Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?

All of us reading this blog right now come from different backgrounds. We all have different stories, perspectives and opinions. But despite our differences, I think we can agree that we all want justice for women. We want women to be free, and given the right to live out the lives they envision for themselves. But are we okay with the fact that someone else’s version of freedom might look different than ours?

The reading “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?” brought to light this terrible idea, that I would be a liar if I said I have never been guilty of thinking, that in order for Muslim women to be free or liberated or happy they must look, act, and dress like “us.” Defining the “freeness” of a woman in terms of apparel is taking such a complex historical, political, and global issue and trying to fix it by suggesting she wear other clothing.

Not to make light of the oppressiveness that does exist behind laws that encroach on individual freedoms by controlling what a woman must wear, but to acknowledge that suggesting that veiling is “the quintessential sign of women’s unfreedom,” as Lila Abu-Lughod writes, is just as damaging to the rights of women. 

By focusing so heavily on the “culture” and religious beliefs of Muslim women, we are looking for religion-centric answers to political and historical questions, which Abu-Lughod explains only drives the wedge deeper between this idea of “us versus them.” By ignoring the historical development of a region, and failing to look at what involvement we as a country have had in said development, we’re failing to understand what is actually needed from us if we want to support Muslim feminism.

The question “can we only free afghan women to be like us or might we have to recognize that even after “liberation” from the Taliban, they might want different things than we would want for them?” is one I feel should be considered by any person involved in women’s rights. The notion that the whole world wants to be American is rooted so deeply in the propaganda of a lot of western feminism that it is almost hard to consider that other’s may not want the same things we do.

In the writing she mentions that the main issue the burqa presents is “how to deal with cultural ‘others.’” And I believe that is true. It is easy to latch on to one text book definition of what feminism is, what being a woman looks like, or what freedom means, when in reality there are so many factors that cause it to differ drastically in different contexts.

  I think the core message in her writing can be drawn from her question “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 understanding of the world?”

Such a seemingly obvious statement, that it is not every Muslim woman’s deepest desire to be like American women, is one that I think deserves more attention by western feminist's, as well as media. Instead of focusing on spreading American ideals, and what we may consider to be the "correct" way of doing things, maybe we should focus more on the fact that we can have a common destination, but our paths may look different. 

 We all want justice, we want women to be free, and given the right to live out the lives that they envision for themselves, but are we okay with the fact that someone else’s version of freedom might look different than ours? That the lives that they want to live may not be the same as the lives we want to live? That maybe there is no universal answer to what feminism looks like?