"Muslim" women and "Western" feminists: The debate on particulars and universals

Monthly Review

Volumn 50, Issue 7, 1998, Pages 19-30

  Mojab, Shahrzad ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0007330622     PISSN: 00270520     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.14452/MR-050-07-1998-11_2     Document Type: Review

References (15)

1. I use terms like "Islamic societies," "Islamic countries," and "Muslim women" very reluctantly, for reasons that will be clear in what follows. For a similar criticism of this usage, see Sami Zubaida, "Is there a Muslim society? Ernest Gellner's sociology of Islam," Economy and Society 24 (2), 1995.
2. See, for example, Homa Hoodfar, "The Veil in Their Minds and on Our Heads: The Persistence of Colonial Images of Muslim Women," Resources for Feminist Research, 22 (3/4) 1994.
3. Iran National Archives, Khoshunat va farhang: Asnad-e mahraman-e-ye kashf-e hejab 1313-1332 (Violence and culture: Confidential records about the abolition of hijab 1313-1322). Tehran: Sazman-e Asnad-e Melli-ye Iran, 1992, pp. 47, 48, 240.
4. See, among others, Abbas Amanat, Resurrection and Renewal: The Making of the Babi Movement in Iran, 1844-1850 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), pp. 295-331.
5. Janet Afary, "The Debate on Women's Liberation in the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 1906-1911," Expanding the Boundaries of Women's History: Essays on Women in the Third World ed. Cheryl Johnson-Odim and Margaret Strobel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), p. 104.
6. The word zimmi (the Persian variant of the Arabic dhimmi), was used in early Islam to refer to a non-Muslim subject who paid capital tax to the Muslim ruler in exchange for protection and safety. Iranian laws are based on this anti-democratic distinction between Muslims and zimmis. For instance, articles 209 and 210 of the "Islamic Penal Code" clearly distinguish between Muslims and "zimmi infidels" (kafar-e zimmi).
7. Patricia Higgins, review of Kate Millett, Going to Iran (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1982) in Signs, Autumn 1983, p. 155.
8. ibid., p. 156.
9. See, for instance, Homa Hoodfar, "Devices and Desires: Population Policy and Gender Roles in the Islamic Republic," Middle East Report, September-October, 1994, pp. 11-17.
10. Hoodfar 1994, p.16.
11. In the West, a rich and growing body of antiracist theory and practice has developed over the decades largely as a result of the struggle of black and native peoples, immigrants, ethnic groups, as well as whites. However, in multinational and multilingual Iranian society where Persian language and culture are official and dominant, non-Persian peoples such as the Turks, Kurds, Arabs, and Jews are subject to harsh racism in both the state sphere and civil society (to the extent that it exists). In a country where only half the people are native speakers of the Persian language, non-Persian peoples are constitutionally denied the right to education in their native languages. The Islamic state has refused to implement Article 15 of its constitution which allows the teaching of the literature of "ethnic and local languages." Racism of the Anti-Semitic type, for example, is rampant in modern Persian literature (see Z. Pirnazar, "chehre-ye yahud dar asar-e se nevisande-ye motajadded-e Irani" ("The face of the Jew in the works of three modernist Iranian writers"), Iran Nameh: A Persian Journal of Iranian Studies, no. 13 (1995) for a brief survey). My own experience indicates the existence, among Iranian immigrants in North America, of extensive racist attitudes towards Black and Aboriginal peoples. Many Iranians deny the existence of racism within Iranian society.
12. See Michael Bronski, "Pope to Jews, Women, Queers - 'Drop Dead'", Z Magazine, 1994 pp. 14-17 on the Vatican, Iran, and Beijing Conference.
13. On the collapse of such binary oppositions, see N. Tohidi, "Islamic Feminism: A Democratic Challenge or a Theocratic Reaction," in Kankash: A Persian Journal of History, Culture, and Politics, no. 13, (Winter 1977) p. 98.
14. Ann Elizabeth Mayer, "Universal versus Islamic Human Rights: A Clash of Cultures or a Clash with a Construct?" Michigan Journal of International Law, Vol. 15, (1994) pp. 307-404.
15. Ann Elizabeth Mayer, "Cultural Particularism as a Bar to Women's Rights: Reflections on the Middle Eastern Experience in Women's Rights," Human Rights: International Feminist Perspectives, eds. Julie Peters and Andrea Wolper, (NewYork: Routledge, 1995), p. 185.