Perhaps it’s time for a new question. Can Muslim women save western feminism from its ethnocentrist arrogance?
Recently, the U.K. newspaper The Guardian asked: “Can western feminism save Muslim women?”
For a critical thinker, this question begets many others: Who says an entire group of women, spanning continents, races, generations, sects, etc., need to be “saved”? Saved from what? Saved from whom? If they do need to be saved, why can’t they save themselves? Why must someone else—someone western—save them?
In the last few years, plenty of feminist hawks have popped up, aiming to liberate Muslim women by any means necessary. For many of them, it is not a question of whether western feminism can save Muslim women, it’s how it’s to be done: military intervention, renouncement of Islam, and/or divorce from traditions and culture are common solutions.
In my article, “The Dos and Don’ts of Defending Muslim Women,” I dismantle a lot of the problems and prejudices that are commonly found in feminist hawk discourses. Many of said problems begin with arrogance.
Nesrine Malik, in her article “Don’t be outraged for Muslim women,” puts it pretty well:
“This seems to be the initial turn-off when western feminism comes to the rescue, the blanket assumption that the victim has no volition nor can respond to adversity with the commensurate degree of outrage because she is so accustomed and desensitised to her own subjugation. It is a strange mix of protective sororal sympathy and smugness.” [sic]
This smugness has been around for centuries: the feminist hawk position closely mirrors colonialism. But instead of being the white man’s burden, now it’s the western feminist’s.
Perhaps it’s time for a new question. Can Muslim women save western feminism from its ethnocentrist arrogance?
Fatemeh Fakhraie is Associate Editor of Altmuslimah
