Abu-Lughod’s article about cultural relativism got me
very interested in the “politics of the veil.” Before reading this article, I
admit that I knew very little about the cultural context around this article of
clothing. Most interesting to me was how Abu-Lughod emphasizes just how crucial
it is to look at the meaning attached to the veil in different cultural
contexts across the Muslim world.
Her focus on how a simplified view of the veil as a
symbol of women’s oppression was used for a justification of the U.S. invasion
of Afghanistan made me realize just how terrible the consequences of viewing women
in the “Third World” as a single group can be. Just as Mohanty criticizes those
whose writing viewed women simply as a “category of analysis” and thus ignored
the cultural, political, and historical context of their lives, the U.S. is
arguably guilty of doing exactly this in its claim to be “saving” women in
Afghanistan.
Moving away from the U.S., I was also reminded of when France passed a law that banned veils in public spaces. In this case, the
French government seems to be guilty of making a similar error that the U.S.
did when it focused on the burqa in Afghanistan as a symbol of women’s
oppression. One former French mayor in the nation claims that this kind of
article of clothing should be “should be banned in the name of the liberty and
equality of women in a secular country.”
Just as Abu-Lughod points out in her article, however,
the veil, (which both the NYT and Abu-Lughod point out is not just one type of
clothing such as the burqa) or the niqab which is worn by Muslim women in
France according to the NYT, has different meanings to different women and
their families.
While the French law does not specifically refer to Islam
and only bans face coverings in public, I see some of what Abu-Lughod refered
to false dichotomies such as Islam vs. the West occurring here. Another NYT article also mentions French feminists being opposed to the burqa.
Once again, I think this is an unfortunate example of what Mohanty referred to
as viewing groups of women as a “singular, monolithic subject.”
Both NYT articles show just how widely views differ
across France’s Muslim population regarding the subject. I find this case of France's government seemingly viewing women in the Muslim world as comprising one
single group as also likely having rather negative implications for
development. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD), France is the fourth largest provider of development
assistance in the world.
Hi Amy,
ReplyDeleteI agreed that it is a sad thing to view groups of women, especially women from global south as "singular, monolithic, ahistorical". And more important, I believe this is unfortunate for both the viewers (which most of the time has been referred to the Western feminists) and viewees. Just think about, what do we usually keep into groups? Most of time, they are things, items, and objects. We get them into different groups, categorize them because of our own convenience. We try to be in control through keeping things in order or simply giving them order. And this is basically what Western feminists do to the non-western women. Grouping them, keeping them in different orders or around different topics so that next time when Western feminists want to talk about those women, they could just easily open their drawer#1 and pick out the "Asian women" and started to talk. I felt sad, not only for women who are grouped, but also the groupers.
I had my Master program in another Middle-West school. And in the whole department, another Chinese girl and I happened to be the only Chinese. Since we were in the same year and good-friend with each other, we had been taken as "one" from the day we got into the program. Some professor would talk with me about my friend's personal issue and ask me to pass it on. Some of them got our names confused from a long time (and in fact our names do not sound similar at all) and hesitated to address us when they only saw one of us. I felt sad for them because on the one hand they were teaching students how they should take each other as unique human being but on the other, they failed to take my friend and I as two different beings. How can scholars be so inconsistent like this in their personal and professional lives, doing critiques in their writing but behaving absolutely the other way around? Where do they put their ethnicity when doing researches? Personally, I felt sorry for them.
typo...I meant "ethic" not "ethnicity"...
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DeleteHi Amy and Zhou,
DeleteI agree with both of you and I thank Zhou for sharing her experience with us, very interesting, yet disappointing.
One cannot ignore the fact that Muslim women in general, and the issue of veil in particular, are among the most enduring subjects of discussion not only in western academia, but also in the western media for decades. Banning Muslim women from covering themselves in public is an overt deny of women’s right to choice and decision-making. It is sad to see that women are not only victims of the colonial powers and preferences, but the significance and multiple meaning of “veil” or “veiled” are also misunderstood and misjudged.
We cannot only blame non-Muslim nations for their ongoing and static misconceptions as well as their misinterpretations of “veil,” while the meaning and significance of veil have been widely misunderstood in some Muslim nations too. For example, as French government denied women a choice by banning veil within the French soil, Turkey banned veil in public schools and office to emphasize its secular principles and enter the European society. I remember reading a news article (it was Hurriyet Daily News, if I am not mistaken) about two Turkish students being expelled from a French school after refusing to remove their veil in order to participate in their gym lesson.
