Emerging from the Veil

Building upon the readings and class discussion concerning global feminism, the notion of the "veil" seems to have emerged in the past ten years as the predominant figure that United States and other Western feminists have looked to as the example for what feminine oppression is in the third world. The rhetoric of the United States government has truly reinforced these notions of women in the Middle East as women who have lived under repressive regimes for their whole lives and has neglected the cultural and social contexts of Islamic tradition. The generalizations that have been made about the third world are even more prevalent regarding the women in the Middle East because of the events of September 11, 2001. Women have taken a large role in our look into the repressive and extremist Islamic regimes of the Middle East. As Western feminists have taken a deeper look into these extremist governments, they have used these cultures as a basis for the idea of feminism in the Middle East.

The notion of "under the veil" truly resonates with our generation. Just like Pearl Harbor, the Vietnam War, the assassination of JFK, September 11 was the event that our generation will always remember. We will always remember where we were at the moment, and the small story of the connections we all had to people in the World Trade Center. The face of 9/11 is the "terrorists wearing the turban," and the "women under the veil." These conceptions are truly unfortunate because they have come to envelop all of the Middle East. This has become a contemporary type of "colonial feminism." It is a positive notion to include the fight for the rights of women alongside the fight against the terrorists in the world. Their intentions are a direct threat against human rights and included in that, as Bunch notioned, is the idea of women's rights. I think Abu-Lughod discounts the value of looking at different parts of the world through a lens of religious tradition and cultures. I think this is especially important in regions of the third world where religion essentially shapes the lives of the people. This is something that Westerners are not accustomed to. In my psychology class, we are looking at collectivist versus individualist cultures. The US, being very individualistic, is vastly different from these different regions that live collectively. We simply cannot fully understand the customs.

Many women in the Middle East have defended the burqa. This is completely understandable and we need to begin looking at this in a different light. Just as women place high value on their own individual success and progress in the United States, many Muslim women have placed an extremely high value on being respected. However, many women claim, as well as other scholars, that these women are subjected to harassment and looked down upon without the burqa. The only argument I would have is that in this case, they simply are not given the choice here. We do need to understand the cultural context, but the freedom of choice is very important for women and I think a first step into achieving rights. When women can decide, that is progress.

Abu-Lughod questions: "What does freedom mean if we accept the fundamental premise that humans are social beings, always raised in certain social and historical contexts and belonging to particular communities that shape their desires and understandings of the world?" (786). I think we do need to understand that this notion is somewhat true. However, I agree that the notion of interrelatedness that came up in the Mohanty article, and even more so here. Cultural relativism does discount interconnectedness on a certain level and we must realize that working with each other and understanding each other is the only way we can come to progress for the overall rights of women, where I believe, just the right to have our own opinions and beliefs, lie at the basis. Working within a framework may be the only preliminary way to address the situation and once a change has been made, new strides can come about. We really cannot discount the foreign aid that we have given to oppressed peoples and countries in need, but we must realize that questions about different regions produce different answers. I think we have come a long way since 9/11 regarding "women under the veil," but we still have a long way to go.