about the West as the seat of moral and social progress. (617)
Williams uses double critique approach to analyze the U.S. based press on temporary marriage in Iran and Shiite dominated areas of Iraq since 1990, as well as the commonalities of the temporary marriage in Islamic regimes with the politics around contemporary marriage/domestic intimacy in the U.S (portrayed as morally superior marriage culture) which on four spectrum parallel with Shiite marriage practices in the Middle East: to summarize the four in short in my own understanding- they are as follows;
1. Likeliness of marriage failure (divorce,) marriage contract-prenuptial and postnuptial agreements.
2. Gender based economic inequality [sexual access in exchange for financial protection and security]
3. Marriage as patriarchy's strategic investment for men
4. Institutionalized. The government promotes marriage as a condition of eligibility for support.
Williams reports that there are growing body of research in a field of "gendered Orientalism" and the "representation of cultural and sexual difference are constitutive of each other", Moallem and Yegenoglu, respectfully. The author also aims to contribute in the field. Williams states, 'Press reports concerning temporary marriage, I show, rely on long-standing orientalist assumptions about the rampant sexual exploitation of women in Islamic regimes as the basis for positioning temporary marriage in the U.S. popular imaginary as foreign, exotic, and odd--a portrayal that simultaneously reinforces a self-understanding of the United States a beacon of modernity and gender equality." (618) The temporary marriage was legalized in 1983 for the first time, in 1990, then-President Rafsanjani gave a speech that promoted temporary marriage by saying, " to clear the path for intrinsic needs of the youth to be satisfied in a correct, legal and orderly manner" (619) Youth? didn't he mean young men? I don't know how to place young women in the equation even after I finished reading the article. Overall, this speech has a significant role in sentimentalization of temporary marriage around the globe, particularly in the West.
Williams notes that there have been relatively small number of articles on temporary marriage (a highly complex and variable social institution) but these reports are made by widely circulating newspapers in the country (the U.S.) thus the limited coverage should not be underestimated because these reports likely to stand as sole source of information for most Americans. Williams cites (Sciolino 1992, 2000; Jervis 2005; Moore 2006) to describe the American press accounts of temporary marriage as such "the article opens with an evocative, real-life vignette that serves as the narrative hook to draw the reader in; this is followed by a brief description of temporary marriage that emphasizes the origins of the practice in Islam; the discussion proceeds to a consideration of contemporary controversies surrounding temporary marriage; ant the article concludes with a return to the vignette for narrative closure" (620) This description was very helpful to me, personally, it gave me some confidence to comprehend the article because this is the first time that I am encountering issues around temporary marriage in Islamic regimes and U.S. based press around those issues. It was also important to comprehend the original source of the news; the most journalists who write these articles are most likely to be stationed in the Shiite regions of Iraq due to U.S. military personnel.
Temporary marriage has been read in the U.S. as promoting prostitution and other forms of sexual licentiousness. The press also associates the temporary marriage with Middle Eastern masculinity with sexual rapaciousness epitomized by the harem, while at the same time depicting women in the region as subject to extreme forms of social control reflecting a cultural obsession with modesty and chastity.(621) For example, news accounts of temporary marriage concerns the question of whether provision of temporary marriage is same as/equal to an Islamic endorsement of prostitution. The public debate on temporary marriage and the position of Islamic provisions governing temporary marriage has been portrayed as pro-prostitution clerics and secular women's rights advocates. Since Islam long has been portrayed as purveyors of ambiguity as well as fundamentalist regime. The U.S. readers were wondering why Iran as fundamentalist regime would want to promote prostitution! Ultimately, temporary marriage portrayed as loophole which one hand soften the idea of the portrayal of resistant to change, on the other hand it did not offer adaptability and openness to progress but only susceptibility to opportunistic manipulation. Then the already assumed ambiguity becomes double condemnation; both as pervasive Islamic practice and as a practice rooted in a perversion of Islamic law. Another example is, the length of duration for temporary marriage has been misrepresented by the U.S. press; Shiite religious authorities are clear that there is no minimum length for a temporary marriage but the press offers fixed and precise duration for the marriage. The readers are those who are accustomed to talk of marriage as a commitment "'til death do us part." Thus the problem is --it projects temporary marriage as unfamiliar and it strongly promotes it to be morally suspect which encourages the judgement of the idea.
I end my blog here with a concept --one of the most astonishing concept (Haeri 1989, 96) introduced in this article--The accommodation of the reality of sex outside permanent marriage, "Shiite political and religious officials in Iran laud temporary marriage as 'one of the brilliant laws of Islam' especially suited to the needs of a modern society." (626) Islamic regime's claim to modernity [through temporary marriage] and as a sign of 'its moral superiority over the 'decadent' Western style of 'free' sexual relationships.' (626) It is astonishing to me because it never occurred to me that there could be accommodation of the reality of sex outside permanent marriage. It was an intervention. Contrary to the concept, the U.S. news accounts of temporary marriage portrayed it as association with tradition rather than modernity yet they ignore and erasure the fact that Western sexual decadence actually centers the official campaign promoting temporary marriage in Iran.
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