|
Western Feminists, Muslim Women and the 'Veil' That Separates Them
Introduction
Problem Setting
Aim and Methodology
Definitions of Terms
System of Transliteration
Review of the Related Literature
Analysis of Texts
The House of Obedience
Harem
In Search of Islamic Feminism
Conclusion
Notes
Works Cited
Introduction
As a child, I learnt the tale of the Persian poet, feminist and martyr Tahirih[1] who
proclaimed "you can kill me as soon as you like but you cannot stop the emancipation of women."[2]
The daughter of a Muslim mujtahid[3] Tahirih was born Fatimih Baraghani in the Persian city of Qazvin
and originally better known as Qurratu'l-'Ayn, meaning "Solace of the Eyes"[4]. Famous for her
beauty, intelligence, poetry, allegiance to a messianic revolutionary movement[5] and women's rights
activism, Tahirih's most celebrated moment occurred on a fateful day in 1848 at a conference in
Badasht. As the story goes she tore off her veil, appeared in front of a group of men, and
announced that she was the trumpet blast for the dawn of a new age signalling equality for men
and women. Stunned by both her beauty and the fact that she had appeared unveiled, one man slit
his throat in horror. Eventually in 1852, Tahirih was strangled to death for her cause[6].
This was the tale I was told, and I fell in love with the unveiled Persian heroine who dared to
challenge the powerful patriarchal society in which she lived. Although today I know more of her
literary prowess, her women's rights activism and the political stance she took as part of a
revolutionary movement: as a girl the strongest images of Tahirih presented to me were her
overwhelming beauty and the moment in which she appeared unveiled in front of a shocked male
audience. Even the names[7] Tahirih, which was given to counter accusations of immorality[8]
made against her, and Qurratu'l-'Ayn were more familiar to me than her birth name Fatimih. Why is it
this strong, intelligent, powerful and rebellious woman is known best for the rendering visible
of her body marked beautiful?
Problem Setting
Much of 'Western'[9] feminist writing focusing on the Muslim practice of women's veiling has
essentialised veiled Muslim women as the 'oppressed Other'. This is achieved through the a priori
assumption of a binary construct in which Western women are presented as liberated by virtue of
their (almost won) freedom from the constraints of patriarchal domination, and Muslim women as
essentially oppressed signalled primarily through the use of the veil.
The matrix of this construct can be located in Orientalist discourse, highlighted in particular
by Edward Said[10], who described the preponderance of pitting inferior Islam against the superior
Euro-centric world in academic writing. This prejudice has manifested itself in Western feminist
writing and had the effect of marginalising the object of their foci: namely veiled Muslim
women.
Aim and Methodology
The aim of this research is to analyse Western feminist discourse about practices such as
Muslim women's veiling, highlighting the problems that arise, with particular reference to the
politics of difference. I will analyse examples from three Western feminist texts that cut
across approximately twenty years of feminist writing on Muslim[11] women:
Juliette Mince's The House of Obedience: Women in Arab Society[12]; Alev Lytle
Croutier's Harem: World Behind the Veil[13] and Elizabeth Fernea's In Search of
Islamic Feminism: One Woman's Global Journey[14].
Definitions of Terms
For the purpose of this research, 'Western' feminist refers to those authors whose works on
Muslim women rely on the construction of a binary that sharply divides 'the West' from 'the East'
with the latter negatively defined by lack of characteristics with which the former is supposedly
inherently endowed. Western feminists model "a historically specific fantasy whereby members
imagine themselves as Western"[15] (read: modern, enlightened, progressive, rational)
and Muslim women as not Western.
Unless specifically defined otherwise, for this research 'Muslim woman' refers to the
Othered object of the Western feminist gaze. She is essentialised to represent 'the East'
and stereotypically represented as oppressed, inferior, traditional, backward, mysterious
and hidden behind the veil[16]. In reality, Muslim women come from a diverse range of ethnic
backgrounds, cultures and traditions that criss-cross the globe, however it is one of the
features of Orientalised Western feminist writing, that the Muslim woman is always represented
as 'non-Western', whether by specific reference, or by lack of disclaimer to the contrary.
Orientalist discourse about the Muslim woman also constructs a monolithic category called
'the veil': a catch-all description for every Muslim woman's veiling pattern implying that all
Muslim women wear the same veil for the same reason. However, this construction needs to be
problematised because it fails to address the reality of the diversity of Muslim women's
clothing practices. Muslim women veil (or not) for a wide range of reasons which should be
differentiated under categories of identity, class, culture, religiosity, political activism
and historical practice among others. The veil of the wife of the Prophet is considerably
different from the veil of the upper-class Turkish lady of the Ottoman empire; which is
considerably different from the veil of the Australian convert to Islam; which is considerably
different from the veil of the revolutionary Iranian protester and so on. It is incorrect to
refer to 'the veil': there are many veils[17].
