Culture » September 7, 2007

Unveiling Muslim Feminism

Muslim women’s bodies are too frequently used to symbolize the state of Islam in Iran, and the degree to which it associates itself with the West

By Erin Wiegand

The cover of the July 21 Economist touted an article about Iran’s push to develop nuclear weapons. But the accompanying photo, filling the cover along with the article’s title, “The Riddle of Iran,” presented a sea of figures in black chadors, floor-length cloths used by some Muslim women to cover themselves—despite the fact that the article said not a word about Iranian women. The riddle of Iran, the photo suggested, is the way that it teeters between modernity (the development of nuclear weapons) and antiquity (the omnipresent chador).

By using the image of the covered Muslim women to question the modernity of the Iranian state, the Economist reflects an entire history of Western interactions with Muslim women. As Nima Naghibi argues in Rethinking Global Sisterhood: Western Feminism and Iran (University of Minnesota Press), Muslim women’s veiled or unveiled bodies are frequently used to symbolize the Iranian state as a whole, and particularly the degree to which the state associates itself with the West.

Rethinking Global Sisterhood is a book that not only tears apart stereotypes and assumptions about the significance of Muslim women’s dress, but levels harsh critiques against those feminists who invoke “global sisterhood” as their cause while perpetuating colonial attitudes of superiority toward their veiled “sisters.” Western-minded Iranian nationalists and liberal feminists have generally viewed the veiled woman as a symbol of a primitive era, but Naghibi argues that the reality is more complex.

The interpretation of “hijab” (modest clothing) has varied greatly between cultures, classes and time periods. In early 20th century Iran, for example, middle- and upper-class women often wore a chador and facial veil. Full concealment was a sign of higher class status, because it indicated that one did not have to work in the fields. (Peasant women traditionally wore simple, loose clothing with a headscarf.)

As Iran sought stronger identification with Western values in the 1930s (under the rule of Reza Shah Pahlavi), the veil became seen as a marker of a tribal past, and “modern” middle-class women discarded it. But by the 1960s, the symbolism had again reversed. Unveiled women were associated with a sinful, corrupt West, and women veiled themselves to proclaim their virtue and, more, importantly, to protest against the Pahlavi dynasty. Following the shah’s ouster, many women removed their veils, which sparked a backlash from those men who believed women should not have a choice in their dress; the women responded by taking to the streets of Tehran for several days of women’s rights demonstrations.

Naghibi also examines the ways the state has regulated Iranian women’s dress in order to promote or reject an association with the West. In 1936, Reza Shah Pahlavi (the first of Iran’s two emperors) banned veiling, as part of an attempt to “modernize” Iran. Women who resisted the ban had their veils ripped from their bodies. Naghibi suggests that the 1936 ban was, in many ways, quite similar to the ban on unveiling that would be imposed in 1983. Both pieces of legislation, at their roots, attempted to use women’s bodies to promote a particular form of nationalism, whether Westernized or anti-imperialist. “Beneath these two polarized representations,” she writes, “lies a desire to possess and to control the figure behind the veil by unveiling or re-veiling her.”

Naghibi suggests that the visibility of Muslim women—whether veiled or unveiled—has caused a great deal of anxiety for Western feminists, who have largely ignored the indigenous presence of Muslim women’s activism. During the Constitutional Revolution (1905Ð1911), for example, Iranian women participated in protests, acted as couriers and even took up arms. Naghibi argues that such actions threaten feminists’ perceptions of themselves “as liberated and modern in contrast to imprisoned and backwards Persian women, and … as leaders of the international women’s movement.”

Seventy-five years later, little had changed. The feminist writer Kate Millet gushed about the Iranian women’s demonstrations in 1979: “It’s a whole corner, the Islamic world, the spot we thought it would be hardest to reach, and wow, look at it go!” It was as if the only possible reading of the situation, for Millet, was to see the demonstrations as the direct result of Western feminism’s influence, rather than something Iranian women were seeking on their own and for themselves.

Millet had been one of a handful of Western feminists (including Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer) who visited Iran in the ’70s and invoked the solidarity of “global sisterhood.” But their incursion, Naghibi argues, actually undermined women’s struggles in Iran, both by encouraging the growth of an elite feminist movement that neglected lower class and rural women, and by creating an association between feminism and the West—an association that made it easy for the women’s movement to be crushed in post-revolutionary Iran, when anything Western was seen as counter-revolutionary and dangerous to the state.

Naghibi’s critique of “global sisterhood,” a concept prevalent among feminists since the ’70s, is by no means new. Feminists of color have been arguing for decades that women’s experiences differ greatly between classes and ethnicities—to say nothing of the fact that the vanguard of such a “sisterhood” has tended toward the white and middle-class. But today, Naghibi writes, the “discourse of sisterhood” in the West has led to “a merging of interests between liberal feminism and a xenophobic nationalism. … [an] uncritical support of the Bush and Blair administrations’ rhetoric of the ‘us/them’ divide, the ‘civilized world versus the terrorists.’ ”

In November 2001, Laura Bush delivered a tear-jerking appeal during the weekly presidential radio address to save the women of Afghanistan from their imprisonment under the Taliban. She invoked the familiar representations of the “oppressed Muslim woman” and the “civilized Western woman” who needs to intervene on her behalf. For feminists who recognize such appeals for what they are—window dressing for imperialist ambitions—it is time to rethink global sisterhood.

