March 27, 2003
From here via Karen Hansen posting on Blog Sisters.
The freedom women experience in any particular Arab nation seems to derive from local tradition rather than from the Koran.
I stare through a glass darkly at an exotic culture and my analysis may be flawed. But one point I am certain. To understand the Arab-Muslim woman, I must lay down "the white woman's burden."
This is the feminist version of the "white man's burden" — a theory that was used to justify colonialism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In essence, the theory said that white people had a moral obligation to civilize brown people. The Rudyard Kipling poem in which the term originated was written to justify the British colonization of India.
Western feminists seem to believe they have a moral obligation to save the Arab-Muslim woman by molding her into their own image. But if the oppression of Arab-Muslim women results from local traditions and not from religion or ethnicity, then it is possible to respect Islam and Arabs without disrespecting her.
By abandoning the assumption of superiority, Western feminists can say to the Arab-Muslim woman, "we don't disparage your religion or your ethnic origins. We only want you to have choice."
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Old Comments (1)
dzwonki polifoniczne nokia on 14 Jun 2004
Hmmmmm interesting !!!