Specifically, I address the veils of Western feminists. That is, I discuss the various
symbologies that non-Muslim Western feminists have coded on to Muslim women's veils rather
than deal with the meanings that real-life Muslim women themselves give to their covering.
Loosely, 'veil' refers to the extra-ordinary coverings worn by (some) Muslim women in front
of non-intimates[18]. It is also used to symbolise the separation of public and private space
including the institution of the harem[19].
System of Transliteration
I have chosen to use a modified system of transliteration based on that used in the
International Journal of Middle East Studies. That is, I have chosen not to use diacriticals
except for the single closing apostrophe ' used to represent hamza and the single opening
apostrophe ' used to represent 'ayn. [Note: this distinction is not carried over to the
internet version of the paper.]
The exception to this rule is in reproduction of the transliteration of proper names and titles
in referenced works. Foreign words are italicised, except for proper names and those that
would ordinarily appear in English dictionaries.
Except where they appear in quotations of works by other authors, I have chosen to use
transliterations for common Arabic words that are closer to the original pronunciation:
for example Muslim instead of Moslem and so on.
Review of the Related Literature
In 1978 Edward Said published the seminal work Orientalism in which his main thesis is
that "as much as the West itself, the Orient is an idea that has a history and a tradition
of thought, imagery, and vocabulary that have given it reality and presence in and for the
West."[20] Orientalism, then, is all at once the field of academic discipline; the method of
describing what is believed to be an inherently separated West and East (or Orient and Occident);
and a "Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient."[21]
Said's work foreshadowed the rise of theories of post-colonialism and post-modernism in humanities
studies. However one criticism made is that he did not address how Orientalism provided the
raison d'étre for focusing on Oriental women as prime objects of discovery and control (and
thence subversion of indigenous cultures) through the intense desire to obtain knowledge about
their 'natural' state.
This is the topic of Meyda Yegenoglu's book Colonial Fantasies: Towards a Feminist Reading
of Orientalism in which she argues that a sexualised understanding of Orientalism is of
fundamental importance[22]. This is precisely because the Orient itself is represented as
feminine: a veiled world of mystery, intrigue and exoticism that is waiting to be penetrated
by the (coded male) Orientalist observer.
The metonymic association between the Orient and its women, or more specifically the
representation of woman as tradition and as the essence of the Orient, made it all the more
important to lift the veil, for unveiling and thereby modernizing the woman of the Orient
signified the transformation of the Orient itself[23] (her emphasis).
In Western Representations of the Muslim Woman: From Termagant to Odalisque,
Mohja Kahf points out that Western depictions of Muslim women are not timeless, but
are instead the product of "specific moments and developments in culture."
[24] By
looking at texts dating from the European medieval through to Romantic eras, Kahf
demonstrates the development of 'the Muslim woman' trope that progressed from the
unveiled and definitely not secluded noblewoman who falls in love with a Christian
man, converts to Christianity and melds into the European world; who later in the
Renaissance period becomes a helpless damsel; and then in the seventeenth century
moves into the seraglio[25] and becomes veiled like her European counterparts.
Finally in the eighteenth century, this sequestered figure stays confined in the
harem where she remains eternally oppressed.
Other smaller essays and extracts from journals that address issues surrounding
Western feminist Orientalising of Muslim women include: Chandra Mohanty's chapter
"Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses"[26] which
critiques the discursive production of the "third world woman" in Western feminist scholarship
and Deniz Kandiyoti's chapter "Contemporary Feminist Scholarship and Middle East Studies"[27]
which surveys three directions of developing feminist theory within Middle East studies.
Analysis of Texts
I have taken examples from three Western feminist texts to analyse in this paper.
They are: The House of Obedience; Harem and In Search of Islamic Feminism.
I chose these
as they represent three different approaches to Muslim women spanning nearly twenty years
of feminist writing that nevertheless still rely on the same West/East binary. Minces'
The House of Obedience, issued by the feminist publishing house Zed Press in 1982 (the
original French version was published in 1980), paints Muslim women as essentially oppressed
through the Arab familial system[28] with the veil as a symbol of that oppression. Croutier's
Harem, published in 1989, focuses on exploring the reconstructed world of the Ottoman
harems as the source of women's oppression. For her, the veil represents the harem system
of segregated space. Finally Fernea's In Search of Islamic Feminism, published in 1998,
is the autobiographical account of the author's travels around parts of the Arab and Muslim
worlds in a personal attempt to establish the strengths and weaknesses of indigenous
feminisms in constant comparison to her own Western model. In particular I have chosen to
analyse one incident in which Fernea recollects her experiences in filming a Moroccan
bathhouse scene that aired in an English television series titled Disappearing Worlds[29].
