Many teenagers look at Muslim and Middle Eastern women in the caricature portrayed in a political cartoon of a buxom, bikini-clad Jerry Hall with four veiled Muslim women kneeling behind her, and see oppressed women worshipping at the feet of women who enjoy greater freedom.

“Jerry Hall’s new line of swimwear might have raised some eyebrows in Morocco, but who could tell,” read a line under the cartoon of the supermodel and ex-wife of Mick Jagger.

“I guess we always think about women not having rights,” Scarborough High freshman Manisha Punjabi said of her view of Middle Eastern women.

Barbara Petzen came to teacher Sue Andersen’s world studies classes at Scarborough High School Friday to challenge those perceptions and give students like Punjabi a broader view of Middle Eastern women. Petzen, who works at Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, surprised some of the students with some of the information she presented.

Freshman Tyler Millett was surprised to hear how few of the world’s Muslims live in the Middle East. And he wasn’t the only one. When Petzen asked students to guess what percentage live in the Middle East, most guessed 80 or 90 percent, when, in fact, only 18 to 20 percent of Muslims live in the Middle East.

“I thought most of them lived in Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia,” Millett said in an interview after class.

Petzen put a world map on the overhead projector and covered the Middle East with a piece of paper, leaving India and Afghanistan exposed to the east. She said more Muslims lived in the countries to the east of the paper than to the west. Indonesia has the largest Muslim population.

There are also plenty of Muslims to the west of the Middle East, however. “There are more Muslims in sub-Saharan Africa than there are in the Middle East. So, Islam is more of an African religion than it is a Middle Eastern religion,” said Petzen.

Many of the students also associate Middle Eastern women with headscarves. Along with many of her classmates, freshman Karah Rogers thought women there were required to wear them and could be punished for failing to do so.

To dispel this myth, Petzen put pictures of women from around the world, some with headscarves and some without, on the overhead projector. Some of the women wearing headscarves were actually Christian, such as Jackie Kennedy, who was wearing a veil in a picture taken after former President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

She pointed to one woman without a headscarf and asked the class what her religious affiliation was. One student answered “Christian,” and another answered “Jewish.” The woman was, in fact, a Muslim, Queen Noor of Jordan.

Despite the fact that she doesn’t wear a headscarf, “she’s still very much admired by Muslim women all over the world. And what’s she wearing? A really expensive haircut,” said Petzen.

She pointed to another woman who was wearing a headscarf, Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan. Although she wears a headscarf now, Petzen said Bhutto once lived in the United States and attended Radcliffe College in Massachusetts.

“I assure you she didn’t wear a headscarf there. She wore bell bottoms and a tie-dyed shirt,” said Petzen.

Petzen’s point wasn’t lost on the students. “She definitely changed my mind about it,” said freshman Natasha Brown. “They definitely have a lot more rights than I thought they did. They don’t have to wear headscarves. It depends on where they live and what their culture is.”

Brown believes the image she had of the average Muslim woman came from the media. She said she had never met a Muslim and had seen pictures of women wearing headscarves in newspapers and on television.

“We don’t understand what Muslim women are like because we’re so caught up in the visual,” said Petzen.

Petzen said the Quran, throughout its text, refers directly to both men and women. It states explicitly that men and women are equal in the eyes of God.

Muslim women have historically had some rights that women from western cultures have not, according to Petzen. Up until the 19th century, for example, women in England had to give their property to their husband when they married. Married Muslim women have had the right to own property since the seventh century.

While many American women look at Middle Eastern women as oppressed, Petzen said American women suffer from a subtle form of cultural oppression. She pointed to the way Jerry Hall appears in the cartoon with the Muslim women kneeling at her feet. Hall is tall, blonde, skinny, busty and nearly naked.

“Wait a second. Who’s oppressed here…How much of American women’s self worth is tied up in how closely they come to that ideal?” Asked Petzen.

Petzen’s presentation seemed to change the way many of the students viewed Muslim women. “It just kind of showed we make a lot of generalizations about people in the Middle East,” said Manisha Punjabi.

Her classmate Katelynne Ruel put it little more bluntly. “I kind of feel like an idiot,” she said.