"This image has also become a stereotype because it is simplistic in its pitting supposedly free sisters in the West against wretched victims in Arab countries. Muslim societies are assumed to have sweeping patriarchal structures, while it is claimed that Western societies are pictures of progressive modernity, says Swiss social anthropologist Annemarie Sancar. Neither of these absolute views are correct."
The West's gleeful obsession with "oppressed Arab women"
Further reading:
Islam in Liberalism by Joseph A. Massad
"In his analysis of the emergence of 'military humanitarianism,' David Chandler notes that the development of the NGO regime prevalent in the 1980s focused on 'capacity buidling,' 'empowering,' and 'civil society' (and this is of course in line with the democratisation ideas...that Muslims lack civil society and one has to be created for them to advance democracy), 'as they argued the need for a long-term involvement in society and a sphere of influence independent from the a Third World state.' In their stead, the human rights NGOs cretaed a Thirld World 'hapless victim in distress' that needed to be rescued by the NGOs of the First World who play the role of their 'saviour' from the villain, the non-Western government or state authorities that caused famine and poverty through personal corruption or wrong spending policies or that consciously embarked on a policy of genocide or mass repression.' For those deploying it, the narrative of salvation and rescue, remains consciously or unconsciously, with the Christian tradition and mission underlining it, and a continuation of the history of the capitulations Christian Europe imposed on the Ottomans.
Lila Abu-Lughod [2002] volunteers her Egyptian native informants to authorise her plea to Western feminists: "I have done fieldwork in Egypt over more than 20 years and I cannot think of a single woman I know, from the poorest rural to the most educated cosmopolitan, who has ever expressed envy of US women, women they tend to perceive as bereft of community, vulnerable to sexual violence amd social anomie, driven by individual success rather than morality, or strangely disrespectful of God." Abu-Lughod's plea is contextualised in the American feminist endorsement of the US attack on Afghanistan."
Strangely though, Lughod sees there is a duty for Western feminists to 'help' poor Afghan women. Such a desire for providing "help" has been expressed to me directly by 19-year old white Western students—a raw material trained to carry the mantra of the imperialist ideology of "easing the suffering of the unfit and helpless Other."
Anne Norton (2013) explains the implications of Western women's participation in "the project of liberating–or simply defeating–the Muslim world" on the Western women themselves:
"This rescue mission continues the coupling of the liberal and the Christian missions of salvation as one and the same. Moreover, the governmentalisation of saving and rescuing women renders both the Euro-American and European states and Western and local NGOs the main imperial agents of rescue at the same time as it enjoins the local state to limit its role to the issuance and enforcement of legislation in line with Western norms while forcing it, in line with the neo-liberal order, to withdraw from the provision of economic and social services to the population."
—Massad, Islam in Liberalism, Chicago 2015, pp. 138-45
The West's gleeful obsession with "oppressed Arab women"
Further reading:
Islam in Liberalism by Joseph A. Massad
"In his analysis of the emergence of 'military humanitarianism,' David Chandler notes that the development of the NGO regime prevalent in the 1980s focused on 'capacity buidling,' 'empowering,' and 'civil society' (and this is of course in line with the democratisation ideas...that Muslims lack civil society and one has to be created for them to advance democracy), 'as they argued the need for a long-term involvement in society and a sphere of influence independent from the a Third World state.' In their stead, the human rights NGOs cretaed a Thirld World 'hapless victim in distress' that needed to be rescued by the NGOs of the First World who play the role of their 'saviour' from the villain, the non-Western government or state authorities that caused famine and poverty through personal corruption or wrong spending policies or that consciously embarked on a policy of genocide or mass repression.' For those deploying it, the narrative of salvation and rescue, remains consciously or unconsciously, with the Christian tradition and mission underlining it, and a continuation of the history of the capitulations Christian Europe imposed on the Ottomans.
Lila Abu-Lughod [2002] volunteers her Egyptian native informants to authorise her plea to Western feminists: "I have done fieldwork in Egypt over more than 20 years and I cannot think of a single woman I know, from the poorest rural to the most educated cosmopolitan, who has ever expressed envy of US women, women they tend to perceive as bereft of community, vulnerable to sexual violence amd social anomie, driven by individual success rather than morality, or strangely disrespectful of God." Abu-Lughod's plea is contextualised in the American feminist endorsement of the US attack on Afghanistan."
Strangely though, Lughod sees there is a duty for Western feminists to 'help' poor Afghan women. Such a desire for providing "help" has been expressed to me directly by 19-year old white Western students—a raw material trained to carry the mantra of the imperialist ideology of "easing the suffering of the unfit and helpless Other."
Anne Norton (2013) explains the implications of Western women's participation in "the project of liberating–or simply defeating–the Muslim world" on the Western women themselves:
In participating in this campaign, [these Western women] learn to look upon Western models of sex and sexuality as liberating, universally valid, and exempt from criticism. They are turned away from the advancement of women's position at home and enlisted in projects of imperial domination."Instruments of liberal citizenship, Interpal Grewal (2005) contends, "produce liberal subjects as objects and subjects of rescue ... Feminist NGOs were contituted as key to this goal, and they worked to manage the 'global' population of women whose welfare became increasingly their concern."
"This rescue mission continues the coupling of the liberal and the Christian missions of salvation as one and the same. Moreover, the governmentalisation of saving and rescuing women renders both the Euro-American and European states and Western and local NGOs the main imperial agents of rescue at the same time as it enjoins the local state to limit its role to the issuance and enforcement of legislation in line with Western norms while forcing it, in line with the neo-liberal order, to withdraw from the provision of economic and social services to the population."
—Massad, Islam in Liberalism, Chicago 2015, pp. 138-45