Double critiques

In Juliet A. Williams' "Unholy Matrimony? Feminism, Orientalism, and the Possibility of Double Critique" the author initiates a study where she compares Western marital culture to those in Islamic societies in order to challenge the "othering" Western media has done to Islamic women and cultures.
Williams initially critiques her own ignorance and judgement towards her mother-in-law as a result of her internalized liberal rhetoric to tolerance. Her mother-in-law, according to Williams, lives a contradicting life that she cannot understand through her Westernized ideologies which prove more prejudice than "liberal." Williams becomes particularly conflicted with her "traditional" and "progressive" social perspectives when her mother-in-law demands Williams and her husband to sigheh. Initially, she rejects the idea as she recalls its cultural history and assumes her mother-in-law has similar intentions, but realizes her feminist critiques led "to a recapitulation of stereotyped judgements about the sexual oppression of women in Islamic societies" (615).  In critiquing orientalism, Williams provides a double critique which not only critiques orientalist discourse of Western ideology, but how the orientalist discourse depicts the West as a determinant of moral and social ways of life. The way that marriage in Islamic societies is portrayed in news reporting ultimately suggests that Western marital practices are the "normative ideal against which other marriage forms are judged when it comes to news reporting" (Williams 623).

Williams' text continues on this semester's theme of Western eroticizing and othering of bodies that don't conform to Western cultures. Both authors critique different layers of Western feminism in order to humanize Muslim women and change popular, and yet limiting, discourse regarding their freedoms. It seems that Western feminism overlooks our own problems which are extremely similar to those in third world or secularist countries. Ultimately, the authors want to shift away from over-generalizations that suppress Islamists into one melting pot.

In Afsaneh Najmabadi's text (Un)Veiling Feminism, the author historicizes secularism, nationalism, and feminism in Iran in order to reconfigure these terms. Najmabadi starts her text by clarifying that (un)veiling feminism is not about modern practice in Islamic societies, but rather "about how feminism itself may have worked as a veil, about the veiling work of feminism as a boundary marker for secularism of Iranian modernity (29). She makes the distinction that she is not generalizing all Islamic societies as one, but focusing on Iranian feminism. Islamic activists and secularists have created a new dialogue by making women the center of the discourse.  As a result of the blatant rejection of feminism, a hybrid of feminism emerged. The complete disregard seemed to fuel women to unite and reconfigure Islam. These reinterpretations were public and since the audience included citizens, rather than teachers and preachers, it helped establish legitimacy. Public Iranian Islamic discourse shifted to have women's needs at the center of reinterpretation as a result of the modernity. This shift created new conversations and established new alliances, but there was backlash from "hard-line" Islamists and secular feminists. A divison between secular and Islamist feminists formed as "hard-line" Islamists and secular feminists demanded "women's rights activists to 'clarify' their position by drawing clear lines between Islam/un-Islam and theocracy/secularism" even thought their reasoning differed from each others' (Najmabadi 32).