Re-inventing Islam: Gender and the Protestant Roots of American Islamophobia (by Deanna Ferree Womack)

Abstract

In Helen Moody Stuart’s 1920 novel Fatmeh: A Common Story of Mission
Schools for Moslem Girls, Stuart creates a fictional Syrian family where
one day young Fatmeh tells her parents she wants to attend the Christian
missionary school to learn to read. “What do you want with reading?”
retorts Fatmeh’s mother. Her mother scolds her and tells her to attend
to her household chores. It is Fatmeh’s father, however, who encourages
his daughter to attend the school, as it might help her marriage prospects
(129). Stuart’s novel, published during the ascent of American missionary
activity in the Middle East, was written to demonstrate that young Arab
Muslim girls can achieve agency from a backward religion and overbearing
family by converting to Christianity in early twentieth century Syria.
It was intended to inspire young women to consider becoming effective
and life-changing missionaries as it was to encourage congregations to
support missionary activity. Fatemeh is only one of several fascinating
fiction and non-fiction works written by women missionaries, or about
women in the mission field, presented by Deanna Ferree Womack in
Re-Inventing Islam.