1. Go green. It is not a secret that climate change disproportionately affects poor people and that women are disproportionately poor (go figure) so that is one good reason right away, but I have another one. The Wahhabist Gulf States, which include Saudi Arabia, The United Arab Emirates (Abu Dhabi, Dubai, etc), Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar, rely on the oil underneath them for their royal families to function and to spread their patriarchal propaganda, including funding ISIS. So if given a choice between something more fuel efficient or with a different power source and a product that depends on a lot of oil, if you can afford it please try to go green! Even recycling uses less plastic and therefore less petroleum and it is free to reuse things!

2. Boycott the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar and its sponsors. This is a venture that Middle Eastern feminists have gotten off the ground but we are having a really difficult time spreading this message. Thousands of migrant workers are dying building that FIFA stadium and the entire system of labor is basically human trafficking:

The name of the current system is kafala, a system forcing all migrants to be sponsored and subsequently tied to an employer. This employer controls housing, wages, travel, and the well being of each employee. The kafala system has been frequently described as modern day slavery due to its exploitative nature. Forced labor, unpaid work, confiscation of documents, and withholding food and water to the migrants are a few of the mechanisms of control the employers enact over the migrants under the kafala system. Workers mainly from South and Southeast Asia travel to Qatar with the hope of a securing a job in order to send remittances back to their families, but the kafala system traps them under the purview of their employer. The 2022 World Cup announcement has seen a significant rise in migrant workers coming to Qatar, creating a larger humanitarian crisis for the living and working conditions of the laborers. Qatar has not changed its policy of the kafala system since it became host of the 2022 World Cup, even with the additional international scrutiny towards its government. If Qatar does not change its policy before 2022, an estimated 4,000 migrant workers will die, making this event the deadliest in sporting history.

Most of the workers dying building that stadium, but almost all domestic workers in the Gulf States who work under the kafala system are women, and they are treated horribly. Boycotting the 2022 World Cup sends a message that the kafala system is abusive and unacceptable, and it helps women AND men. If you can afford to buy other products instead of these, please help. A list of the current 2022 World Cup sponsors:

Adidas



Anheuser-Busch which includes Budweiser, Corona, and Stella Artois

Coca-Cola which includes Sprite, Fanta, Dasani, Minute Maid, Powerade, Simply Orange, Glaceau Vitamin Water and Smart Water, and Fuze

Gazprom

Hyundai

Kia

McDonald’s

Sony

Visa



If you can, please encourage your national teams not to play. I know most people do not have any sort of power over this, but if even a few teams boycotted to send a message then it could make a big difference!

3. Be aware of issues that specifically affect Middle Eastern women and be ready to talk to other about them. Some of these issues are very sensitive for some people and nobody is obligated to psychologically torture herself. If you feel safe and comfortable you can consider studying one of these topics and talking to other people who might not be aware. Please keep in mind these are issues in the Middle East or parts of the Middle East but many are also problems in other places and in diaspora communities:

4. Let Middle Eastern feminists speak. I will give a short recommendation list here but please explore for yourself and form opinions! Many Middle Eastern women write about our lives but for some reason people do not want to listen to us speak and would rather listen to what other people have to say about us. Of course other people are not always inherently wrong but many times, they ignore us and share their own ideas that aren’t very accurate. Here are some works I enjoy that you might be able to find free online:

The works of Inaam Kachachi. Of course because I am Iraqi I will start with an Iraqi woman! I believe her books and other pieces are translated into many languages and she writes about the rise of religion in Iraq and how it has affected women.



Wild Thorns by Sahar Khalifeh.

by Sahar Khalifeh. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi.

by Marjane Satrapi. Beyond the Veil by Fatema Mernissi. (She is Moroccan which is in North Africa but I think the piece is very important for everyone to read.)

by Fatema Mernissi. (She is Moroccan which is in North Africa but I think the piece is very important for everyone to read.) Woman at Point Zero by Nawal Al-Saadawi.

by Nawal Al-Saadawi. The poetry of Rafeef Ziadah is available on YouTube and Spotify.

Please stop silencing Middle Eastern women or being condescending if you don’t like what we have to say. If one more Westerner tells me they know more about being an Iraqi woman than I do I am going to lose it!

5. Stay aware and critical of what you read and hear. Countries all around the world are active in the Middle East and this directly affects the women who live here. Of course we understand that people might only have very limited control or no control over their governments and large private companies and most rational people do not generalize Westerners as being war-hungry monsters.

Sometimes Western governments insist they are helping when we are screaming that they are not. For example, did you know that the UN Security Council sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s directly or indirectly led to the deaths of half a million children?

According to Unicef, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the death rate of children under five is more than 4,000 a month - that is 4,000 more than would have died before sanctions. That is half a million children dead in eight years. If this statistic is difficult to grasp, consider, on the day you read this, up to 200 Iraqi children may die needlessly. “Even if not all the suffering in Iraq can be imputed to external factors,” says Unicef, “the Iraqi people would not be undergoing such deprivation in the absence of the prolonged measures imposed by the Security Council and the effects of war.”



Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator but by punishing him this way, the UN also punished many of the most helpless people in Iraq. I understand there are no easy answers in these situations. How can the West fight against ISIS in Iraq? (Cutting ties with the Gulf States would help but nobody listens to Middle Eastern feminists!) These are complicated problems but solutions that cause so many children to die are probably not good solutions.

Please be wary of what you are told about the Middle East and how your government’s actions actually affect the people here. Some questions to ask yourself might be: