Violence against women is characteristic of misogynistic societies and cultures. Incidence of honor killing—killing of women, who transgress accepted social/moral codes, in the name of safeguarding the honor of the family—is reported from western as well as eastern societies. While on the one hand, well-intentioned social movements engage in struggles and campaigns against this heinous practice, on the other, we notice popular textual representations of incidents of violence against women which conceal a sinister design to malign oriental cultures. This paper reads Norma Khouri’s bestselling “true story,” Forbidden Love, as an attack on the Muslim society and culture rather than a spirited defense of the hapless Muslim women, as the book is touted to be. The accounts of sociologists, the timing of the book, i.e., between September 11, 2001, and the war on Iraq, as well as the scurrilous attacks the book makes on the Islamic creed expose the true color of the author’s espousal of the cause of the victimized women.

The reception of a writer’s work is neither neutral nor arbitrary. “It’s not a matter of who’s good, who’s bad. It’s a matter of who has the power—who has the power and writes books,” says Nawal El Saadawi, reputed Egyptian feminist activist and novelist (qtd. in Amireh, 2005, p. 269). This observation is true of El Saadawi herself as well as of several others writing about the Middle East and Middle Eastern women. Narratives about the captivity, enslavement and oppression of women in Middle Eastern Muslim countries have always had an overwhelming reception in the West. Since the 1991 Persian Gulf War, there has been a proliferation of texts claiming to “unveil”, get “behind the veil”, and “expose” the “hidden world” of Islamic women. Popular interest in literature about the Middle East and the Middle Eastern women has risen substantially since 9/11. Countless are the narratives that portray the oppression and subjugation of “veiled” Muslim women of the Middle East. Since 9/11 alone innumerable books have been published that reinforce popular Western stereotypes about the Oriental women—Latifa’s My Forbidden Face (2002), Jean Sasson’s Mayada: Daughter of Iraq (2003), Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books (2003), Carmen Bin Laden’s Inside the Kingdom: My Life in Saudi Arabia (2004), Siba Shakib’s Samira and Samir (2005), Yasmin Crowther’s The Saffron Kitchen (2006), Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007), and Deborah Rodriguez’ The Kabul Beauty School (2007) are but a few of the titles on the bestselling list. One striking feature about the marketing of most of these books is the tendency of publishers to flaunt a picture of a veiled women on the cover. What is most unfortunate is that such books get published at the cost of other books that give a fuller, an authentic account of the Middle Eastern women. With Norma Khouri’s Forbidden Love as a case in point, this paper explores how these popular texts jeopardize the cause of the Middle Eastern Muslim women on the pretext of crusading for it.

Touted as a ‘true’ tale of love and honor killing in Jordan, Norma Khouri’s Forbidden Love is a runaway bestseller. Khouri’s tragic story stole readers’ hearts and triggered an international outcry against honor killings in Jordan. She became a bestselling author in the same league as J K Rowling and Michael Moore. She was published in 15 countries and Australians voted her memoir into their favorite 100 books of all time.

English Studies Journal, Indian English Short Fiction, Bhasha Literatures, Autonomous Forms, Indian Short Story, Indian Language, Montage Patterns, Women Writers, Social Milieu, Postmodernist Movements, Global Communities, Joint Family System, Indian Women Writers.