veils and fiances

one of the things that most interested me about coming to study in the middle east was the opportunity to learn about and hopefully come to better understand what it means to be a woman in a muslim society. after being here almost a month i can definitely say that my knowledge is growing, but i am still nowhere near a full comprehension.
one of the classes i am taking here (and by far my favorite) is called arab women writers, and it is taught by one of the most interesting professors i have ever met: rula. rula is a hardcore feminist, made even more hardcore by the fact of the region she lives in. example: today in class she told us she respects women who wear the hijab because it can be an important part of islam, but she does not support those who wear the burqa- in fact, she informed us that when she's driving and she sees a woman in the car next to her wearing the burqa she will roll down her window and shout at them "that is not true islam!"- if you met her you would believe her that she actually does literally yell out her window. like i said, she's hardcore. but more importantly, she is a fountain of insights and information about the women's movement here, about the obstacles it faces, and about the realities of women's situations. today we briefly discussed the hijab and how covering one's head is part of the quran, and that faith is the reason many women choose to wear it. however, the hijab has over history taken on greater political/social/cultural symbolism: some see it as an anti-western statement, some are forced to cover by their husbands/fathers/brothers etc. because it is seen as societally appropriate, some feel that covering in fact gives a woman more liberty because she does not have to be recognized or scrutinized. the list goes on, and i remain unsure as to how to tell whether wearing the hijab is truly voluntary, or is due to family/societal pressures. i am also unsure of my own opinion regarding the hijab/burqa, beyond that i believe it should be every woman's choice. but how can that be ensured or enforced in a society where this is often not the case? it is also interesting to recognize how incredibly overblown the issue of the veil has become in the international and local arena as a symbol of misogyny in muslim societies- i would bet that if you asked arab women feminists what they were working towards, a world-wide ban on the veil would not even appear on the list. the hijab is part of islam and the culture here, and should neither be a symbol for something it does not represent, nor be the centerpoint of a struggle when more important rights are at stake.
another aspect of a woman's life here that is incredibly different from my own culture is the rules/process for dating/marriage/etc. ciee hosted a conversation between jordanian and american students about the differences between our cultures in this regard, and it was incredibly interesting to learn how it works here. although people do break the rules and there are exceptions, if you follow muslim customs this is how it works: a guy, our age or older, decides he's at a point in his life where he wants to get married; he tells his mom; his mom is elated that her son wants to start a family, she starts asking around through the grapevine for beautiful/smart/from good family/good reputation girls; she calls the mother of a potential girl and asks to meet her daughter; the meeting occurs, if the mom likes the girl she tells her son 'oh she is so nice you must meet her etc. etc.'; the boy and girl meet, in the girl's home under family supervision, and talk, get to know each other a little, talk about what they are looking for in life/marriage/etc.; if they get along well and seem compatible they meet another few times in the same rather formal setting; after these few times they decide to be 'engaged', which is a formal agreement between the families stating their intention to get married; the engagement is then usually quite long, a couple years maybe, which gives the couple time to really get to know each other; if the engagement is eventually broken it is not a big deal, but the point of it is that it gives the couple a formal status for their relationship so that it is not 'haram' for them to be seen together in public etc.- but absolutely nothing physical occurs before the actual wedding. sometimes it does happen that the couple meets on their own like in university, but before having a relationship they go to their families and go through the formalities for approval- family is the most important thing here, and if one family does not like the other the wedding will not happen; the concept of eloping is unheard of, it is almost inconceivable that someone would choose love over their family's approval. i can't help but think how strange so many of our american movies/tv shows must seem in this culture, which i can imagine partially because of how alien the customs here seem to me. and when i see alien, i don't mean bad, i just mean so incredibly different from the mentality i have grown up with that it is hard to understand. but it so interesting to realize how the lenses my own culture gives me can make something different seem so strange, but when considered from the standpoint of the society and cultural norms here this system makes perfect sense. i hope to talk more about this with the jordanian girls so that i can understand it well enough to cancel out my urge to cry out "what about love??" when they describe it to me haha.