Blog Post 1

I am in no position to tell women in different cultures what their freedom is.

I began learning about Muslim Feminisms last semester when I took a Gender and Globalization class at SFSU and was first introduced to intersectional feminism and womanism a few years ago when minoring in Race and Resistance. As a new Feminist, early in my college career, I didn't understand the overlapping identities that result in different privileges and oppressions people experience. I was guilty of a unidimensional perspective of liberation until I began learning about marginalized peoples' perspectives and lives, something we are often not taught in contemporary Western grade school. Chandra Mohanty's "Under Western Eyes" thoroughly critiques normalized mainstream Western ideology and Feminism. It challenged my intersectional feminism to be transnational and challenge my privilege as a Western feminist and challenge how the effects of Western assumptions result in the marginalization and continual oppression of Muslim women. Mohanty's text taught me to think of how Western assumptions of privilege and ignorance of it's effects characterize third world women as "other." Now, my feminism recognizes the multidimensional experiences that call for equitable liberations and empathy, rather than sympathy and condemning.

Reading the chapters from Fatima Mernissi's "The Veil and the Male Elite" gave me personal insight to the contradictions and misconceptions of Islam from an Islamic Feminist's perspective. Mernissi seeks to understand a Hadith that says: "Those who entrust their affairs to a woman will never know prosperity!" Her analysis sheds light on the many complexities, in my understanding, the Islamic religion has. It also made me think of how frustrating and contradictory it is for Islam to have such a bad reputation when Western religions aren't as "peaceful" as they depict themselves to be. This is also similar to how Western culture portrays itself as an all-encompassing way of life and savior.
Mernissi's text highlighted the different forms of patriarchy that occur in different cultures. The patriarchy Muslim women face is different than the patriarchy I face on many levels, but it doesn't mean one is more oppressive than the other; it just calls for equitable social justice. Learning about false Hadiths was completely new to me. I can only imagine the frustrations they cause and am looking forward to learning more about Islam so I can help change the Islamaphobic culture we live in.

There are radical interpreters in every religion that justify their heinous actions with religion, so why does Islam get such disproportionate negative attention?