Saudi Cultural Missions Theses & Dissertations
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Item Restricted An Analysis of Islamic Legal Literature Concerning Concepts of Privacy as they Relate to Women's In/Visible Bodies in Saudi Arabia(Saudi Digital Library, 2023-09-04) Qirwan, Hind; O'meara, SimonThis thesis examines the concepts of public and private in relation to women's in/visible bodies in Saudi Arabia throughout the twentieth century until 2018. The aim is to demonstrate how manhood (murūʾah) among Saudi Arabian men is obtained and conveyed by controlling and rendering women's bodies invisible in public. Additionally, the thesis aims to illustrate how the restrictions on the visibility of women's bodies are significant in defining the political status of male members in Saudi society. The examination begins with reviewing the relevant notions in Islamic legal thought, including privacy (ḥurmah) and rulings on the issue of the gaze, also known as ʾāḥkām al-naẓar. The examination shows how opinions concerning the aforementioned legal categories established a system of visual practices that were not gender-neutral and were intended to exert more control over the male gaze because it was perceived to have far more severe social consequences than in the case of a woman's gaze. In the light of the legal backgrounds discussed in chapter one and two, this thesis will explore critical political events and social issues concerning a woman's in/visible status in public in Saudi Arabia ( i.e. the siege of Mecca in 1979 led by Juhaymān al-ʿUtaybī and controversies around gender mixing (ikhtilāṭ)). This is to offer a nuanced understanding of the links between political tension and the visibility of women in public. This thesis will also examine attitudes towards public representations of women in Saudi Arabia by focusing on the opinions of the religious establishment regarding looking at images. The examination reflects the intense attention, effective in legal rulings, given to the morality of looking at a woman beyond the act of looking directly at her. It also shows how Saudi scholars found in the principle of "eradicating pretexts" (sadd al-dharāʾiʿ) a legal loophole to justify excessive control over the male gaze, even with regard to the indirect gaze upon the image of a woman.16 0Item Restricted The Veil and its Representation in the Work of Three Contemporary Women Artists of the Middle East(2015-07-12) Qirwan, Hind; O'meara, SimonThis study is focused on investigating the notion of veiling in Islamic culture and how it is connected to women. The suggested contextualising will extend to examining the prescriptive veil in Saudi Arabia and Iran to further theorise the political and social impacts arising from the practice of veiling. Drawing on some selected sources within Orientalism and ranging from the colonial era up to contemporary times, the study demonstrates how the veil became an icon. It also explains how veiling became the framework in which the woman’s image is represented. The different approaches used by female artists discussed in this study highlight the complexity of the veil as a signifier in contemporary art. Discussions on the artwork illustrate how artists’ definitions of the veil are not consistent with the conservative society in which they live. The artists used the veil to signify multi-layered messages that questioned women’s identity in the light of the social and political perceptions of what a woman should be. Despite the artists’ involvement in that dialogue, their criticisms remained far from provocative or transgressive. Ultimately, the study offers a framework that allows an objective visual interpretation of the veil as a signifier by contextualising its representation in contemporary art within its original culture.17 0