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• Reader Comments

  “to save the women of Afghanistan from their imprisonment under the Taliban. She invoked the familiar representations of the “oppressed Muslim woman” and the “civilized Western woman” who needs to intervene on her behalf.”

  Ix this really the example you want to give? Under the Taliban women could not be doctors and since they were not allowed to be close to males, could not go to doctors. The brutality of the Taliban to women is well known - if the west had not rescued these women, they would still be ruthlessly subjugated.

  Of course, in much of the Middle East (Saudi Arabia comes quickly to mind) Islamic women are still under the boot heal of the males who live there. Whether this is intrinsically due to an evil religion or whether is is due to just evil men is merely academic. Either way, they are in need of rescue. Hopefully this will happen peacefully, as Islam collapses due to its own horrible failures.

  Posted by wolf on Sep 7, 2007 at 5:57 PM

  The men act ruthlessly because they hold a value that tells them they own the unquestionable, cosmic truth, part of which says that women are subordinate and questioners are apostate, aren’t worthy to live.

  Ruthlessness is called for if you have all the truth for all time. But of course in real life no one ever will.

  Secular government may not be perfect, but at least no one thinks they speak for the cosmos. When faith is the basis of law it’s bound to be a nightmare.

  Posted by Kuya on Sep 12, 2007 at 10:08 AM

  This piece is ridiculous. Are we not sick of Western feminism being called a middle class white woman’s affair? This author makes assertions but seems to know little about feminism’s past or present. The author, quoting another author, assumes Western women have a colonial attitude towards other women based on what? Certainly not their actual record.

  Of course Islamic women were influenced by western feminism. We’re all human and women naturally desire liberation like anyone else. But what is the point here? There’s no focus to this piece.

  There is no such thing as a real feminism under a religious aegis. But women laudably struggle against male domination and preference and of course feminists support them.

  Isn’t attacking feminism for being all white a has-been affair?

  Clearly we need a new feminist discourse based on a recognition of the essential and inherent misogyny in most if not all organized religions. And less of this type of crap.

  Atheism is feminist!

  Posted by janej on Sep 20, 2007 at 3:55 AM

  Actually “attacking feminism for being all white” is not a has-been affair.  It is obvious from your comments you still suffer from the very condescending and colonial attitude that White American/Eurocentric feminism promotes.  Let women in other parts of the world speak for themselves.  No one is going to deny that Wahabist interpretations of Islam, such as the Taliban or what we see in Saudi Arabia is extremely oppressive towards women.  Does that mean that you need to jump on the Bush/Blair bandwagon for global takeover?  Look at Iraq and Afghanistan in the post invasion and occupation years?  Are women really always that much better off? 

  Going back to Iran: of course women face myriad inequalities and challenges.  But the post-Revolution years have not all been the same.  Education and health care have both increased and improved for women, especially for women in rural areas.  It’s not perfect by any means, but from that perspective it is definitely not worse than it was under the Shah. 

  Why don’t you try to support indigenous feminist movements in Islamic countries?  You’ll find secular groups and you’ll also find religiously-oriented groups.  If you’re going to demand that women have to be unveiled perhaps you should ask those very women first.  Why does feminism have to be rooted in American/European models that have very different histories and cultural contexts, not to mention a history of oppression towards these very people who you are claiming to “liberate.”

  Posted by thinkagain on Sep 24, 2007 at 3:35 PM

  More religious apologism and racist namecalling from “thinkagain” who might try thinking once instead of knee jerking. Of course as a feminist, I support all women’s efforts within whatever structures they fight. That’s not the point and I thought most enlightened discourse was beyond that question. And I certainly do NOT need to be told to support indigenous women—which is different from state citizen- natives how???—of course I do and am even considering studying international women’s human rights law to do so.

  The point is we get this liberal kowtowing over religion when it is for many women a large source of oppression, as well as Western-imposed. Why do white women always get blamed for excluding other women, when the groups I know of and read are very very inclusive.

  I am sorry to burst your bubble, but a veil is oppressive, whether worn voluntary or involuntarily, for ‘modesty’ or otherwise. I actually live in one of the most diverse areas of America, a neighborhood in Brooklyn where some women wear burqas. I would never think of victimizing those women further, but to veiled is to be denied full personhood. 

  Do you really think that you are helping women in Muslim countries by accommodating the idea of a veil as a cultural marker rather than as a marker of oppression? Do you really think using euphemisms like “myriad inequalities and challenges” helps by distracting from the systemic denial of basic human rights shared by women globally?

  I think a conversation should be broached, and I’m working in media with a big goal in mind to do just that. I don’t think launching attacks on well meaning women is the way to do it. And i don’t for a minute think these feminists are as short sighted as you do.

  Why do you also situate me as presumably a white female, which i am, as a member of the male-led colonialist class? I am neither but a regular working class girl who lives in an immigrant neighborhood. I don’t need lectures from blowhard kneejerkers and I won’t be hit with veiled racist/classist threats from you.

  Feminism means realizing a global sisterhood and it is clear you are not there yet.

  Posted by janej on Sep 24, 2007 at 5:14 PM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 6 posts.

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