No Shame for the Sun Lives of Professional Pakistani Women by Shahla Haeri (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2002. 454 pages.)

Abstract

Shahla Haeri’s groundbreaking work could not have emerged at a more
desperately needed time. In the aftermath of 9/11 and the war on Iraq, the
western media have worked feverishly to bombard the West with images
and messages about Muslim women and Islam. Whether it is the image
of Afghanistan’s burqa-clad women or Iraq’s veiled women, the message
has been the same: All Muslim women are speechless, powerless, and
often invisible victims of an oppressive monolithic Islam.
In No Shame for the Sun: Lives of Professional Pakistani Women,
Haeri presents the reader with an insightful and poignant look at the lives
of six educated, middle-class and upper-middle class, professional
Pakistani women. Situated against Pakistan’s changing social, political,
economic, cultural, and religious landscapes, their successes, costs, and
struggles “challenge the notion of a ‘hegemonic’ and monolithic Islam that
victimizes Muslim women” (p. xi).
The book’s preface spells out its main purpose: to render visible the
experiences of professional Pakistani women within the larger goal of disrupting
the dominant western stereotypes and beliefs of Muslim women.
In the introduction, Haeri situates herself by raising a series of questions
emerging from her own experiences as an Iranian-born, middle-class, educated,
professional Muslim woman living and working in the United
States. Namely, she questions her own invisibility resulting from the persistence
of western stereotypical images and beliefs of women in the
Muslim world and then offers an overview of the theoretical and historical
rationale for their persistence ...