As a Muslim woman, I am fortunate of living and pursuing my Master Degree in the U.S, where I tested the real test of democracy, than in France.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI think the veil “issue” is such a fascinating subject. However from my perspective, at least in the case of Europe, I think the “veil issue” is a scapegoat for a larger problem of European resistance of immigration for the sake of keeping their European culture distinctly “European”. I feel like I come across a lot of discourse about how much national identity and cultural “purity” of this identity is important to a lot of Europe. This article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/17/world/europe/dutch-to-ban-full-face-veils.html?_r=0 is about the Netherlands ban on the burqa, and there is a direct quote which states the ban was “necessary and justified in the interest of protecting the character and way of life in the Netherlands.” There is no mention of “saving” women from oppression.
ReplyDeletePerhaps a parallel in the United States would be the apparent larger national resistance to Spanish becoming an increasingly prevalent language throughout the States, despite the fact that there is no official language for this country. Here is a recent example:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/07/english-only-law-proposed-government-mailings-arizona_n_2637994.html
In no way do I support the intolerance or justify the actions of the examples that I give above. But is there really any nation that is totally accepting of influence or “creeping” of other cultures within their own boundaries? Hasn’t there been historically and in the present, cases of European/ “Western” culture being resisted throughout the world for the sake of cultural “purity”?
In the case of the veil, perhaps it just the veil itself that is an easy target, especially when in the case of France, that might be the most obvious indicator of not being “authentically” French. And perhaps this is aligned with feminist discourse; it seems to be apparent that it is more acceptable to criticize a woman’s appearance than a man’s appearance.
I agree with Maria that the issue of the veil in politics in various countries such as the United States, France and Turkey amongst many others is often not only, or sometimes not at all, associated with the liberation of women but is part of undercurrents both of a nation’s internal politics as well as its foreign policy. Reading Abu-Lughod’s article, I was reminded about the immediate post-September 11th time period that she was writing in, and a lot of the arguments that were being used to justify military intervention in Afghanistan and overthrowing the Taliban. In hindsight it is easy to be objectively critical of this dialogue such as the speeches made by Laura Bush and see it in the same line as other “moral” justifications for intervention in Iraq and other areas in the Middle East. However, at the moment, amongst a people that had just felt “attacked”, this was popularly used across the political and social spectrum to justify the future interventionist U.S. foreign policy by assuring the U.S. that we were the “good guys” who had religious and gender liberties while the people we were about to attack were violent oppressors of women and of anyone or thing that did not adhere to their particular religious and social beliefs (e.g. the destruction of the famous statues of Buddha). I remember going to CSG (Columbus School for Girls) to hear Mavis Leno , the wife of Jay Leno who was a famous “advocate” for Afghan women, as part of my participation with my school’s Amnesty International club. Hearing the language she used, it was clear that this “liberation” of Afghan women was just another tool in the U.S.’s moral arsenal to justify its war, for she expressed that when the Taliban would be toppled the Afghan women and society in general would be eternally grateful for our efforts and we will have a new “friendly government” in the area. Little was discussed about Afghans’ own self-determination; the burqa was seen as an obvious symbol of oppression that served as another justification for our intervention.
ReplyDeleteIn other countries where the use of the veil is debated, such as France, Australia and the U.S., the idea of women’s liberation is discussed even less. Rather, this debate is often centered in the paradigm of mult-culturalism versus assimilation. In these countries, many older immigrants and those who would call themselves “natives” of the countries (though the true native populations of Australia and the U.S. are hardly represented as such in these dialogues) hold that there are certain values that must be assume in order to become a citizen or part of that society. In France especially, a country that often sees itself as reborn in its Enlightenment- influenced revolution, public secularism and secular humanism is often seen as a value of “Frenchness” and the veil may be seen as contrary to that and a presumed “social contract” that exists when one lives in France and takes up French citizenship. In places such as Australia and the United States, it is stated by many that its citizens should assimilate to its values of religious and individual liberty, and to some, the veil, in of itself or sometimes even as an extension of Islam, is articulated as a form of oppression that is contrary to these values. These debates therefore often do not express concern for the women involved but are part of larger debates regarding immigration, assimilation vs. multi-culturalism and foreign policy.