With so much of American foreign policy being focused on various Muslim countries, it is no surprise that there is a “concern” among conservatives about the issues that Muslim women face in different parts of the Muslim world. I have a wish that their concern is sincere, but when I read essays like Zeyno Baran’s recent tirade on The Huffington Post, I see my wish is futile. Zeyno Baran is a fellow at the Hudson Institute.
There are so many wrong assumptions and ethnocentrism in the article that it is hard to know where to begin. One of the most the glaring assumptions in the essay is the idea of a monolithic Islamic society. For a scholar, Baran has no sense of nuance when discussing Muslim societies. Countries such as Iran (which molds its government on Shi’a fiqh) and Pakistan (which has a secular government) are grouped together. Muslim women are discussed as a monolithic group with no socioeconomic or racial diversity.
“The more I learn about the condition of Muslim women, the more I feel embarrassed by how many things I have taken for granted. Unlike so many Muslim girls, I had the opportunity to receive an education — and one that prepared me to be able to follow my dreams from Istanbul to Stanford to Washington — and the freedom to choose what to do with my own body, mind, and intellect.”
You know, Baran’s experience of receiving an education seems to curiously be my experience, too. It also is the experience of other Muslim women I know from around the world. I went to college with Muslimahs from Saudi Arabia, Syria, Pakistan, Malaysia and Bangladesh, to name just a few countries. My goodness! Are we all anomalies among Muslim women or is Baran simply grouping all Muslim together to serve an agenda that has really nothing to do with helping Muslim women at all?
What exactly is the condition of Muslim women? As Baran should know, issues that Muslimahs face in Turkey won’t be exactly the same as issues that women face in, say, Iran. Some issues may overlap, but often issues are different because of the different situations of those countries. In addition, issues that an upper class woman in Iran or Turkey would face won’t be the same as issues that lower class women in those face. Ethnic identity (which is diverse in both countries) will also affect what issues women face in those countries, despite both countries being predominately Muslim. Muslim women in various parts of the world, including America (which Baran thinks is “the one and only country where dreams can truly come true”), have to deal with intersecting issues and those issues aren’t all the same. That’s why it’s frustrating when commentators feel the need to lump all Muslim women together and say that we’re all in the same condition. Clearly, we are not.
Muslim men are all lumped together as well. Reading Baran’s piece, you would think that the only Muslim man who cared for women was Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Baran paints Muslim men as brutes who force their women to cover their entire body, stay in the house, be silent and who kill their women if they break any of those rules. Again, Muslim men aren’t a monolithic group. I’m not naive to think that there aren’t Muslim men who think this way, but to paint a broad over all Muslim men is troubling.
Additionally, Baran’s view of Ataturk, as well as gender politics in the Muslim world, is very one-sided. Yes, Ataturk allowed women to vote and run for office but he also took away their right to wear hijab in public spaces. That seems rather paternalistic to me. In fact, the banning of hijab in universities, government offices, schools, etc., is still an issue that Turkish hijabis have to contend with. Also, honor killings are still a major problem in Turkey. Yet, Baran completely glosses over these facts and makes Turkey seem like a utopia for Muslim women.
Additionally, women have the right to vote in a lot of Muslim countries, Pakistan and Iran included. Why didn’t Baran mention this? Would it be because her real agenda is not to discuss issues affecting Muslim women but rather to paint countries like Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan and others in as negative a light as possible? Baran appears to be using feminism to serve a neo-conservative agenda rather than sincerely discuss how the U.S. can aid Muslim women in our fight to gain rights and keep the ones we have.
Baran’s ethnocentrism becomes especially apparent in her idea of “freedom” for Muslim women. Baran predictably attacks hijab: “Women are covered and brought under submission — through enforced illiteracy and through a form of veiling: the burqa, niqab or hijab.” Is hijab really comparable to forced illiteracy? Also, why does Baran assume that Muslim women who wear the burqa, niqab or hijab are being subjugated? How many times do hijabis have to say that not all Muslim women are forced to wear hijab and that we wear it for a variety of reasons!? Again, I won’t deny that unfortunately, there are Muslim women who are forced to wear hijab, but Baran makes it seem that Muslim women wear hijab for one reason only.
Additionally, Baran seems to think we’re all unhappy and that for us to be “free” we must be happy. “The biggest threat to those trying to control or kill the spirit is children and women laughing, dancing and singing freely. That is also what is most forbidden in most parts of the Islamic world.” Okay, this sentence is so laughable. Has Baran watched YouTube videos of singer such as Ruby, Veena Malik or Haifa Wahbi? If women singing and dancing freely in most parts of the Islamic world was so forbidden, then why are these singers so popular?
Baran’s idea of how we should be “free” doesn’t seem to be influenced by what Muslim women say, but rather the shallow idea of “freedom” that has propaged by neoconservatives for way too long. In fact, the idea that we have to “freed” by altruistic American politicians is extremely paternalistic. Baran titled her essay “Let the Truth Shine”, but the only thing that shines through in her essay is thinly veiled propaganda.
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Tags: ethnocentrism, feminism, The Huffington Post, Zeyno Baran
Yet again, men are arguing with eachother about who gets to decide how women should live. If women’s choice in clothing is restriced by law (in ways that men’s clothing isn’t) then that is in itself oppressive, whether the law says that you must wear a hijab or it says you must not wear it.
It’s so much easier for Western men to point out the sexism in someone else’s culture than it is to deal with their own preconceptions of what a proper woman is and how they affect women’s lives.
Salaam Alaikum,
She should have come to my wedding party, plenty of women dancing and having fun there.
Aside from that, I have to admire you Faith, for sitting down and going to the bother of deconstructing this. Maybe we need some king of spreadsheet or bingo card to tick off all the stereotypes one by one.