Fernea figuratively parts the veil and reveals the otherwise hidden and - according to her
script - fast fading personal lives of Moroccan women in their most intimate moments with
each other.
The House of Obedience: Women in Arab Society
Juliette Minces prefaces her work telling the reader that the experience she gained
observing women in various countries across the African and Asian continents, gives her
the ability to "situate the Arab world fairly precisely, both in terms of the Muslim world
as a whole and in terms of the non-Muslim parts of the Third World."[30] Thus, from the very
beginning, Minces relies on a split between her as the scientific observer and the object of
her focus: the women of the collapsed and categorised singular Arab[31] world: as if there
exists a singular Arab world about which it is possible to talk with any meaning.
This appeal to credibility as the independent, unbiased observer faithfully reporting
the impartial results of her work is one of the foundational pillars of Orientalism
resulting from the influence of the Enlightenment notion of the disinterested state
of the scientist as the highest excellence in pursuit of an objective Truth. Although
Minces attempts to make the disclaimer that she attempted to avoid using her Western
experience as the central criterion, she goes on to do exactly that by using the notion
of the universalised Western "project of emancipation"[32] by which to judge her constructed
Arab Muslim world. This centring of West, making the western feminist the universal
subject, can be seen in the language Minces chooses to use: particularly in her references
to "we" and "us" (implying her intended audience is 'fellow' Western
feminists and
certainly not the pathetic creatures she describes as Muslim women[33]) as opposed to
"them" and "this society".
Another aspect of the centralising discourse can be found in the use of a time-line in
which the Muslim woman remains part of a static objective reality as opposed to the West
which progresses in time, functioning as the standard mark by which to judge everything
external to itself[34]. Minces writes:
while women elsewhere gradually liberated themselves - to some extent - from the total
supremacy of men, most women in the Muslim world continued to be totally subordinate.
They live under a system which has barely changed despite the undeniable evolution of their
societies ...[35]
It is particularly striking to notice the collapsing generalisations made by Minces.
According to her "most" Muslim women live under "a" system for which she
blames the
strength of religious law that pervades the totality of Muslim lives. As I mentioned
above, Mohja Kahf, pointed out that the depiction of Muslim women is far from being a
timeless, eternal truth and is instead a product of the discursive techniques employed
in a given moment. Here, Minces wishes to present the Muslim woman as the oppressed,
silent victim of Islamic patriarchy[36]; and this caricature is given authority by being
presented as the single, encompassing truth about the reality of (most) Muslim women's
lives that spans generations of time, cultures and countries.
Minces condenses centuries deep layers of cultures, laws, texts and practices into
generalised paraphrases of what Muslims think and do: usually presented in the worst,
and most oppressive light. For Minces, all Arabs and Muslims have "an almost identical
vision of women"[37] furthermore "this society", she writes, again depicting a solitary,
monolithic culture, "has produced a specific mentality amongst women, which is common
to all subject creatures"[38] (my emphasis). All Muslim women are hypocritical, deceitful
and duplicitous[39] and (using circular reasoning) it is by these characteristics that
Muslim women are identified as non-Western. The result, is that in order for women
in the Muslim world to be truly liberated, they must free themselves of their own nature.
Thus, not only is Minces' Muslim woman oppressed in the past and present: if she remains
herself, she is eternally condemned oppressed in the future.
It is only with the destruction of indigenous Islam and adoption of Westernisation that
will ensure true liberty, progress and modernity, according to Minces. This two-part plan
(destruction of 'Islamic culture' and adoption of all things Western) is suggested in a
number of places in the text. First where Minces equates liberation with drinking alcohol,
eating pork and having pre-marital relationships[40], and a "weakened
religious observance,
especially the dietary interdicts and the period of abstinence during Ramadan"[41],
secondly
where Minces directly equates progress with the process of Westernisation. She notes the
secularisation of Turkey and pre-revolutionary Iran as what was "universally considered to
be progress, namely an imitation of the West"[42] and favourably describes
immigrant Muslim
women as beginning the adoption of "the Western lifestyle"[43] which
involves being "free to
go out, receive friends and even find work for themselves."[44] So, while
segregation and
backwardness are painted as inherently Islamic practices, being free to move and work in
public becomes inherently Western. This is one of the great myths of Orientalism: that
all things progressive, modern, superior, good etc. are inherently Western and therefore
the Western culture should be adopted by non-Western peoples.
