globalizing gender and sexuality

yale university fall 2014, spring 2016 professor vanessa agard-jones

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“I use the term ‘Muslim women’s rights’ ... because, as I said from the outset, the notion that there is such a thing and the work and debates framed in terms of this concept have become commonsensical.”

- Do Muslim Women Need Saving? (p. 147)

To what extent is Lila Abu-Lughod re-inscribing the myth of IslamLand with this approach? To what extent does her project of complicating what we think of when we think of “Muslim women’s rights” justify this move? At what point along a timeline or spectrum of emancipatory language does this put her?

- APD

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The Rise of the Islamic Feminists

Muslim women are fighting for their rights from within Islamic tradition, rather than against it.

"She quotes fluently from the Qur’an, is familiar with Islamic law, invokes precedents from early Muslim history, writes sophisticated articles on the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), arranges conferences on Google Calendar, conducts online surveys, and draws from a wide range of experiences of organizing for change.” 

- Do Muslim Women Need Saving? (p. 202)

I wonder about the extent to which we can talk about the rise of “Islamic feminist” movement without reinforcing the concept of IslamLand that Lila Abu-Lughod disdains so much. 

- APD

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“ ‘People kill their own flesh and blood to satisfy backward tribal values and traditions that are by no means related to religion’ ... Attractive as they are, these views must be put in the context of the wider liberal politics of dialogue and tolerance represented by cosmopolitan youth like him.”

- Do Muslim Women Need Saving? (p. 128)

I’m including this quote because of the sign’s ambiguous meaning. Is it a defiant attempt to “write against culture” and establish that violence against women in Muslim-majority societies isn’t a sign of religio-cultural inferiority? Is it an attempt to accuse locals who commit violence of operating against their culture? Who is the audience, and how does that complicate the message?

- APD

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“In another conversation, we had a year later, she defended Islam in general. She insisted that Islam says that women are free to work and free to go to school” 

CMD 

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Image Source: Popartic/dreamstime.com 

-ANW

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“a universalizing term like ‘rights’ accumulates meanings form multiple sources...when a woman asserted or claimed her ‘rights,’ one simply does not know what register she was using, which meaning(s) of rights she was referencing, or whether in fact these all inflected each other, producing a dense sense of rights” (169). - Lila Abu-Lughod

Image Source: earla.org

-ANW

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Check out this report published by Musawah!

-ANW

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One thing that I did not know about was the occurrence of honor killings in the US and the west in general and this is a really interesting ( and problematic) documentary about a killing in the US that was dabbed an honor killing. 

CMD

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I was a bit curious as to what repressed memories actually are and whether they are valid or not after Abu-Lughod said they were unreliable. Her statement seemed problematic, and although this article doesn’t give a full picture of the debate surrounding repressed memories, it does provide some context. 

-CV

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Women scholars in Egypt reflect on the intersection of Islam and feminism

Islamic feminists in many Muslim-majority countries have spent years studying and interpreting Islamic texts, especially the passages concerning divorce, inheritance and child custody. In Egypt, three women scholars discuss their new interpretations of Islamic law.

-CV

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“In assuming the uniformity of such practices, popular narratives affix values of individualism, freedom, humanity, tolerance, and liberalism nearly onto the West while denying them to others, despite the actual distribution of acts of inhumanity, intolerance, and illiberalism across many societies,” (Abu-Lughod, Lila 128)

Image: INFOGR.AM

-CV

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Abu-Lughod mentions erotic orientalism in her book. This is a great paper that dives outside of the pulp nonfiction and into classical art. It’s short and there are so many pictures on every page (it’s the little things).

- JWC

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“Things can  go wrong for people everywhere. Some fathers are violent, some brothers commit incest, there are men who kill their wives and lovers on suspicion, and there are families and marriages that are dysfunctional and abusive. “Honor cultures” do not have a monopoly on violence against women” (126) - Abu-Lughod

First photo: UN News Report 

Second photo: HuffPo Analysis

- JWC

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Equality in the Muslim Family

Musawah is a global movement for equality and justice in the Muslim family.

Abu-Lughod mentioned Musawah as a Muslim feminist organization creating change on their own terms. Here is a link to their site!

- JWC

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“The honor crime gives legitimacy and resilience not just to all the mechanisms of regulation, surveillance, and mass mediation intrinsic to modern state power but also to the specific forms and forums of contemporary transnational governance, whether neoliberal economic institutions or humanitarian intervention of the feminist or military sort” ~ Abu-Lughod, Do Muslim Women Need Saving?, pg. 135-6.

Does modern (Westernized) statehood end up creating the cultural pattern of the honor crime, out of individualized instances of domestic violence?

Image: http://sites.tufts.edu/anth27h/honor-killing-today/

-EAH

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Just last month, a Polish magazine published a cover story with these photos.  How can Europe create a positive environment for Middle Eastern refugees if there is such deep seated racism as that revealed in these fear-mongering magazine photos?  This is a case of white men being called in to save brown AND white women from brown men (e.g. the disembodied arms).  This is horrifying.

Image: http://www.buzzfeed.com/krishrach/a-magazine-published-this-cover-depicting-the-islamic-rape-o#.vsKxdRKMd

-EAH

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