The turmoil in Britain over the niqab, a form of
the traditional veil that leaves only a slit for the eyes, has focused on
thorny questions of cultural integration and religious tolerance in
Europe. However, it is also a debate about women and Islam.
For westerners, the veil has long been a symbol of the
oppression of women in the Islamic world. Today, quite a few Muslims
regard it as a symbol of cultural and religious self-assertion and reject
the idea that Muslim women are downtrodden.
In our multicultural age, many liberals are reluctant to
criticise the subjugation of women in Muslim countries and Muslim
immigrant communities, fearful of promoting the notion of western
superiority.
At the other extreme, some critics have used the plight of
Muslim women to suggest that Islam is inherently evil and even to bash
Muslims.
Recently, these tensions turned into a nasty academic
controversy in the United States, as the Chronicle of Higher Education has
reported.
In June, Hamid Dabashi, an Iranian-born professor of
Iranian studies and comparative literature at Columbia University,
published an article in the Egyptian newspaper, Al-Ahram, attacking
Azar Nafisi, Iranian émigré and author of the 2003 best-seller, Reading
Lolita In Tehran.
Nafisi’s memoir is a harsh portrait of life in Iran after
Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic revolution, focusing in particular on the
mistreatment of women, who were stripped of their former rights and
harshly punished for violating strict religious codes of dress and
behaviour.
Complaining that Nafisi’s writings demonise Iran, Dabashi
branded her a "native informer and colonial agent" for American
imperialism. In a subsequent interview he compared her to Lynndie England,
the US soldier convicted of abusing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
While Dabashi’s rhetoric is extreme, it is not unique.
Even in academic feminist groups on the Internet, criticisms of the
patriarchal oppression of women in Muslim countries are often met with
hostility unless accompanied by disclaimers that American women too are
oppressed.
A more thoughtful examination of Islam and women’s rights
was offered earlier this month at a symposium at the American Enterprise
Institute in Washington. The keynote speaker, Syrian American psychiatrist
Wafa Sultan, an outspoken critic of Islam, described an "honour killing"
of a young Middle Eastern woman that occurred with the help of her mother.
In a later exchange, another participant, the Libyan
journalist, Sawsan Hanish argued that it was unfair to single out Muslim
societies since women suffer violence and sexual abuse in every society
including the United States. Sultan pointed out a major difference: In
many Muslim cultures such violence and abuse are accepted and legalised.
Yet the symposium’s moderator, scholar Michael Ledeen,
rejected Sultan’s assertion that Islam is irredeemably anti-woman. He
noted that the idea that some religions cannot be reformed runs counter to
the history of religions.
Several panellists spoke of Muslim feminists’ efforts to
reform Islam and separate its spiritual message from the human patriarchal
baggage. Some of these reformers look for a lost female-friendly legacy in
early Islam, others argue that everything in the Koran that runs counter
to the modern understanding of human rights and equality should be revised
or rejected. These feminists have an uphill battle to fight and they
deserve all the support they can get.
Meanwhile, using the language of tolerance to justify
oppressive practices is a grotesque perversion of liberalism.
The veiling debate is a case in point. No amount of
rhetorical sleight of hand can disguise the fact that the full-face veil
makes women, literally, faceless. Some Muslim women in the West may choose
this garb (which is not mandated in the Koran) but their explanations
often reveal an internalised misogynistic view of women as creatures whose
very existence is a sexual provocation to men. What’s more, their choice
helps legitimise a custom that is imposed on millions of women around the
world who have no choice.
Perhaps, as some say, women are the key to Islam’s
modernisation. The West cannot impose its own solutions from the outside –
but, at the very least, it can honestly confront the problem.
(Cathy Young is a contributing editor at Reason
magazine.
Her column appears regularly in The Boston Globe.)
(Courtesy The Boston Globe.)
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/10/23/opinion/edyoung.php
