“To Believe in God and in Own Personal Competencies”: The Family Life of Arab Muslim Widowed Women in Israel

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.