The author examines the role of women in Oman culture

An unprecedented, sympathetic, and wide-ranging exploration of the mysterious world of Islamic women--the people behind the veils--is presented by female writers and Christian workers.

“A fascinating account of the significant changes underway in Saudi Arabia based on years of excellent reporting on the ground.” —Bruce Riedel, director of the Brookings Institution Intelligence Project, author of Kings and Presidents: Saudi Arabia and the United States Since FDR Saudi Arabia is one of the world’s most secretive countries. Now, Susanne Koelbl, award-winning journalist for the German news magazine Der Spiegel, unveils many secrets of this mysterious kingdom. For years she traveled the Middle East, and recently lived in Riyadh during the most dramatic changes since the country’s founding. She has cultivated relationships on every level of Saudi society and is equally at ease with ultra-conservative Wahhabi preachers, oppositionists, and women from all walks of life. In this “piercingly powerful book” (Ahmed Rahid, New York Times-bestselling author of Taliban), you can have breakfast with Royal Highnesses; meet Osama bin Laden’s bomb-making trainer; enter palaces of secret service chiefs; listen to intimate conversations with women about their newly offered freedoms; learn about journalist Jamal Khashoggi; and view an in-depth portrait of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), as you learn about the not-so-obvious facts of the kingdom’s history, politics, customs, and hidden power relations.

Lydia Laube worked as a nurse in Saudi Arabia in a society that does not allow women to drive, vote, or speak to a man alone. Wearing head-to-toe coverings in stifling heat, and battling administrative apathy, Lydia Laube kept her sanity and got her passport back.

Experiences and observations of a Boston doctor who spent two years as the head of Saudi Arabia's most modern hospital.

A riveting journey through the underbelly of the Middle East, exposing a secret world as shocking as it is widespread

"Behind the Veil in Persia and Turkish Arabia: An Account of an Englishwoman's Eight Years' Residence Amongst the Women of the East" by M. E. Hume-Griffith and A. Hume-Griffith is the detailed account of two doctors' mission to Persia and Turkey. Written as a travelogue, the book shows an appreciation for this exotic and fascinating culture while also framing the differences with the European customs of the book's audience.

Lydia Laube set off in search of adventure to work as a nurse in Saudi Arabia. Soon she found herself embroiled in a society that did not allow women to drive, vote, or speak to a man alone. As soon as she stepped off the airplane, Lydia's passport was confiscated and quickly she felt like a prisoner, trapped in a country with no means of escape. Wearing head-to-toe coverings in stifling heat, and battling against unfathomable bureaucracy, Lydia maintained her sanity throughout her year of service. This is the gripping account of one woman's resolve to survive in the hostile environment of a Saudi Arabian hospital.

A probing study of the veil's recent return—from one of the world's foremost authorities on Muslim women—that reaches surprising conclusions about contemporary Islam's place in the West todayIn Cairo in the 1940s, Leila Ahmed was raised by a generation of women who never dressed in the veils and headscarves their mothers and grandmothers had worn. To them, these coverings seemed irrelevant to both modern life and Islamic piety. Today, however, the majority of Muslim women throughout the Islamic world again wear the veil. Why, Ahmed asks, did this change take root so swiftly, and what does this shift mean for women, Islam, and the West?When she began her study, Ahmed assumed that the veil's return indicated a backward step for Muslim women worldwide. What she discovered, however, in the stories of British colonial officials, young Muslim feminists, Arab nationalists, pious Islamic daughters, American Muslim immigrants, violent jihadists, and peaceful Islamic activists, confounded her expectations. Ahmed observed that Islamism, with its commitments to activism in the service of the poor and in pursuit of social justice, is the strain of Islam most easily and naturally merging with western democracies' own tradition of activism in the cause of justice and social change. It is often Islamists, even more than secular Muslims, who are at the forefront of such contemporary activist struggles as civil rights and women's rights. Ahmed's surprising conclusions represent a near reversal of her thinking on this topic.Richly insightful, intricately drawn, and passionately argued, this absorbing story of the veil's resurgence, from Egypt through Saudi Arabia and into the West, suggests a dramatically new portrait of contemporary Islam.

From the writing of her first book, Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Modern Muslim Society in 1975, Mernissi has sought to reclaim the ideological discourse on women and sexuality from the stranglehold of patriarchy. She critically examines the classical corpus of religious-juristic texts, including the Hadith, and reinterprets them from a feminist perspective. In her view, the Muslim ideal of the silent, passive, obedient woman has nothing to do with the authentic message of Islam. Rather, it is a construction of the 'ulama', the male jurists-theologians who manipulated and distorted the religious texts in order to preserve the patriarchal system. Mernissi's work explores the relationship between sexual ideology, gender identity, sociopolitical organization, and the status of women in Islam; her special focus, however, is Moroccan society and culture. As a feminist, her work represents an attempt to undermine the ideological and political systems that silence and oppress Muslim women.