Looking back, he was a weird mirror of my (roughly Pentecostal/fundie-Baptist-flavoured) Christian self at the time, particularly the way he despised those who were born and brought up in the religion rather than converted to it, parallelling how the fundie Christian church i spent most of my teens in regarded Catholics and Anglicans.

I think a very important point that can’t be made too often is that “culture” is not immutable. Everyone within a community has the capability to redefine its “culture”…

@ Asmaa:
See my above comment for why I still think it’s different when white sisters say some of these things. I would also disagree that white Muslims are always criticised for saying these things; in my experience, I definitely don’t think they get called on these things enough. And these aren’t potshots; even if I’m singling out two specific comments, this phenomenon is widespread, and I really think that white privilege in Muslim communities does not get questioned nearly enough. To add context to this, I (as a white person) am involved with some anti-racist organising in non-Muslim circles as well, and I think it’s a general thing that white people need to be more aware of what they say. I just happen to be talking about the Muslim context right now.

And I *totally* hear you on the “mundane, mediocre whining, validate me tripe” that’s out there. Even worse is being asked to contribute to that stuff! And then people are surprised when I tell them that it’s personal and I don’t want to give them a long, dramatic story of my experiences… Ugh.

I agree with what people are saying about how this isn’t exclusively a white thing; a lot of Muslims end up attributing problems to their own cultures (or to other cultures within Islam.) And often there’s truth to that. There really are many cultural practices out there that are harmful to women (or to other groups of people.) But I still think we have to consider *which* cultures are being painted as patriarchal, oppressive and sexist, and which ones are assumed to be good or neutral (often by not being mentioned at all.)

To those who are saying, “well, everyone says these things, why are you picking on the white people?”: First of all, it’s an issue of power. White voices are privileged within our society, and these voices often have more power than non-white perspectives to affect the way that certain cultural groups are seen. This only becomes more intense when the cultural group to which the speaker belongs is let off the hook. White people who hear these comments are led to believe that those “other” people are violent and backwards, without ever having to look critically at their own culture.

It also plays into a long history of Orientalist representations. European cultures have, for a long time, depicted the “East” as a place of barbarity and savagery. These images still have insane amounts of power (see other MMW articles for evidence), and it makes me really uncomfortable to see these forms of racism reproduced among Muslims. Especially disturbing is that these images are so ingrained in many people that they don’t realise how problematic it is to reproduce them.

I think the audience of this material is the problem, how do these articles fulfill preconcieved notions about Arab/desi manhood, etc. for the non-Muslim white audience? Why does this narrative interest that audience, especially detached from further discussions of how being “Southern” makes it all worse for women.

But really, it IS culture, and I think when we as Muslims discuss these things amongst ourselves and prioritize Islam above culture, it is very beneficial in our localized contexts.