Leila Ahmed notes that despite centuries of androcentrism and misogyny in the
Euro-centric world:
Western feminists do not therefore call for the abandonment of the
entire Western heritage and the wholesale adoption of some other culture as the only
recourse for Western women; rather, they engage critically and constructively with
that heritage on its own terms.[45]
Therefore, Minces' call for Westernisation is a false one. While it is possible
to speak meaningfully as to what extent elements (for example: freedom of speech;
right to self-determination or equality of women and men) exist within a given
society; the elements themselves are not attributes inherently identifiable to
a specific culture.
It is worth noting that the same mistake is made when simply reversing the
binary and positing Islamic culture as the source of all good, and the West as
the source of all evil, as is often posited in Islamist rhetoric. This reverse
polarisation still perpetuates the myth of sharply divided West/East (or Islam)
ascribing positive and negative attributes as inherently defining of each
culture[46].
However, because Minces' theories rest on the sharp division between the West
and the Arab (or Islamic) world, two symbols have been chosen by her to stand
for Muslim women and the oppression they face from the sexually obsessed and
frustrated[47], indulged[48], faithless[49] and
naturally oppressive Muslim man: "female
genital cutting"[50], a discussion of which is outside the scope of this paper, and
the veil. "The veil is one of the key symbols of women's position in the Muslim
world"[51] writes Minces. She blames the spread of the practice on the transformation
of village life and as a way of reacting to the West. Although there are elements
of truth to this notion, the most interesting aspect of Minces' description of
Muslim women's veiling is the reference to the common Orientalist notion that
underneath the veil, all sorts of dark and duplicitous notions are entertained.
In some of the less puritanical countries, the veil actually enables certain
women to carry on illicit amorous intrigues without running the risk of being
recognized. Morocco is often mentioned in this context.[52]
The deceptive nature of the veiled Muslim woman trope, is a resounding feature
of Orientalist fantasising. As the veiled Muslim woman represents the hidden
East - the object Orientalists desire to penetrate to discover all the mysterious
and exotic pearls of knowledge - it is a source of eternal frustration that the
Orientalist can never quite grasp the essence of what lies behind the veil.
Therefore, the Muslim woman is painted as duplicitous, vaporous, hiding the
prize out of revenge or spite[53]. This is also one of the themes expressed in
the next text I will discuss.
Harem: The World Behind the Veil
Alev Lytle Croutier's book published nine years after Minces, in 1989,
contains a collection of Orientalist artwork and photography along with a
descriptive narrative that seeks to explore the "mysterious, beautiful, and
unbelievably repressive world concealed for so many centuries behind the
veil"[54]: the harem[55]. Like Minces, Croutier
constructs a West/East binary,
separated by time and geographical space, as the objects of Croutier's attention
are the long since dead women of the Ottoman seraglios. Setting herself the
project of reconstructing the life of the sequestered odalisque[56] Croutier
establishes in the beginning her Western feminist credentials. She writes:
I returned [to Istanbul], carrying new baggage with me: an expatriate's eye and
a self-conscious awareness of art history and of feminist rhetoric. It was not
surprising, then, that I found myself fascinated with the recently opened harem
apartments of Topkapi Palace - the Grand Seraglio, or the Sublime Porte, as it was
known in the West.[57]
Taking on the role of the Orientalist voyeur Croutier's lifting of the veil
is doubly figurative, both in that the objects of her gaze are the hidden women
who exist behind the veiled space of the harem; but also because she attempts to
glimpse lives that no longer exist. In a sense however, Croutier's women never
did exist: she is not reconstructing real-life women, but the Orientalist fantasy
of them. She notes in the preface herself, that the material from which she
reconstructed their story, apart from a small smattering of primary sources,
came from "fragments - romanticized descriptions of the imperial harem by
Western travelers, writers and diplomats"[58].
Like Minces, Croutier uses massive generalisations encompassing broad
time spans, cultures and histories. According to her, "Islam holds women
in particularly low esteem"[59], a Muslim wife "has no
rights"[60] and all "men
are by nature polygamous"[61]. This last assertion is justified by pointing
to the apparent lack of polyandrous societies. But Leila Ahmed points out
that pre-Islamic Arabs did practice polyandry[62] and Naomi Wolf quotes Evelyn
Reed, Elaine Morgan and others as dismissing "sociobiological assertions of
innate male polygamy and female monogomy."[63]
Also, Croutier uses the 'deceptive veiled Muslim woman' motif quoting Gerard de
Nerval who describes the veil as a mask which is alleged to permit them (the
veiled Muslim women) to publicly hide their illicit sexual exploits with lovers[64].
