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BETWEEN ORIENTALISM AND POSTMODERNISM:

THE CHANGING NATURE OF WESTERN FEMINIST
THOUGHT TOWARDS THE MIDDLE EAST

SHADI HAMID
Oxford University

Abstract

1980s postmodernism provided a viable theoretical alternative to existing

discourses. Where pre-postmodern second-wave feminism subscribed to
prescriptive notions of what a woman should or should not be, postmodern
feminists (or post-feminists) instead articulated a much more diverse, mal-
leable, morally and culturally relative notion of what it means to be a
woman. This new relativist approach meant that feminists were now mak-
ing a conscious effort to engage with third-world women in a way that
acknowledged cultural particularities. Today Muslim women are struggling
to find a place for themselves. Western feminists have the potential to
play an important role in the process of change in the Muslim world.
The nature of this role has yet to be determined. In recent decades,
Western feminists have had a tendency to superimpose their own culturally
specific notions of equality on the Muslim world. Now, there is the risk that
a new generation of postmodern intellectuals will decide to slowly disengage.
With this in mind, finding the middle ground has never been more urgent.

Few words are more controversial than the word feminism. Few
words can elicit such a wide range of charged emotion. For some,
it is a word which conveys freedom and liberation from patriarchal
oppression. For others, it represents a merciless attack on the insti-
tution of the family. For yet others, feminism is just another means
with which the West can destroy the culture and traditions of the
Third World.
Like most other things, feminismas a concept and as a move-
mentdefies easy characterization. Over the course of the last forty
years, since the heady days of sixties radicalism, feminism has mor-
phed and evolved in response to rapidly changing conditions and
circumstances. What it is today is certainly not what it once was.
As countries and cultures interact in an increasingly globalized

Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2006 HAWWA 4, 1

Also available online www.brill.nl
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world, feminists have been forced to address a variety of challeng-

ing questions. Obviously, feminists care about their female counter-
parts in the Third World. But it is one thing to care; it is another
to decide on a specific course of action.
In their interaction with those still hurting from the scars of the
colonialist project, feminists have found themselves in a catch-22.
If they get involved in womens rights issues in cultural settings
they are not familiar with, they run the risk of offending local sen-
sibilities and will almost inevitably be accused of imposing Western
values on unwilling populations. On the other hand, if they choose
not to act in the name of cultural sensitivity, then they are essen-
tially staying silent in the face of injustice, a morally problematic
situation for those whose very raison dtre is helping women fight
the oppression of patriarchy.
Feminists have struggled to come to terms with this dilemma
a dilemma which continues to plague womens rights activists to
this very day. In this article, I will try to put this dilemma in per-
spective, examining how different feminists have addressed this issue
and, hopefully by the end, provide some tentative suggestions on
how to proceed. For the purposes of this article, and in light of
recent international events, I have chosen to focus on the Middle
East. The moral dilemmas that feminists face is nowhere more evi-
dent than in this troubled region.

A U R B
Feminism was (and still is) a Western construct. The movement for
gender equality arose out of the Enlightenment ideals of freedom,
equality and the dignity of the human person. In the works of John
Stuart Mill and Mary Wollstonecraft, two of the earliest and most
influential feminists, we constantly see references to reason, rationality
and objectivity. Unfortunately, with these apparently lofty ideals
came Western exceptionalism and its negative aspectsethnocen-
trism, racism and imperialism. Through the colonialist project,
Western modern thought was introduced to the future nations of
the Third World. And since then we have witnessed the uneasy
relationship between feminismwith all of its Western intellectual
and philosophical baggageand the non-Western world.
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Second-wave feminism, which gained ascendancy in the 1960s,

