PVCC Puma Press: April 2006

For the first time in its history, PVCC is hosting a Fulbright Scholar in Residence this semester. Dr. Zahra Tamouh, associate professor of history at the University of Mohamed V in Rabat, Morocco, is splitting her time as a visiting scholar between PVCC and Estrella Mountain College this spring.

While at Paradise Valley, Tamouh will have a noticeable presence on campus. In the classroom, she will be co-teaching a world history course (History 110) and guest lecturing in courses in fields as diverse as journalism, political science and anthropology. Outside of the classroom, she will be assisting in the creation of a new certificate program in Islamic Studies and will moderate a faculty development workshop entitled “The Muslim World from Tradition to Modernity” on April 6.

Because Tamouh will be an active figure on campus, there will be opportunities for PVCC’s students to interact with her. Her presence offers them an opportunity to learn more about a region of the world that is critical to US interests, but which many Americans know little about beyond what appears on their television screens.“They’re going to have direct access to what’s going on in the Muslim world,” says Michele Marion, director of international education at PVCC. Marion, who authored the Fulbright proposal that eventually brought Tamouh to the district, is not alone in identifying the value of Tamouh’s visit to the college’s students.

“I think she can bring a tremendous understanding of the Arabic culture and Islamic culture to the students at Paradise Valley College,” says Dr. David Rubi, Communications and Humanities faculty. “She is a remarkable resource for that.”

Tamouh brings an impressive resume of erudition to Paradise Valley. She holds doctorates from both the Sorbonne in Paris and the University of Mohamed V in her native Morocco. She is an expert in several fields: the history of Africa, Islam in Africa, and Muslim civilization. But the PVCC community will discover in her far more than a passive scholar. Tamouh is a prominent women’s rights and human rights activist who helped to advance a reformist agenda in Morocco and participates in international organizations and conferences worldwide.

A Feminist Muslim

Tamouh is a vocal advocate for the rights and freedoms of all people and especially for impoverished women in Africa and the Islamic world. She believes that better laws and democratic values can create social conditions that improve the lives of women who, in turn, make a nation more fertile ground for democratic institutions.

“To make society democratic, you must involve the half of society that is female,” Tamouh says.

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	Dr. Zahra Tamouh believes that the recent progress on rights issues in Morocco can serve as a beacon for the rest of the Islamic world
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As a prominent figure in Morocco’s feminist movement, Tamouh has left an imprint on that nation’s organizations, education and reformed system of family law.

In 1993 Tamouh helped found “8 March” (named after the date of International Women’s Day), the first feminist magazine in Moroccan history. Prior to that she had been a founder of Union de l’Action Feminine, an organization created to lobby for women’s rights, which now does fieldwork to alleviate poverty and increase opportunities for women, particularly in impoverished rural areas.

Under the reign of Morocco’s young modernist king, Mohamed VI, Tamouh was able to act as more than just a proponent for new policies. As coordinator of one of several subcommittees that offered recommendations on a new code of family law to a royal commission, she became a participant as well.

The efforts of Tamouh and other like-minded reformists were rewarded when Mohamed VI adopted many of their recommendations in 2004. Morocco now enjoys some of the Islamic world’s most reformed laws on issues ranging from divorce to polygamy to the legal age of marriage for women. Although some of these changes were met with large demonstrations of opposition, there were also large counter demonstrations in support of the measures.

Tamouh’s involvement with modernization efforts in Morocco also extends to that nation’s educational system. She is the coordinator of a sub-commission of the Moroccan government’s Observatory of Values. In that capacity, she evaluates textbooks used in Moroccan schools to ensure that they reflect the values of human rights, freedom and equality.

Tamouh believes that the recent progress on rights issues in Morocco can serve as a beacon for the rest of the Islamic world, even while acknowledging the stiff challenges that reformers face. The most serious obstacle to increasing women’s rights, Tamouh asserts, is the manipulation and flat-out misrepresentation of shari’a, or Islamic law, by fundamentalists wishing to keep women out of schools, jobs and cars. These abuses of shari’a are often confused both in the West and among Islamists as embedded within the Islamic faith.

“There is nothing wrong with Islam in itself," says Tamouh, a Muslim. “But there are many things wrong with the conservative interpretation of Islam.”

Tamouh believes that if interpretations of shari’a by feminists, reformers and modernists gain traction, the condition of Muslim women will improve and the needs of the ummah, or Islamic community, in the 21st century will be better met.

“We have a culture of submission we have to overcome,” Tamouh says of Muslim women while offering a prescription. “We will overcome it with education, women’s economic independence, family rights, good family law and new technology information.”

Tamouh is an unabashed optimist who envisions the struggle within the Islamic world between reformists and fundamentalists as leading to an eventual and inevitable victory by the former. Once women have gained a status of equality with men, she believes that there will be no turning back.

“In general, it is impossible to come back,” Tamouh says. “There is a march toward modernity.”

Cross Cultural Learning

Tamouh, who spent the fall half of her year-long residence in the district at Mesa and Chandler-Gilbert college, says that her experience at American colleges has surpassed some of her expectations, but not met others.

Tamouh feared that in the wake of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq it would be difficult to hold frank discussions on a number of topics related to the region. However, she instead found that there was no shortage of intelligent dialogue even on sensitive subjects.

“Here there is no taboo subject,” Tamouh says. “You can discuss anything using the right facts, good arguments and objectivity.”

One thing that Tamouh did find lacking in the classroom, however, was good information, at least among the students she spoke to last fall. She was surprised that most did not even know where Morocco is (it is located on the northwest corner of the Africa continent, only a few miles across the Straits of Gibraltar from Spain).

“Most (students) don’t have good information (about Islam and the Middle East), and most of what they have is from the media,” Tamouh says.

Tamouh believes that students should be exposed to more scholarly information than is typically found on a television screen to arrive at a better understanding of the world abroad. While in the U.S., she herself has been pleased to discover an ease of access to such information that does not exist in Morocco and many other nations.

The Library of Congress, the facility of book exchanges between libraries, the Blackboard system and, above all, the concept of eBooks have left indelible impressions on her about the possibilities of increasing the dissemination of scholarly information. She plans to introduce these ideas to her colleagues and students back in Morocco.

As for PVCC's students, the scholarly expertise Tamouh is lending to the development of the curriculum for the embryonic Islamic Studies certificate will impact them long after she leaves.

“With that legacy,” says Marion “we’ll be able to realize long-term, students going through a specific program to appeal to their interests.”