Whatever role one might want to ascribe to Islam in respect to prevailing gender relations, it should be stressed that the Middle East was not, and is not, synonymous with Islam. Moreover, Islam itself is lived heterogeneously. And while most Middle Easterners are Muslims, there exist differences among Sunni and Shi’a Muslims as well as other Muslim groupings, such as the Alawite minority in Turkey. Moreover, women belonging to religious minority groups, such as the Maronites in Lebanon, or the Copts in Egypt, for example, are generally exposed to very similar, if not the same, cultural and social codes and traditions as their Muslim counterparts of the same social class standing (Eickelmann, 1998).
Often traditions and customs are not actually rooted in religion per se. The tradition of female circumcision is a case in point. Widely practised in Egypt among both Muslim and Coptic women, the tradition has its roots in Pharaonic times and is common among various countries in Africa, such as Sudan and Somalia, but is not practised in most Muslim countries (ibid.). Another often neglected point is the fact that religious stipulations are not only mediated by cultural codes but, in most cases, they are also interpreted by a male clergy