70s, and early 80s, was very much a product of Enlightenment
thought with its almost messianic belief in unlimited progress.
Feminists, at this point, had a less nuanced view of the world than
their more relativist sisters would in later years. They emphasized
the universality of their mission. For the most part, it did not occur
to them that women in other parts of the world had their own
culturally specific notion of womens rights. Reina Lewis and Sara
Mills note that, second wave Anglo-American feminist theory had
generalized from western middle-class womens experiences and
developed a form of theorizingsisterhood is globalwhich assumed
that those white concerns were the concerns of women everywhere
(2003: 4). Second-wave feminists were supposed to come together
as women and not as anything elsenot as black women, not as
Arab women, and not as Catholic women. The common and over-
riding denominator was supposed to be the oppression at the hands
of men that each and every woman experienced.
When second-wave feminists looked outside of their own borders,
they did so from a position of dominance, power and presumed
superiority. They saw societies that seemed to them to be stuck in
time, consumed by outdated ideas of tradition and religion. Little
effort was made to understand these backward cultures on their
own terms. Instead, Western feminists tended to look at Third
World women as a composite, monolithic group of powerless women
lacking any agency. What resulted was a cultural gap that did not
bode well for relations between Western feminists and their non-
Western counterparts.

W F M W
It would be useful here to look at some specific examples of anti-
Muslim bias in Western feminist thought. For the purposes of his-
torical perspective, I will begin more than 200 years ago with a
brief look at Mary Wollstonecrafts A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,
published in 1792. This work, which still stands today as one of
the seminal feminist texts, is replete with casual references to the
backwardness of Muslim women and the religion of Islam in gen-
eral. Referring to English women, Wollstonecraft says: In the true
style of Mahomentanism, [they] are treated as a kind of subordinate
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beings, and not as part of the human species, when improvable

