TITLE:
“To Believe in God and in Own Personal Competencies”: The Family Life of Arab Muslim Widowed Women in Israel
AUTHORS:
Yossi Maman, Janan Falah, Inas Hijazi
KEYWORDS:
Widows, Women Status, Muslim, Society, Arab, Israel
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.7 No.8,
August
9,
2019
ABSTRACT: This
study is of five Muslim widowed women from the Arabic city of “Tabula” (a
fictitious place for ethical reasons) from the north of Israel, out of a desire
that they would expose their personal experiences (Spradley, 1979)[1]. It deals with women’s personal status, the widows’ difficulties, and the
conflicts between the Arab Muslim traditional society and modernity. The Arab
society is a traditional, collective, patriarchal and religious society. The
women’s status is considered inferior to that of the men’s and their main role
is conceived as raising children and taking care of the house. Following are
the stories of Muslim women who became civilian widows by the ages 30 to 40.
The study examines the way widows coped with their situation in a time in which
the society underwent great changes, moving from a traditional society to a
more modern one. By dealing with this situations: 1) The personal changes; 2) The main
difficulty of being lonely; 3) The return to religion; 4) Coping with the loss
of the husband; 5) The women’ expectations out of the Arab society.