What is interesting in the constant Orientalist cross-referencing[65] of this motif,
is the emphasis on the sexual nature of the illicit acts supposedly performed by
these women. There is scant attention to the plethora of other possible acts of
immorality the women could perform while masked (like thieving, impersonating someone
else, even murder); the focus is entirely on the possibility of the sexuality of the
Muslim woman, which is otherwise denied by the use of the veil. It is worth noting
that, in connection with the Iranian revolution, some writers have suggested that the
long black chador[66] disguised heavily armed revolutionary protestors. But in this
depiction, the object of attention is not the feminised passive Orient waiting to
be penetrated which allows the motif to be discarded in this particular instance.
The figurative lifting of the veil to unmask the hidden Muslim woman is, however,
a key feature of the last text I shall discuss.
In Search of Islamic Feminism: One Woman's Global Journey
Elizabeth Fernea's 1998 book is loosely an autobiographical narrative of her search
for indigenous feminisms in parts of the Arab and Muslim worlds. Although entirely
more sophisticated than either of the previous texts analysed in this paper, it is
the story of Fernea's filming of a Moroccan bath scene that puts her in the role of
Orientalist voyeur like Croutier before her. This time, instead of attempting to
capture the lost lives of the Ottoman Muslim odalisques, it is the vanishing culture
of African women that are the object of attention.
This disappearing, vanishing, or lost aspect to Muslim women is the temporal
version of the hidden, veiled Muslim woman. If the Muslim woman cannot be made to go
through the process of unveiling literally, then she is made to unveil through the process
of discovery and subsequent possession of knowledge about her state of being.
It is with a Moroccan novelist, Leila Abouzeid, that Fernea discusses the
shooting of a notorious bathhouse scene[67] as part of her film: Some Women of
Marrakech. What is interesting to note is the artificial construction of the scene.
Fernea and the film crew had rented the bathhouse in order to ensure that only the
women who knew what they were getting themselves into[68] would be filmed, but the
parallel with the French colonial studio-made postcards is inescapable. Precisely
because they could not visually penetrate the veiled female Algerian public, French
colonials attempted a substitution by artificially staging images of Algerian women
in various states of undress in the studio, photographing them to produce postcards
which could be sent through the post back to France[69]. Likewise, Fernea's bathhouse
scene was the substitution of a staged artifice, despite Fernea's surmised reason
for Moroccan objections that the film was too real and clashed with an officially
accepted public projection of Moroccan prosperity.
Conclusion
Looking at examples from these three texts by Western feminists, a number of key
features emerge. Western feminist focus on issues such as veiling, as part of an
Orientalist pursuit, constructs the Muslim woman as a passive figure: she is not
allowed to speak for herself. This takes attention away from the real lives of
Muslim women and the real oppressions that they might face. In turn, because of
the Orientalist project of this genre of Western feminism, the word "feminist"
itself is hijacked and used as a term of derision against indigenous women's
rights activists implying that their arguments are imported Westernisms, not
authentic to 'local' culture, and thus can be rejected.
Another key feature is the obsession with lifting the veil (literally or figuratively)
and discovering the secrets of the hidden Muslim woman. Like all binaries, in which
the subject is defined by the object, a split is performed between the liberated, not
veiled Western woman and the oppressed, veiled Muslim woman. Therefore, the Western
feminist writing about the Muslim woman takes on a coded male role: penetrating and
taking control of the feminised, passive and silent Muslim woman. This essentialises
the Muslim woman to her oppression, just as Tahirih - who as a flesh and blood woman
was a complex figure: a poet; scholar; religious leader; daughter; mother; wife;
revolutionary; martyr and more - ends up in as a fairy tale of a beautiful woman
whose defining moment (with which she is forever linked) is to reveal herself to
an audience of men.
top
Notes
[1]The female name Tahirih is a derivative of the Arabic for: pure, chaste, virtuous.
See Wehr, Hans. A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic. Ed. J. Milton Cowan. 3rd ed. (New York: Spoken
Language Services Inc., 1976) 570-571.
[2]Effendi, Shoghi. God Passes By. (Wilmette: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1957) 75.
[3]A legal doctor who can pronounce decisions on legal or theological matters. See Wehr 143.
[4]Effendi 7.
