Female circumcision also called female genital mutilation, is another case in point.  It involves removing part or all of a girl's clitoris and labia in an effort to reduce female sexual desire and thereby preserve chastity.  FGM is widespread in sub-Saharan Africa and in Egypt, with scattered cases in Asia and other parts of the Middle East.  The World Health Organization estimates that up to 140 million girls and women have undergone the procedure.  Some Muslims believe it is mandated by Islam, but the practice predates Muhammad and is also common among some Christian communities.

Sexual anxiety lies at the heart of many Islamic strictures on women.  They are required to cover their bodies - in varying degrees in different places - for other than their husbands.  The Koran instructs women to "guard their modesty,"  not to "display their beauty and ornaments" and to "draw their veils."  Saudi women typically don a billowy black cloak called an abaya, along with a black scarf and veil over the face morality police enforce the dress code by striking errant women with sticks.  The women of Iran and Sudan can expose the face but must cover the hair and the neck.

In most Islamic countries, coverings are technically optional.  Some women, including some feminists, wear them because they liked them.  They find that the veil liberates them from unwanted gazes and hassles from men.  But many Muslim women feel cultural and family pressure to cover themselves.  Recently a Muslim fundamentalist group in the Indian province of Kashmir demanded that women start wearing veils.  When the call was ignored, hooligans threw acid in the faces of uncovered women.

Limits placed on the movement of Muslim women, the jobs they can hold and their interactions with men are also rooted in fears of unchaste behavior.  The Taliban took these controls to an extreme, but the Saudis are also harsh, imposing on women some of the tightest restrictions on personal and civil freedoms anywhere in the world, Saudi women are not allowed to drive.  They are effectively forbidden education in fields such as engineering and law.  They can teach and provide medical care to other women but are denied almost all other government jobs.  Thousands have entered private business, but they must work segregated from men and in practice are barred from advancement.

Though Iran is remembered in the West mostly for its repressive ayatollahs, women there enjoy a relatively high degree of liberty.  Iranian women drive cars, buy and sell property run their own businesses vote and hold public office.  In most Muslim countries tradition keeps ordinary women at home and off the street but Iran's avenues are crowded with women day and night.  They make up 25% of the work force, a third of all government employees and 54% of college students.  Still, Iranian women are - like women in much of the Arab world - forbidden to travel overseas without the permission of their husband or father, though the rule is rarely enforced in Iran.

Gender reforms are slow and hard fought.  In 1999 the Emir of Kuwait, Sheik Jaber al-Ahmed al-Sabah, issued a decree for the first time giving women the right to vote in and stand for election to the Kuwaiti parliament, the only lively Arab legislature in the Persian Gulf.  conservatives in parliament, however, blocked its implementation.  In addition, the legislature has proposed giving women more marriage and property rights and a primary role in development efforts but fundamentalists are resisting the measure.

Muslim women are starting to score political victories, including election to office.  In Syria 26 of the 250 members of parliament are female.  In Iraq the numbers are 19 out of 250.  Four Muslim countries have been or are currently led by women.  In Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia, they rose to prominence on the coattails of deceased fathers or husbands.  But Turkey's Tansu Ciller, Prime Minister from 1990 to 1995 won entirely on her own.

Turkey is an exception to many rules.  Women in Turkey are the most liberated in the Muslim world, though Malaysia and Indonesia come close, having hosted relatively progressive cultures before Islam came to Southeast Asia in the 9th century.  In Turkish professional life women enjoy a level of importance that is impressive not only by the standards of other Islamic countries but also by European lights.  Turkey's liberalism is a legacy of the republic's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, an aggressive secularist who gave women rights unprecedented in the Muslim world (even if he found it hard to accept women as equals in his own life).  Last week the Turkish parliament went a step further by reforming family law.  Previously, a man was the head of the household, able to make unilateral decisions concerning children.  No more.  The law also establishes community property in marriages and raises the marriageable age of girls from 15 to 18.

Around the Islamic world, women are scoring other victories, small and large.  Iran's parliament recently compromised with conservative clerics to allow a single young woman to study abroad, albeit with her father's permission.  Bangladesh passed legislation increasing the punishments for crimes against women, including rape, kidnapping and acid attacks.  Egypt has banned female circumcision and made it easier for women to sue for divorce.  In Qatar women have the right to participate in municipal elections and are promised the same rights in first ever parliamentary balloting scheduled to take place by 2003.  Bahrain has assured women voters and candidates that they will be included in new elections for its suspended parliament.

Saudi Arabia, the chief holdout, has at least pledged to start issuing ID cards to women.  Today the only legal evidence of a Saudi woman's existence is the appearance of her name on her husband's card.  If she gets divorced, her name goes on her father's card; if he's dead, her brother's; and if she has no brother, the card of her closest male relative, even if she scarcely knows him.  Manar, 35, a Riyadh translator, thinks ID cards for women will make a real difference.  "As long as you are a follower, you cannot have a separate onion, you cannot be outspoken," she says.  "Once you have a separate identity, then other things will come."  For most Muslim women, there are many things left to come.