Queen Rania of Jordan: Part 1

Transcript:
ZAKARIA: Known around the world for her intelligence, elegance and outspokenness, Queen Rania of Jordan has divided opinion between those who feel she should take a more traditional role and those who see her as a shining example for modern Arab women.

She was in New York recently, and she joined me to talk about the role of women in Islam and how to promote the voices of moderation within that religion.



ZAKARIA: Queen Rania, thank you so much for doing this.

RANIA AL ABDULLAH, QUEEN OF JORDAN: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

ZAKARIA: Let me ask you, you're probably the best-known face of women in Islam. And many people talk about Islam, and they worry particularly about the role of women in Islam. And they feel that Islam has placed women in a subordinate and subjugated role.

How do you react to that charge?

QUEEN RANIA: Well, I personally think that Islam, in and of itself, does not subjugate women and does not hold them back. But certain people choose to interpret Islam in a way that does hold women back.

Now, you might ask, why would they do that. And I think there's a lot of men, in particular, choose those interpretations in order to validate and justify their own conservative, traditional and sometimes chauvinistic attitudes.

So, what we need to be looking at is some of these traditional mindsets. We need to challenge some of those attitudes, the social attitudes that hold women back. And that's what we need to focus on.

It is not necessarily that you have to look at, you know, Islam itself. Holy scripture does not hold women back. It's the people that decide to interpret it in such a way for their own, sometimes political, agendas.

The other thing is that, in many of the Muslim countries, they suffer from economic problems. And what I've found, and what development has shown, is that whenever people feel the pinch, whenever the going gets tough, the first to get sacrificed are women. You know, they are always the last in the door and the first out the door. And so, when there's hardship, women's rights tend to suffer.

And so, if you combine those two things -- economic hardship as well as age-old mindsets and very conservative attitudes -- and then you find that women are really sort of suffering. But ...

ZAKARIA: But we see all over the Muslim world women choosing a more traditional form of dress. So, for instance, the first time I went to the Middle East in the early '70s, you'd find women, frankly, dressed as you are. And now you go to Cairo or to Amman and you see more and more of the chador or the veil.

There is a kind of conservatism and religiosity that has taken grip in the Muslim world.

QUEEN RANIA: Again, I think it has more to do with the cultural aspects, with the political climate, with the economic climate, with the social situation in those countries.

A lot of women feel the pressure to dress in a certain way ...

ZAKARIA: Why?

QUEEN RANIA: ... because that's what society -- that's what society pressures.

I mean, again, you know, political leaders sometimes, who have certain agendas and justify them through Islam, put pressure on women to dress in a particular way. Sometimes it's not their own choosing. And sometimes they just feel embarrassed not to be dressed in that particular way.

So, I think we need to look at it deeper. It's not a matter of just religion, because Islam has been around for a very long time. Why is it that we're suddenly seeing this rise, as you're saying, in conservative practice?

For me it has much more to do with the environment in the Arab world rather than the religion itself.

ZAKARIA: Well, do you ...

QUEEN RANIA: And with the ...

ZAKARIA: ... ever get criticized for not wearing a veil?

QUEEN RANIA: Absolutely, you know, very often. But likewise, there are many women like me who do not wear the veil. So, as long as it's a choice.

I have nothing against the veil. And I think that wrongly, many in the West look at the veil as a symbol of oppression.

Now, as long as a woman chooses to wear the veil, because that's her belief and because of her own -- that's a personal relationship with God, so she should be free to dress in whichever way she wants.

And we should be smarter than to apply more meaning to a symbol of clothing than we should, because, you know, all over the world there are many symbols of dress and many ways of prayer, et cetera. We shouldn't judge people through the prism of our own stereotypes.

And I think there has been a stereotype that has developed over -- in the Western world of a women -- a veil means oppression, you know. That is not necessarily the case.

And unfortunately, these stereotypes have been very dangerous between East and West. And we really need to start challenging them, because, you know, they really rob us of accurate perspective.

ZAKARIA: There are also many prejudices about the West in the Arab world.

QUEEN RANIA: Absolutely.

ZAKARIA: When you poll Arabs, they still -- 30 percent feel that 9/11 was something that was actually perpetrated by the American government.

How do you -- how does one change that?

QUEEN RANIA: There was an interesting Gallup poll that came out earlier this year in which they asked many in the West if they thought that the Arab world was interested in improving relations. And the majority said, no, they don't.

And likewise in the Muslim world, they asked if the West was interested in improving relations. And they said, no.

But on the positive side, overwhelming majorities on both sides said that the quality of the relationship between East and West is something that is important to them.

So, the problem is not that people don't care. It's that they don't see their care reflected. So, it's very important for us to start creating platforms for dialogue.

I, for example, did a small -- I had a small project on YouTube, where I had a page, and I encouraged people to send in their stereotypes, and we started to try to challenge them. And, you know, the idea was to get people to question their assumptions and to question certain beliefs that they held to be true.

And that was a very enlightening experience, because there was a lot of anger out there. There was a lot of misunderstanding. There was a lot of ignorance.

But that is just a drop in the ocean of what needs to be done. I think we need to take these initiatives at all levels.

ZAKARIA: But in some communities, it isn't just a small minority. If you look at, for example, the Palestinian community, I mean, you are yourself Palestinian. But if you look at the Palestinians in Gaza, they elected Hamas and a Hamas government.

How should the West deal with the situation where you have an elected government that espouses a certain kind of terrorism, does not believe in a two state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem?

QUEEN RANIA: Well, in my mind, the success of Hamas has been a result of the failure of the international community to deliver to the Palestinian people. In my mind, their success has been a result of the sense of hopelessness and helplessness of the Palestinian people.

They really could see no end of the -- no light at the end of the tunnel. And they were perceiving the Palestinian Authority through the government of Mahmoud Abbas as being inefficient, as not delivering. You know, their way of life has been going from bad to worse.

If you look at Gaza, for example, unemployment is now at over 50 percent. Over 80 percent of the people living there rely on U.N. organizations for food, for example.

So, you know, this is a situation that's not tolerable. They don't have access to basic health services, schools. Roadblocks are all over the place, so you can't even move.

So, in a situation like that, I think out of desperation people must have elected Hamas, because Hamas were viewed as providing social services, of, you know, giving -- opening kindergartens for kids, of providing education for girls, et cetera.

But at the end of the day, the Palestinian Authority is the -- we view it as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. And the sooner the infighting inside of the Palestinian camp ends, the sooner they can start having a unified stand that really delivers to the Palestinian people. Because at the end of the day, it's the Palestinian people who are paying the price.

And the onus is on the international community to try to embolden and strengthen the moderate hand, so that the moderate hand can show that it's delivering to the people. And that's where they will be able to have more power and more leverage.

I don't think people by nature are extremists. You will never find a population of extremists. Extremists have existed throughout the centuries on all religions. And what happens is, extremists start to have more leverage when the situation is bad.

ZAKARIA: And we will be right back.