Present-Day Economic and Social Conditions 257
is that of reforming the Muslim divorce-laws, which completely
subject the wife to her husband's caprice. The other Middle Eastern
countries are less 'advanced5 than Egypt,1 and everywhere the
forces of reaction against the education and emancipation of
women are still strong. Even in Egypt a bill was recently introduced
into parliament to ban women lawyers, but was defeated. There
is some reason to fear that the achievement of complete inde-
pendence and the decline of direct European influence may,
temporarily at least, affect adversely the course of their emanci-
pation.2
* * *
To sum up, the present economic and social situation of the
Middle Eastern countries presents many disquieting features. They
are ruled by ageing men of the upper-class whose political charter
has been the achievement of national independence from foreign
imperialisms, and who are insufficiently sensitive to economic and
social change. The impact of Western liberalism and industrializa-
tion has in the last hundred years shaken the Middle East out of its
post-medieval trance; but its ability to adjust itself to the changed
conditions is still being tested, it has not yet been conclusively
demonstrated. Before it has successfully emerged from this test, it
is already being subjected to the still more formidable impact of the
Russian Communist theory and practice of materialist determin-
ism. To this new challenge the elder statesmen can reply only with
the repression of'subversive elements', with schemes of economic
and social improvement which will convince those familiar with
the history of Middle East paper-reforms only when they have
been realized in fact, and with lip-service to the idea of social wel-
fare which is rarely confirmed by their conduct. The younger
generation has the advantage of having grown up in a more
mechanized environment running at a faster tempo than their
fathers, and thus finds it less difficult to adjust itself to extraneous
influences; but on the other hand, it lacks the comparative stability
and what passed for a philosophy of life enjoyed by the older men
who passed their formative years amid the traditionalism of the
Ottoman Empire; and it is therefore almost completely at a loss for
1 For progress in Iraq, cf. Freya Stark, East is West, 178 fF.
2 After the expulsion of the French, Damascus became for a time the scene
of a 'puritan reaction* (Prof. H. S. Deighton, in International Affairs, XXII
(1946), 520).