[5]Babism01
[6]Most of what is available in English about Tahirih's life is contained in hagiographies
such as Memorials of the Faithful; The Dawn-Breakers; God Passes By and Rábi'a the Mystic and Her
Fellow-Saints in Islám. As for an academic treatise, Negar Mottahedeh has written "Ruptured Spaces
and Effective Histories" which looks at the Islamic significance of Tahirih's unveiling in the
garden conference at Badasht particularly in regard to rejection of gendered division of space
which constituted a definitive Babi break with Islam. (See Works Cited list for full bibliographic
details of works mentioned here.)
[7]She was also called Zarrin-Taj or "Crown of Gold". Blomfield [Sitárih Khánum].
The Chosen Highway. (Wilmette: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1975) 27.
[8]The Dawn-Breakers: Nabíl's Narrative of the Early Days of the Bahá'í Revelation.
Trans. Shoghi Effendi. 1st British ed. (London: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1975) 57.
[9]A fully fleshed definition for 'Western' feminist that I use in this paper occurs in
the body of the text. However it is worth noting here that to categorise all feminists who write
representing trends in various western feminisms as belonging to the same (Orientalist) genre, is
to make the mistake that is made by those who would paint all Muslim women as belonging to the same
monolithic category of "oppressed Other". As such I deal with one particular trend in feminism and
have labelled it here as 'Western' feminist. To facilitate reading of the text I have removed the
single quotation marks that make this caveat after the initial use of the label.
[10]Originally in Said, Edward W. Orientalism. Reprint. with new afterword.
(London: Penguin Books Ltd., 1995).
[11]There is some conflagration between the labels "Arab", "Muslim" and "Middle
Eastern" however they are variously used in these texts to denote the same stereotypically Orientalised and
Othered woman that is not-Western.
[12]Minces, Juliette. The House of Obedience: Women in Arab Society. Trans.
Michael Pallis. Trans. ed. (London: Zed Press, 1982).
[13]Croutier, Alev Lytle. Harem: The World Behind the Veil. (New York: Abbeville Press, 1989).
[14]Fernea, Elizabeth Warnock. In Search of Islamic Feminism: One Woman's Global Journey.
(New York: Anchor Books Doubleday, 1998).
[15]Yegenoglu, Meyda. Colonial Fantasies: Towards a Feminist Reading of Orientalism.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) 3.
[16]Yegenoglu 11.
[17]In fact, Fadwa El Guindi points out that it is imprecise to refer to use the
English word 'veil' to refer to Muslim women's coverings, particularly in light of the heavy
weight of meanings indigenous to the English language that are incorrectly foisted on to the
various Arabic and Muslim words. See Guindi, Fadwa El. "Hijáb". The Oxford Encyclopedia of the
Modern Islamic World. Ed. John L. Esposito. Vol. 2. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995) 108-111
and Guindi, Fadwa El. Veil: Modesty, Privacy and Resistance. (Oxford: Berg, 1999) 31-32.
[18]A Muslim woman's intimates are her husband and the categories of people to whom
marriage is forbidden including her father; father-in-law; son; stepson; brother; foster-brother
by a shared wet-nurse; nephew; maternal uncle; paternal uncle; grandfather; other women; household
slaves, or servants (eunuchs) and young children.
See Qur'an an-Nur 24:31. Al-Qur'an: A Contemporary Translation. Trans. Ahmed Ali.
Revised ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988) 301.
[19]Woman's section of a Muslim house. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current
English. Ed. J.B. Sykes. 7th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987) 455. The anglicised
harem is derived from the Arabic haram meaning: forbidden, prohibited, sanctuary. It carries strong
connotations of sacredness ie. the most holy place in Islam, the qibla to which Muslims turn in
direction for formal prayer, is called "albayt alharaam" (the Holy House). See Wehr 171-172.
This point is discussed by Fadwa El Guindi 95-96 where she writes:
The concept of sanctuary that connects sacred places, like mosques and pilgrimage
centers, also applies to women, women's quarters, and family - a connection that brings out
the significance of the idea of sanctity in these contexts. The veil, veiling patterns and
veiling behavior are therefore, according to my analysis of Arab culture, about sacred
privacy, sanctity and the rhythmic interweaving of patterns of worldly and sacred life ...
[20]Said 5.
[21]Said 2-3.
[22]Yegenoglu 2.
[23]Yegenoglu 99.
[24]Kahf, Mohja. Western Representations of the Muslim Woman: From Termagant to Odalisque. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999) 2.
[25]Harem; Turkish palace. The Concise Oxford 960.
[26]Mohanty, Chandra. "Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses".
Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism. Ed. Chandra Mohanty et al. (Bloominton: Indiana University Press, 1991).
[27]Kandiyoti, Deniz. "Contemporary Feminist Scholarship and Middle East Studies". Gendering the Middle East: Emerging Perspectives. Ed. Deniz Kandiyoti. (London: I.B. Tauris Publishers, 1996).
[28]As pointed out in Mohanty 55.
[29]Also in the United States as part of the PBS Odyssey series. Fernea 65.
[30]Minces vii.
[31]Although Minces does state that she intended to deal with Arab women in particular, she conflagrates Arab and Muslim into one essentialised non-Western Other.
[32]Weedon, Chris. Feminism, Theory and the Politics of Difference. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999) 110.
[33]Said notes:
None of the Orientalists I write about seems ever to have intended an Oriental as a reader. The discourse of Orientalism, its internal consistency and rigorous procedures, were all designed for readers and consumers in the metropolitan West.
Said 336.
[34]The point was made by Yegenoglu who writes: "The essential difference between the East and the West is premised on this temporal lag." Yegenoglu 98-99.
[35]Minces 14.
[36]Because Minces bends over backward to portray Muslim women in the most degraded and pitiful way, she makes
fundamental errors. One example occurs on page 36, where she tells the reader that the Muslim man develops a deep revulsion
towards women justified in particular by the practice of purity rituals after sexual contact and the ban "on embracing or
even desiring a woman during Ramadan". What Minces fails to take into account is that according to all Islamic legal schools
(and indeed she fails even to note the existence of varying legal schools at all, collapsing 1400 years of doctrinal and
legal adjudication into one omnipresent "Islamic law"), ritual purity laws regarding sexual contact apply equally to men
and women both without prejudice. A Muslim woman is required to wash herself after having had sexual contact with a man
before she can perform the relevant religious rites, just as does a Muslim man. Furthermore, it would be a mistake to
characterise purity rituals simply as a type of sexual obsession: Muslims are required to perform ablutions in all sorts
of contexts including after sleep, passing wind, giving birth and so on. As for the fasting period during the month of
Ramadan: the sawm is practised to encourage abstinence from any type of material desire (whether it is for food, money
or sex) for a specified time. While it is beyond the scope of this paper to go into all the intricacies of the various
legal pronouncements of the Islamic schools on this point, it is safe to say: given that the laws of abstinence apply
equally to women and men, it is fallacious reasoning to presuppose that this engenders hatred and revulsion from the
Muslim man towards the Muslim woman on this account. This is just one example of how Minces contracts the Muslim
woman into an icon of oppression and backwardness. For a summary of the positions of the four Sunni schools on the
issues of ritual purification and fasting, please refer to Sabiq, As-Sayyid. Fiqh us-Sunnah: at-Tahara and as-Salah.
Trans. Muhammad Sa'eed Dabas and Jamal al-Din M. Zarabozo. Vol. I. (Indianapolis: American Trust Publications, 1991) and Sabiq,
As-Sayyid. Fiqh us-Sunnah: az-Zakah and as-Siyam. Trans. Muhammad Sa'eed Dabas and Jamal al-Din M. Zarabozo. Vol. III.
(Indianapolis: American Trust Publications, 1991).
[37]Minces 23.
[38]Minces 44.
[39]Minces 44.
[40]Minces 49.
[41]Minces 85.
[42]Minces 24.
[43]Minces 46.
[44]Minces 46.
[45]Ahmed, Leila. Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate.
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992) 128.
[46]Yegenoglu points this out and writes:
Derrida proposes a two-step strategy to deconstruct the binary structure.
The first moment is to reverse the hierarchy by re-valuing the de-valued or subordinate "other" term.
However, this is not sufficient, because reversal in itself does not come to terms with the domination of the
first term and it leaves the binary structure unquestioned. A second step is necessary to break the structure
apart: this is the procedure of displacement. Displacement is the operation of locating the subordinate term
into the heart of the dominant one. It is through displacement that the dependence of the subject on the other
is made explicit.
Yegenoglu 7.
[47]Minces 34-38.
[48]Minces 35.
[49]Minces 75.
[50]Also described as "female genital mutilation", and as Mince refers to it: female "circumcision".
[51]Minces 49.
[52]Minces 51.
[53]This is the point Yegenoglu makes when she writes:
By posing and presupposing that the veil is hiding something, concealing some ungraspable essence,
the subject turns the veil into a mask. ... The grand narrative of colonial gaze is a deaf tropology of the veil,
made up of tales of unveiling, fantasies of penetrating the inaccessible world of the other, the metaphysics of
discovering her truth, fantasies of domesticating and reforming and thus controlling her.