Baran might as well have written this in Lol speak for all the fresh insight it brings. I’ll do it for her: “Muzzlim womenz has scarvvs, kan’t read
”
Maybe I’m just being cranky because I’m still pregnant!
@ Jenny: Zeyno is a woman.
LOL @ Safiyah!
Great post, Faith. Nail on the head!
Safiyah–LOLOLOL. You should totally make that an actual macro that can be posted in forums where people go down that road of stupid. Actually, reducing complicated-sounding arguments to lolspeak does help a lot; I actually explained the thesis of a S. Huntington’s book to my students this semester as “i has a power/NOOOOOO they be stealin my power,” and it helped greatly.
My favorite part of the article is when she says that Obama needs to understand gender to understand politics (to which I say, YES INDEED) but then says “How a man treats women should tell him all he wants to know.” No, that’s not it at all–it’s not about how individual men treat individual women (because there are nice guys and evil guys everywhere, abusers of women and male feminists everywhere) but about how systems of power strip women of their autonomy or integrity. But if you want to talk about that, you have to actually look at how women live, what their daily practices are, what they actually think, rather than casting an eye across their bodies and saying OH NO SHE WEARS A FUNNY HAT! OPPRESSION! *Sigh*
Great analysis Faith! You ripped this apart as it should be!
The piece by Baran has such a juvenile feel to it. I am AMAZED at how uninformed and ignorant Baran has comes across as. Wow. Some of those statements seem so old school and out-dated. Do people still believe this BS?
“You know, Baran’s experience of receiving an education seems to curiously be my experience, too”
Mine too! And to my mother, and sister, and the many, many women in my family. Who wouldda thunk it?? I mean my grandmother had female cousins who were doctors and dentists, in Pakistan.
You were right on to critique her exaggeration of Turkey. I’m sure its a wonderful country and I would LOVE to visit one day, but c’mon. Misogyny is a universal phenomenon from which no nation is exempt.
At America being “the one and only country where dreams can truly come true” – I’m offended not only as a minority but also as a Canadian! Canada’s pretty damn good too
I’m tired of always being depicted as “the poor and oppressed Moslem woman who is waiting to get saved through the liberties of the West”
Every other glaring error and exaggeration aside … children? Laughing? Does anyone really have such a picture in theirs minds of any muslim society as to image that children are forbidden to laugh?
I was just discussing this (attitude that seems to be so commonplace in American society) the other day with my father and we went through many of the points you mentioned, especially the education issue. My cousin had a Muslim girlfriend from the U.A.E. that had a Ph.D and her government paid for her education & living expenses abroad. People don’t stop to think that Muslims are as diverse as the U.S., each group, family, country, ethnicity, individual having different experiences and opportunities.
Cheers to this post for bringing up such good issues!
Countries such as Iran (which molds its government on Shi’a fiqh) and Pakistan (which has a secular government)
Actually, Pakistan does not have a secular government. It’s one of the few countries whose government and constitution are explicitly Islamic (or rather, explicitly strive towards that goal). Back in the early 80′s, the only other two countries were Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Actually, Pakistan is a mix of religious and secular (English) law. It’s not purely Islamic law.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/10/religion.law1
Actually, Pakistan is a mix of religious and secular (English) law. It’s not purely Islamic law.
I didn’t mean it didn’t have laws not based on Islam. If that’s the criterion, probably no country really is Islamic. It’s official goal, however, is explicitly to be Islamic.
From part 9 of the constitution (http://www.pakistani.org/pakistan/constitution/part9.html):
“(1) All existing laws shall be brought in conformity with the Injunctions of Islam as laid down in the Holy Quran and Sunnah, in this Part referred to as the Injunctions of Islam, and no law shall be enacted which is repugnant to such Injunctions.”
This statement was there from their very first constitution (in a different form, but same meaning).
Thanks for the comments!
@Safiya: lol! I have to admit that when I first read her essay, I did think it was a joke of some sort that went over my head. Then I read her bio on Wikipedia and realized that she worked for a conservative think tank and that she probably thought that drivel was deep and intellectual.
@Dude and Sobia: Thanks for the info!
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“i has a power/NOOOOOO they be stealin my power,”
I get the lol speak, but who was this meant to imitate?
@Faith “Additionally, Baran’s view of Ataturk, as well as gender politics in the Muslim world, is very one-sided. Yes, Ataturk allowed women to vote and run for office but he also took away their right to wear hijab in public spaces. That seems rather paternalistic to me. In fact, the banning of hijab in universities, government offices, schools, etc., is still an issue that Turkish hijabis have to contend with. Also, honor killings are still a major problem in Turkey”
Right on. And in Turkey you can’t saying anything bad about Ataturk. I don’t see that as being a good thing.
There’s a fear that if they allow women to wear hijabs then their government will turn into a Sharia-run one … so that’s how they scare people. Not sure how their logic goes exactly, but that’s how I understand it…
Salaam Alaikum,
There’s also the fact that those who view themselves as the defenders of Ataturk’s legacy tried to ban the democratically elected ruling party.
“There’s a fear that if they allow women to wear hijabs then their government will turn into a Sharia-run one … so that’s how they scare people. Not sure how their logic goes exactly …”
Taking away the power of public religious expression by assigning one form of it more power than it actually holds.
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@faith: as far as Mustafa Kemal Atatürk is concerned, although he did indeed give women the right to vote, etc., along with that came a new Kemalist feminism that basically built a new cult of secularist conservatism. Clothing styles and voting rights changed (sometimes by force), but socially speaking women were in the same place, and if you look at the Turkish Parliament today, the extremely low numbers of women deputies (hovering around 2 percent) tells the rest of the story. A very superficial facade of women’s empowerment indeed.
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