Do Muslim women believe and desire what Western women believe and desire?

AmirAshkan Pishroo
by AmirAshkan Pishroo
02-Sep-2008
 

Consider: if it were natural for women to cover their bodies, they would not need so many laws and sticks commanding them to do so. Women would not have to be tempted into it by carrots of immortality, men’s love, or God’s love. Like so many men, to paraphrase Phyllis Chesler, “women follow orders– to their own detriment, to their very deaths–when they are given by male dictators, by father-figures on earth and in Heaven.”

The question is: Do Muslim women believe and desire what Western women believe and desire? Following Virginia Woolf’s model of sexual equality, the internationalist feminists are convinced of the universality of women’s needs and rights beyond national boundaries. As Woolf once said, “As a woman, I have no country. As a woman, I want no country. As a woman, my country is the world.”

But, according to professor Shahrzad Mojab, some postmodern feminists defend the use of veil in the guise of respect for other cultures and denouncing critics of the veil as cultural imperialist. For example, professor Fadwa El Guindi goes as far as claiming that for women, veiling in contemporary Arab culture fulfills many functions. It can signify privacy, kinship, status, power, autonomy, and political resistance, she says. Boiled down to its essence, this view is a cultural relativism, which render nations or individuals with authority to (mis) use culture as a basis for justifying human rights abuses.

Professor Mojab is right when she says that “Stoning a woman to death in Bangladesh should and can be seen as an assault against women everywhere, and it should and can spur us to think and act in North America.” Disciplining the woman’s body through Islamic dress codes also should be regarded as a humiliation of women everywhere by Islamic theocracies. She correctly insists that it is necessary and appropriate to denounce and criticize the veil even if all Muslim voluntarily wear it.

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A dose of education sometimes helps

by factfinder (not verified) on

... "natural state" is influenced by cultural relativisim, making no sense whatsoever

Really? Now read on:

//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_relativism

//www.bigissueground.com/philosophy/cauthen-r...

Also, by suggesting that I am "...suffering from some sort of vendetta", you are trying to say that I am being vindictive!

Good English can also be hepful :)


IRANdokht

"factcinder" hol nasho darling

by IRANdokht on

it seems like you're just trying to find faults and flaws and grabbing at straws here.

hol nasho my dear, you can write a blog of your own some day too, when you're ready of course. This one was about Islamic Hejab and women. You can write about heaven and hell, eternal life vs immortality and their differences as much as you want. We don't mind ;-)

First you tell Mr Pishroo that he's misspelling things, then you go even further and tell him that "natural state" is influenced by cultural relativisim, making no sense whatsoever. I let that part go at first and just showed you were off the mark as politely as I could, then you tell me that I have "put my foot in it again", revealing yet more personal issues you might have.

If you are suffering from some sort of vendetta, I suggest you drink
a glass of iced water and get over it :0)

 

IRANdokht


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Azarin and Irandokht: How about this for a laugh?

by factcinder (not verified) on

Heaven and Hell are BOTH timeless! So once again Irandokht dear you put your foot in it :))

IranDokht if you want to argue just to have the final word, OK, I let you have it but please don't twist and bend the words to suit your objective. Immortality does not apply to the after life otherwise all mankind should be immortal! Moreover, Islamic belief has it that after death whether one ends up in hell or in heaven, one is there forever. If you want to interpret this as immortality, be my guest but you would be laughed at by those who know a little or two about history of religions and their belief systems. I any case, even if we stretch the meaning of immortality to the after life (!), it can't be a carrot because whether we end up in hell or in heaven we are all immortal anyway - according to you - so what's the carrot in this?


Azarin Sadegh

My dear Irandokht,

by Azarin Sadegh on

I was having a bad day this morning...until I read your comments here! It's priceless...I am still laughing!

Thanks! Azarin 


IRANdokht

mortality in heaven

by IRANdokht on

I wasn't aware that you were promised only one lifetime in heaven for being such a good example of islamic values.

so how successful is this carrot of "heaven" if nobody is immortal there either? How long will you be in heaven with your virgins? 50-60-90 years? what happens then?

you just don't make a whole lot of sense. sorry

IRANdokht


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Not a case of misreading but misspelling!

by factfinder (not verified) on

As a matter of fact, immortality is meaningless here. I think Mr Pirshroo's spell checker changed a badly spelt "immorality" to "immortality" but what he really meant was the former and not the latter. In Islamic terms no one except God (Allah) is immortal therefore a promise of immortality cannot be an Islamic carrot. On the other hand, again Islamicly speaking, it is most definitely immoral for women to "unveil" themselves in public and therefore "immorality" is a threatening Islamic stick! If Mr Pishroo meant immortality, then it must have been a product of his fertile imagination!!

I must have corrected the author, inadvertenly. Factfinder, hardly misreads!


IRANdokht

Fact finding is not so easy?

by IRANdokht on

wrong question results in wrong answers ....

what does misunderstanding (misreading) result in?

it's "immortality"  not "immorality"  and yes it's used as the carrot.

IRANdokht


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Wrong question results in wrong answer ...

by factfinder (not verified) on

and that in turn results in wrong conclusion. Here is the question you posed based on a wrong premise:

"Consider: if it were natural for women to cover their bodies, they would not need so many laws and sticks commanding them to do so. Women would not have to be tempted into it by carrots of immortality, men’s love, or God’s love"

First let's be a little pedantic. "Immorality" cannot be a carrot - it is stick!

