Islamization as Expression of Cultural Identity (Book Notes: No God but God)
In No God but God: Egypt and the Triumph of Islam, Geneive Abdo explains that women in Muslim nations are adopting more traditional Islamic standards of dress and behavior out of a desire to emphasize their cultural identity:
The appeal of popular Islam among educated, privileged women...poses an insidious threat to the regime [in Egypt] and a seemingly overwhelming intellectual challenge to secularists at home and abroad. The elite’s attraction to religion goes straight to the heart of the struggle between Islam and modernity and the effort by today’s Islamists to forge a workable compromise between the two, this time within the highly charged world of male-female relations.
For decades the role of women in Muslim society has provided one of the primary battlegrounds in the cultural war between East and West, between the colonized and the colonizers.
These educated, privileged women are not seeking to end education and working rights for women, but they are seeking to separate men from women in ways that would not even be contemplated in the West. For these women, it’s a matter of personal, religious, and cultural identity — it signifies that they aren’t simply copying women in the West but have their own values, ideas, and beliefs.
To some extent, that’s only natural. It would be unreasonable for anyone to expect women all around the world to become carbon copies of women in London, Berlin, or New York City. At the same time, though, reactions against such trends should not push so far back that they actually make things more difficult for women. The goal will be to find a balance whereby the basic human rights of women are respected without compromising their ability to affirm their cultural and religious identities as Muslims.
Is it possible? In theory, there’s nothing that should prevent it. In reality, though, there will be those who don’t want to respect women’s basic rights and will use expressions of religious identity (like head scarves) as a thin wedge to force through their own political agenda. Head scarves are a symbol and symbols mean something, but they don’t mean the same thing to all people. Wearing one can symbolize accepting a certain identity while refusing to wear one can symbolize rejecting fundamentalism — but not necessarily the identity, too.
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Comments
Interesting quandary. i’ve experienced this in myself often in the past year, living in Herndon, VA. There are many muslim (among others) families here. i see the men dressed in the same clothes as white men, and the women wear the traditional gear. Part of me wants to yell “you don’t have to wear that here!”. Reflexively, i assume her husband is pressuring her to be submissive and live under his thumb, and is using religion as his moral back up. i have to consciously remind myself that that might be the way they both like it. They are Americans now, or are at least living in America and can do pretty much what they like. And that is some consolation, though it will always irk me.
The difference i see is this: In pre-invasion Afganistan if a woman showed her face in public she could be imprisoned, beaten or killed and thrown into the village well to rot. Here she has a choice, at least legally. She has the right to not wear the scarf if she so chooses, and her husband can’t (legally) do a thing about it. If he abuses her physically or mentally to gain her compliance, that crosses the line into criminal. i’ll continue to find the double standard offensive, but won’t give them any grief about it.
We have it in our heads that these scarves and burkas represent repression of women, something we are raised to belive is wrong. My response to seeing these things in the US indicates a sort of moral arrogance. i’m conscious of it and that’s a start.
People *tend* think their way is “THE way”. Is there a point where it stops being “cultural difference” and becomes repression of half the population?
i’d say a cultural thing would be, women wearing warm colors and men wearing cool colors. Repression would be, sewing their genetalia shut and denying independent income and voting.
Then the next question is of course, should anyone do anything about it?
Isn’t there an aspect of repression to them? The purpose of these items is to cover the female form because it is believed that women are responsible for the creation of sexual temptation and excitement in men. Women are made responsible for how men react to the sight of women and, therefore, women are made responsible to preventing the “wrong” reactions from occurring. How is such differential treatment of the responsibilities of men and women not at least a little bit repressive?
In Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law, Martha C. Nussbaum writes:
How can women be fully equal in the political and social spheres if there is great disparity when it comes to how the male and female bodies are treated socially? We can grant that because there are biological differences then there were always be some social differences in how they are treated, but I’m not sure that burqas and even head scarves qualify as justified.
Just because a person voluntarily accepts something doesn’t mean that it doesn’t contribute to their being unequal. Involuntary acceptance can be achieved through social pressure — men don’t need to abuse women, they just need to have women in a community where women are treated as morally depraved for revealing their hair or ankles in public.
Of course, doing anything about that can be difficult. Most “remedies” could be worse than the problem. Paramount must be protecting the ability of individuals to leave such cultural communities - people have rights; cultures do not.
“Just because a person voluntarily accepts something doesn’t mean that it doesn’t contribute to their being unequal. Involuntary acceptance can be achieved through social pressure — men don’t need to abuse women, they just need to have women in a community where women are treated as morally depraved for revealing their hair or ankles in public.”
Word.
i want to agree with everthing you said, but something nags at me to say “but that’s their way, and we shouldn’t judge”. In my heart of hearts, i’m with you. Drawing that line and deciding what to do about someone crossing it, must be a frightening challenge. At least for someone objective/ethical/open enough to see it as a quandary. And, yeah, the cures can be as Deep Thought said, “tricky”.
We can’t help but to judge — to agree or disagree, approve or disapprove, find something to learn or something to criticize. If you think about a situation you will end up forming a judgment of some sort. Obviously we can’t give up thinking, so we also shouldn’t be afraid to give up judging as well.
It’s quite fair to form judgments about actions and beliefs. It’s fair to form judgements about whether certain actions or beliefs enhance or inhibit liberty, freedom, autonomy, democracy, etc. It’s also fair to form a judgment about whether said enhancement or inhibition is good or bad. Finally, it’s also fair to form a judgment about whether the inhibitions should be discouraged and the enhancements… encouraged. Just be cautious about going beyond that.
Forming a judgment, at least if it’s an informed and thoughtful judgment that you’re willing to amend, isn’t a problem. Where you run into real problems is if you decide all of Islam is inferior because of something like this, or assume that all Muslim women are submissive and don’t think for themselves because of this, or if you think that all Muslim men are misogynistic jerks because of this. That sort of thing.
That’s the sort of “judging” that we shouldn’t be doing. Then again, that isn’t very informed or thoughtful judging, either. Unfortunately, it can be easy to move from one to the other without realizing it — it’s how bigotry and prejudice develops. Thus, even the reasonable sorts of judging should probably be done with some caution and care.
Let’s imagine a women in a bad relationship without Islam being involved at all — not even religion, specifically. We can judge that she’s made some bad choices and we can judge that there are some things which she should be doing in order to improve her situation. Of course, that doesn’t entitle us to judge her as a person and we should keep in mind that it’s easy for us, as outsiders, to form judgments about things which she doesn’t think she can help. Our judgements must thus be tempered with compassion and even some humility. Otherwise, we could end up blaming the victim — a common problem.