The place of woman in society has always been a very controversial issue; from culture to culture, from century to century the meaning of women’s rights and their freedom varies. In the article called “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?” Lila Abu-Lughod examines the real women’s role in what is nowadays called ‘War on Terrorism’. The main issue of her research is whether western community overlooks Muslim women in the right way. Her answer is definitely closer to being negative; “We now understand them as suffering from structural violence. We have become politicized about race and class, but not culture” (Abu-Lughod). As the author tries to examine the real time definition and specifics of ‘international feminism’ and its misconception by western society. The main issue, in other words, is that Muslim women do have their own culture adopted to the necessities of their own world; this fact is mostly ignored both by famous politicians and by the society.
Nowadays the most popular concept, when talking about east, is the opposition and total contrast of Eastern and Western ‘worlds’. Muslims are viewed as barbarians due to the traditional western vision of life; that is why women in burqas are potentially viewed as those requiring help. G. C. Spivak, “White men are saving brown women from brown men” (Spivak), properly described this phenomenon.
The problem seem to be more than a today standing controversial issue. Mistreatment of other cultures is deep in the history of western invasions and colonization. L. Ahmed gives an example of ‘colonial feminism’ while talking about Egypt and Egyptian women (Ahmed 192). Almost the same idea is stated by M. Lazreg, who describes the attitude of Algerian woman talking about the ‘protective France’ without the understanding that France nearly evaded their country without any tolerance to their culture (Lazreg 110). However, ignorance has always been a feature of most of colonists.
The attitude to Muslim women is almost the same when talking about the American (and Western at all) ambitions to save Muslim women by attacking Afghanistan. The evidence is in the speech of Laura Bush, who provides listeners with analogies like Taliban-and-the-terrorists (not even giving a chance to distinguish these two ‘concepts’). In addition, this public speech created a kind of border between civilized west and suffering east (Abu-Lughod). Even claiming that western women worry for their eastern ‘sisters’, the speech did not show women of the world as equal creatures. This has made all the effect of the necessity of Muslim being saved.
However, the author of the article “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving”, Lila Abu-Lughod, sounds categorical and sometimes even aggressive. She has a right to give an emotional shade to her words as she distinguishes her own opinion from the objectively formed facts. Still, some of the arguments do not seem well examined. For example, the role of Western community in fighting the racial and class discrimination is quite effective. Even though the author claims that Western society concentrated on the ‘racial and class safety’ instead of cultural one, she does not analyze the role of these stages (racial and class) in creating a proper attitude to Muslim women and their safety (Abu-Lughod). Concentrated on how Afghan culture of women treatment is seen from the cultural point of view, the other aspects of ‘international feminism’, named in the previous statement, are not seen as those, which have any meaning at all.
However, the author states in the article that Western culture is definitely different from the Eastern, thus, saving Afghan women cannot be a proper reason for the ‘War on Terrorism’ and attacks on other countries. According to the author, the best way to avoid the discrimination and violation of women’s rights is to create a world with favorable conditions. Still, this world cannot exist without cultures being understood and tolerated by each other.
Works cited
Abu-Lughod, Lila. Do Muslim Women Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others. Web. 20 Jan 2016.
Ahmed, Leila. Women and Gender in Islam. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 1992. Print.
Lazreg, Marnia. The Eloquence of Silence: Algerian Women in Question, New York: Routledge. 1994. Print.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Ed. Cary Nelson & Lawrence Grossberg. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1988. Print.
Ahmed, Leila. Women and Gender in Islam. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 1992. Print.
Lazreg, Marnia. The Eloquence of Silence: Algerian Women in Question, New York: Routledge. 1994. Print.
Abu-Lughod, Lila. Do Muslim Women Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others. Web. 20 Jan 2016.
