Open Democracy - 6 November 2014
Colonial feminism is based on the appropriation of women’s rights in the
service of empire and has been widely utilised in justifying aggression
in the Middle East. But is it liberal?
In a recent CNN interview,
religion scholar Reza Aslan was asked by journalist Alisyn Camerota if Islam is violent given the “primitive treatment in Muslim
countries of women and other minorities.” Aslan responded by stating that the
conditions for women in Muslim majority countries vary. While women cannot
drive in Saudi Arabia,
elsewhere in various Muslim majority countries, women have been elected heads
of states 7 times. But, before he could finish his sentence pointing out that
the US
is yet to elect a woman as president, he was interrupted by co-host Don Lemon
who declared: “Be honest though, Reza, for the most part it is not a free and
open society for women in those states.”
How is it that
people like Camerota and Lemon, who very likely have never travelled to “free
and open” Turkey, Lebanon or Bangladesh, or read the scholarship on women’s
rights struggles in Morocco, Iran and Egypt, seem to know with complete
certainty that women are treated “primitively” in “Muslim countries”? On what
basis does Lemon believe that he has the authority to call Aslan out for
supposed dishonesty? How is it that with little or no empirical evidence on
women’s rights in Muslim majority countries (which vary widely based on
country, regions within a country, social class, the history and nature of
national liberation movements, the part played by Islam in political movements
etc.) Western commentators routinely make such proclamations about women and
Islam?
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