Bleat bleat
This is an irritating piece of crap.
By Allah, we’re an arrogant lot. By “we”, I mean modern western feminists, a group among which I am generally proud to be included. Except when we’re full of ourselves. Western feminism is not the only ideology exquisitely sensible of gender injustice.
It’s not clear what that is supposed to mean – feminism is universalist, not ‘Western,’ and there are of course feminists all over the globe. But if Geraldine Brooks means that feminism itself is not the only (or best) way of talking and thinking about and demanding gender justice – well I just have no idea what she means, because talk of gender justice is feminism, and vice versa, so what other ‘ideology’ would there be?
Nor are western feminists the only ones willing or able to speak up about it. Muslim women have been doing this themselves for decades, loudly and often effectively.
That’s interesting, but ‘western feminists’ don’t claim to be the only ones willing or able to speak up about it, and we’re thrilled when non-‘Western’ (which here apparently means Muslim, which is a tad simplistic) women speak up. (And when they do speak up – they’re doing a feminist thing. That’s the ‘ideology’ that’s in play. There’s no point in looking around for a different one, because that’s the only one there is.)
In Iran, on the other hand, a young generation of Koranically-literate Islamic revolutionary women sparked a national conversation on personal status issues, using Islamic jurisprudence rather than legislative measures. By educating women in the use of Islamically sanctioned pre-nuptial agreements, for example, an Iranian woman can secure for herself the right to divorce in set circumstances, to continue study or work after marriage and to establish her share of property if the marriage is dissolved.
Oh wow – so if she uses an Islamic pre-nup she can get some very limited rights, and as for just being entitled to such rights and more simply because she’s an adult human – well that’s just some pesky Western ideology, so she doesn’t need it – according to Geraldine Brooks, who is all right Jack.
What I am recommending is a little humility. Western feminists with a genuine desire to raise the status of oppressed women in Afghanistan or elsewhere should call their nearest mosque and make an appointment to talk to the sisterhood there…[I]n the majority of mosques they will learn of efforts long afoot to reclaim the positive messages about women’s rights in the Koran, messages obscured for too long by patriarchy and oppressive social customs. It is those efforts that we western feminists should support if we care about the women, and not the sweet sound of our own politically correct bleatings.
Our own politically correct bleatings – politically correct where, exactly? In many circles what Brooks says is far more politically correct than what universalist feminists say, so bleatings yourself, comrade.
I know you didn’t mean to mislead when you omitted “(I’m not talking about Wahhabi or Salafi-dominated mosques, which really are hopeless.),” but it’s a pretty big admission that there are people you simply can’t talk to if you want to be treated like, well, people, which kind of knocks the stuffing out of a lot of what she’s trying to say in the first place.
The men withholding equal rights from women in Muslim societies are never simply going to give them to them out of the goodness of their hearts. It is very annoying to read people going on about how women ought to be empowering themselves while neatly sidestepping the necessity of de-fanging the religious establishment that will so often have them killed for merely trying.
I have to admit, there’s one thing I agree with Brooks about: finger-wagging won’t help Muslim women. Of course, she’s wrong about almost everything else.
Rather than finger-wagging, we in the “West” need to actually DO something to bring our “Western” liberal values to them (and I mean true liberal values, not the morally bankrupt political left of today). We need to provide Muslim women in Islamic countries with education and microloans (just a couple of examples) so that they can have some help in throwing off the shackles of religion.
“the positive messages about women’s rights in the Koran, messages obscured for too long by patriarchy and oppressive social customs.”
What are those messages, does anyone know? I really don’t feel like reading the whole tedious book to find out, so, given that Brooks doesn’t feel like telling us where to find them, can anyone here help me out?
Well they’re not just lying around for anyone to see – you have to use hermeneutics, and Muslim feminism, and then if you rub very gently for a long time then the letters start to appear, very faintly.
Whenever I read crap like this, I feel like setting my phaser on max. Not very PC of me, but I can be excused on the grounds of being only a naturalized Western feminist. The “change from within” will work as well in Islam as it did in Orthodoxy or Catholicism. Or, as Audre Lorde said, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”
Tea: if you compare the Koran to 19th-century Western law with regard to, say, property rights, then it looks less hellish in comparison. So that’s feminist. Sort of.
The problem, as OB points out, is that to find positive stuff about women’s rights in the Quran you have to set your expectations really, really low and be grateful for scraps.
SomeOne: Providing education and microloans is not the same as imposing our values on them. Why do we NEED to bring our “Western” (capital W) “true liberal” values to them? Help them out of persecution and poverty, sure, but let them figure out how to better their society.
The whole schtick behind religious feminism (pick your religion) is almost exactly the same as the whole accomodationism ‘controversy’: while feminism and religion are fundamentally incompatible, that doesn’t stop people from trying to hold two contradictory ideas in their heads at the same time.
Feminism is a secular body of ideas that stands or falls on its own merits, and doesn’t need the “eternal truths” of religious texts to justify it. Religion is only relevant to feminism to the extent it serves as a justification for anti-feminist behaviors, actions, and ideas. Which, unfortunately, makes religion extremely relevant to feminism as it is its primary antagonist.
woot wrote:
Good analogy.
And you might say that both of the above are similar to the idea of “Complementary Medicine” — blending modern, science-based treatments with alternative medicine woo like homeopathy and reiki, so that they “work together to treat the whole person.” Except, of course, that only one of them actually works, and the other gets to ride to credibility on its back.
(By the way, I am almost finished with my new copy of Does God Hate Women? It’s very, very good: I had to make myself put it down, partly to calm down, and partly so it wouldn’t be over too soon.)
Thanks, Sastra!
There really is no limit to how far people will go to preserve an overvalued idea. Rather than state the obvious (the Bible/Koran was written during a time when women were treated like property, and the book reflects those values), they pretend these books were written by liberals.
It’s shameful. There’s nothing more preposterous and offensive than the claim that the Koran is actually a bastion of enlightenment on civil liberties and equality. I mean, have these people even read the scriptures they’re bleating about?
Joseph Kelly – You’ll notice that I put “Western” in quotes. That should indicate that I do not think such values are limited to “the West”. I don’t think the notion of a “West” is terribly coherent, but many people use that term to refer to a certain set of ideas. Among those ideas are the notions that women, like all human beings, would benefit from eduction, or that women, like all human beings, would benefit by engaging in business ventures. Are you not aware that many people around the world see these basic notions as dangerous “Western ideology”? That, for example, members of the Taliban in Afghanistan throw acid in the faces of women who go to school because they see it as part of an American plot to undermine their society?