Second, you assume that the state of being "natural" is a universally accpeted concept, in other words, one size fits all. This is a very absoutist take on the concepts of "natural" or "normal". What may be "natural" to you is not neccesarily "natural" to others. Cultural relativisim has its applications too! Thefore, the rest of your argument, which is based on this flawed assupmtion, is not valid.

Sorry that I couldn't find a kind way of putting this to you but you seem to have a "natural" tenedency to rush to conclusions based on your opinionated views :-) The same as your comment on another thread that had missed out the father of necosrervatism: Leo Strauss (see my reply on: //iranian.com/main/2008/dutch-connection)


AmirAshkan Pishroo

IRANdoxt, Azarin, and Negar

by AmirAshkan Pishroo on

"If you're paraphrasing her correctly in that she argues that the veil must be denounced even if the Muslim woman chooses to wear it, then Shahrzad Mojab is an orientalist," wrote Negar.

At the vey outset of her article, Mojab warns us that:

"In the last two decades, a host of theoretical positions - cultural relativism, identity politics, postmodernism - have emphasized the differences that divide human beings and cultures. For these particularist theories, commonality, solidarity, and internationalism represent "grand narratives," "universalism," "totalization," or "essentialism," all of which are, it seems, inherently oppressive, Eurocentric, and imperialist. Politically, these types of particularism imply either passivism or fragmented and localized micro initiatives." [reading on]

Dear Negar, my question for you is this: Is it essentialism and/or orientalism to reject "honour killing," which is part and parcel of the Middle Eastern cultures, or to insist on the universality of oppression of women and the struggle against it?

My beloved comrade, IRANdoxt, who sticks her neck out for women/human rights, I share your astonishment of "how brainwashed some so-called intellectual women can be to allow and excuse the mistreatment and de-humanizing of other women," as you put it nicely. The other side of this capacity for submission is an inability to figure out how cruel and painful hejab can be for a woman wrapped in it.

Azarin e aziz, if women's discourse seems under massive attack today, then, I think, that precious essence of the women spirit is being held safe in the wisdom of the novel. Thanks for the kind words.

 

 


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Is wearing of bras also an abuse of women's rights?

by Just Asking (not verified) on

If we are going to protest the voluntary wearing of a "roosari" (headscarf) by some Muslim women (and I mean only voluntary, not by compulsion, as in Iran), then can we also protest the wearing of bras by Western women? Perhaps, the bra is as much a symbol of oppression as the headscarf. I'm being a devil's advocate, by why are some anti-Muslim individuals so obsessed with "hejab"? There are other ways to improve women's lives in a more substantive way than constantly fretting about "hejab". Some Christian women in the Balkans and former USSR also wear the head scarf. Are they also being oppressed by that piece of cloth? It seems that the author is more interested to wage an ideological conflict on the heads (literally) of some Muslim women, then to contribute anything constructive on the topic.


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westerners seem to be obsessed with

by Anonymous-haha (not verified) on

Muslim women's hijab.

Why not be obsessed with Muslim women's panties too? There are not as sexy as western women's panties.

1 in 4 young western girls have STD before they reached 18-year-old. That's a great accomplishment for a gender that failed miserably to produce engineers and scientists!!


Azarin Sadegh

Excellent question!

by Azarin Sadegh on

Great first sentence and excellent point!

"if it were natural for women to cover their bodies, they would not need so many laws and sticks commanding them to do so. Women would not have to be tempted into it by carrots of immortality, men’s love, or God’s love."

Thank you! You made my day!

azarin 

 


negar

I'm not familiar with any

by negar on

I'm not familiar with any of these scholars but it sound to me that you're oversimplifyin a much more complex issue to a pro-hejab vs. anti-hejab debate. To assume that women everywhere want the same things is a very essentialist and reductive approach. A postcolonial feminist like Chandra Talpade Mohanty (Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discources) would argue that the essentialism of "I know what you need because you're a woman," that is so dominant in the western feminism, eliminates social and cultural conditions as important factors.

If you're paraphrasing her correctly in that she argues that the veil must be denounced even if the Muslim woman chooses to wear it, then Shahrzad Mojab is an orientalist who implies that "people over there (which is paradoxically where she's from) don't know what's good for them so we over here will fight their fights and get them what they don't know they want by the essence of being a woman."

As Edward Said pointed out in Orientalism, the scholars from "the Orient" are most susceptible to adopt an Orientalist point of view and assess themselves in the eyes of the overbearing colonial powers.

I'm not defending hejab. I'm merely saying that you must be careful about how you argue against it.


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To: IRANdokht

by Reza K. (not verified) on

Not to say the veil is such, but you come up ,even with the most idiotic, backward, obscene idea, and wrap it around one religion, and SOMEBODY is going to, not only volunteer to follow it, he ( or she) will die defending it.
Religion is a powerful thing, and just like greed, lust, crime, ambition,...etc., will always be part of human endeavor.


IRANdokht

what's voluntarily...

by IRANdokht on

 She correctly insists that it is necessary and appropriate to denounce and criticize the veil even if all Muslim voluntarily wear it.

The way I see it, wearing an islamic hejab is never 100% voluntarily when the government, faith, traditions or family pressures do not allow an alternative.

I agree with professor Mojab statement, these human right abuses should not be justified. I can't imagine how brainwashed some so-called intellectual women can be to allow and excuse the mistreatment and de-humanizing of other women.  

Thank you for the post. I'll make sure to read from professor Mojab.

IRANdokht