Yegenoglu 58.
[54]Croutier 13.
[55]In the edition to which I had access, the bracketed Arabic text  (which occurs in the
middle of English text) was written upside down as in: 
[56]Eastern female slave or concubine, especially in the Turkish Sultan's seraglio. See The Concise Oxford 703.
[57]Croutier 11.
[58]Croutier 13.
[59]Croutier 20.
[60]Croutier 20.
[61]Croutier 20.
[62]Ahmed, Leila 44.
[63]Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women. (London: Vintage Books, 1991) 13.
[64]Croutier 79.
[65]The creation of the Orient through the discourse of Orientalism - the constant cross-referencing of Orientalist
texts with each other - is discussed in Said 67 and Yegenoglu 20-22.
[66]Large one-piece outer covering that is draped over the head and body.
[67]Fernea 65-68.
[68]Fernea stresses it was the women themselves who had invited the bathhouse filming.
[69]It was Malek Alloula who collected a study of the French colonial postcards.
Fadwa El Guindi discusses their "colonial violence" in Guindi 22-25.
top
Works Cited
Ahmed, Leila. Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.
Al-Qur'an: A Contemporary Translation. Trans. Ahmed Ali. Revised ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988.
Bahá, 'Abdu'l. Memorials of the Faithful. Wilmette: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1997.
Blomfield [Sitárih Khánum]. The Chosen Highway. Wilmette: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1975.
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English. Ed. J.B. Sykes. 7th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Croutier, Alev Lytle. Harem: The World Behind the Veil. New York: Abbeville Press, 1989.
The Dawn-Breakers: Nabíl's Narrative of the Early Days of the Bahá'í Revelation. Trans. Shoghi Effendi.
1st British ed. London: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1975.
Effendi, Shoghi. God Passes By. Wilmette: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1957.
Fernea, Elizabeth Warnock. In Search of Islamic Feminism: One Woman's Global Journey.
New York: Anchor Books Doubleday, 1998.
Guindi, Fadwa El. "Hijáb". The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World. Ed. John L.
Esposito. Vol. 2. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Guindi, Fadwa El. Veil: Modesty, Privacy and Resistance. Oxford: Berg, 1999.
Kahf, Mohja. Western Representations of the Muslim Woman: From Termagant to Odalisque. Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1999.
Kandiyoti, Deniz. "Contemporary Feminist Scholarship and Middle East Studies". Gendering the
Middle East: Emerging Perspectives. Ed. Deniz Kandiyoti. London: I.B. Tauris Publishers, 1996.
Minces, Juliette. The House of Obedience: Women in Arab Society. Trans. Michael Pallis.
Trans. ed. London: Zed Press, 1982.
Mohanty, Chandra. "Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses". Third
World Women and the Politics of Feminism. Ed. Chandra Mohanty et al. Bloominton: Indiana University Press, 1991.
Mottahedeh, Negar. "Ruptured Spaces and Effective Histories: The Unveiling of the Babi Poetess
Qurrat al-'Ayn Tahirih in the Gardens of Badasht". Occasional Papers in Shaykhi, Babi and Baha'i Studies.
2.2 (Feb. 1998). 8 Nov. 2000. http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~bahai/bhpapers/vol2/ruptured.htm.
Sabiq, As-Sayyid. Fiqh us-Sunnah: at-Tahara and as-Salah. Trans. Muhammad Sa'eed Dabas and Jamal
al-Din M. Zarabozo. Vol. I. Indianapolis: American Trust Publications, 1991.
Sabiq, As-Sayyid. Fiqh us-Sunnah: az-Zakah and as-Siyam. Trans. Muhammad Sa'eed Dabas and Jamal
al-Din M. Zarabozo. Vol. III. (Indianapolis: American Trust Publications, 1991).
Said, Edward W. Orientalism. Reprint. with new afterword. London: Penguin Books Ltd., 1995.
Smith, Margaret. Rábi'a the Mystic and Her Fellow-Saints in Islám: Being the Life and Teachings of
Rábi'a al-'Adawiyya Al-Qaysiyya of Basra together with some account of the place of the women saints
in Islám. Reissued ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
Weedon, Chris. Feminism, Theory and the Politics of Difference. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999.
Wehr, Hans. A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic. Ed. J. Milton Cowan. 3rd ed. New York:
Spoken Language Services Inc., 1976.
Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women. London: Vintage Books, 1991.
Yegenoglu, Meyda. Colonial Fantasies: Towards a Feminist Reading of Orientalism. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998.
top
|