reason is allowed to be the dignified distinction which raises men
above the brute creation (1992: 80). Here she uses characteristic
Enlightenment-era language to create an oppositional binary between
the subhuman Mahometans and then men, presumably European,
who rise above brute creation because of their improvable reason.
Later, she makes another off handedly reductionist comment: Beauty,
he declares, will not be valued, or even seen, after a couple have
lived six months together . . . why, then, does he say that a girl
should be educated for her husband with the same care as for an
Eastern harem? (1992: 191).
Similarly, in the Subjection of Women, published in 1861, John
Stuart Mill asserts that, [Christianity] has been the religion of the
progressive portion of mankind, and Islamism, Brahminism, etc.
have been those of the stationary portions (1997: 46). If we fast
forward to 1952, the same themes reappear in Simone De Beauvoirs
The Second Sex when she informs the reader that when the family
and the private patrimony remain beyond question the bases of
society, then woman remains totally submerged. This occurs in the
Moslem world . . . the veiled and sequestered Moslem woman is
still today in most social strata a kind of slave (1997: 84).
Despite the fact that a relatively small number of women wore
the veil at the height of Arab secular nationalism, the Orientalist
image of the oppressed, secluded veiled woman continued unabated
in Western literature. Muslim women were seen as passive, sexless
beings covered up in masses of cloth, a sharp contrast to the self-
assured sexually liberated women of the advanced West.
We should note, however, that this was not always the way the
matter was perceived. Interestingly, during the colonial period,
Muslim women were stereotyped as sensual, seductive, and sexu-
ally charged. In contrast, white women would emphasize and accen-
tuate their whiteness, which was supposed to connote purity (Bulbeck
1998: 129). The veiled woman was seen as mysterious, almost phan-
tasmic. Her very inaccessibility made her all the more desirable in
the European mind. The colonist sought to control and conquer
all, including native women. But, face to face with the veiled woman,
the European lost his power. Control eluded him and reciprocity
was denied. After all, she could see him, but he could not see her.
It is this inability to fix and control that is unsettling and terrifying
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yet so seducing (Yegenoglu 2003: 548). In the end it did not really
matter whether they were active or passive, sexed-up or sexless
Muslim women were always othered, invariably defined as the oppo-
site of their Western counterparts.
In the late 1970s, with the rise of political Islam across the
Muslim world, Westerners were bombarded with negative images
of angry, bearded men who apparently locked their women in the
kitchen. Common stereotypes which were already widely held were
strengthened and reinforced. Feminist circles were no exception.
Published by Zed Press in 1980, Juliet Mincess audaciously titled
The House of Obedience: Women in Arab Society serves as a revealing
example of the lingering residue of easy reductonism. Muslim women
are portrayed as uniformly oppressed, powerless in the face of reli-
giously induced patriarchy. As one might expect, the veil for Minces,
symbolizes this oppression. Her repeated usage of we (read: pro-
gressive, enlightened, liberated Western women) and they (read:
the ignorant, tradition-bound, oppressed veiled Muslim women) is
telling. Her articulation of this binary is similar to that of John
Stuart Mill nearly 120 years before: While women elsewhere grad-
ually liberated themselvesto some extentfrom the total supremacy
of men, most women in the Muslim world continued to be totally
subordinate. They live under a system which has barely changed
despite the undeniable evolution of their societies (1980: 14). More
troubling, however, is Mincess disrespect for Muslim religious obli-
gations when she equates womens liberation with eating pork, hav-
ing pre-marital relations and drinking alcohol (49).
A true pre-postmodern feminist, Minces begins the book by say-
ing that her extensive travels have given her the ability to situate
the Arab world fairly precisely (vii). It would seem that she is try-
ing to persuade the reader that she is an objective, neutral observer
interested only in the truth. She uses the language of Enlightenment
discourse to justify what is clearly an ethnocentric analysis. The
point of reference is always the West. Consequently, just as the
West represents the center, so too does the Western feminist, pre-
sumably far ahead of her time.
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F P
It is impossible to say exactly when postmodernism began (to even
come up with a tentative date would be a decidedly un-postmodern
thing to do). In any case, we can say that the emphasis on het-
erogeneity in the 1960s foreshadowed the postmodern obsession
with difference. The first real stirrings of this new intellectual
movement came in the mid to late 1970s. By the 1980s, post-
modernism had come into its own, providing a viable theoretical
alternative to existing discourses. One of the seminal works that
expounded on postmodern theory was Jean-Francois Lyotards The
Postmodern Condition. In his analysis, Lyotard emphasizes the impor-
tance of context, arguing that decisions should be made based on
local circumstances and conditions. He seems to capture the essence
of postmodernity when he refers to its incredulity towards meta-
narratives (1984: xxiv).
Postmodernism, with its skepticism toward absolute values and
any absolute notion of progress, provides a stark contrast with the
Enlightenment belief in transcendent, universal values. Where the
Enlightenment project saw mankinds potential for infinite and unfet-
tered advancement, postmodernism saw the destruction and disil-
lusionment that this progress left in its wake.
Postmodernism, as well as post-structuralism and post-colonial
thought, ended up having a marked influence on the evolution of
feminist thought. Where pre-postmodern second-wave feminism sub-
scribed to prescriptive notions of what a woman should or should
not be, postmodern feminists (or postfeminists) have instead artic-
ulated a much more diverse, malleable, morally and culturally rel-
ative notion of what it means to be a woman. The new relativist
approach meant that feminists were now making a conscious effort
to engage with third-world women in a way that acknowledged cul-
tural and locational particularities. Postmodern relativism has become
pervasive in feminist thought with the success of writers like bell
hooks, Gloria Joseph, Audre Lord, Elizabeth Spelman and others.
What, though, has the advent of postmodernism meant for Western
feminist interaction with the Muslim world? There has been an
undeniable improvement in the way Western feminists look at the
Middle East and the Third World in general. The work of Edward
Said, specifically the publication of Orientalism in 1978, represented
a turning point in academic circles.
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Despite this new recognition of cultural specificity, there remains

a less noticeable but still pervasive bias in the works of many mod-
ern-day feminists. This is not to say that these feminists are will-
fully malicious. In fact, the opposite is true. They often come with
good intentions, but their knowledge of the Muslim world is often
limited. We see this in the overgeneralizations and stereotypical
constructions used to describe conditions in hot spots like Saudi
Arabia, Iran, and the Palestinian territories. In the 1990s, many
womens rights activists became involved in campaigns against honor
killing in Jordan and female genital mutilation in Egypt. These
NGO-initiated efforts failed to have any noticeable effect on the
societies that they were presumably trying to change. Western NGOs,
with their secular orientation, were at a loss when it came to under-
standing the dynamic interplay between religion, culture, and pol-
itics in the Muslim world.
Perhaps more problematic is the inability of many Western fem-
inists to come to terms with the headscarf, or ijb. The ijb some-
how manages to evoke a surprising amount of indignation and
vitriol. In early 2004, nearly every feminist group in France endorsed
President Jacques Chiracs call to ban the headscarf. The issue here
is not whether or not the ijb is actually mandated by Islam or
whether it is merely a cultural manifestation of Islam. The fact is
that many Muslims do choose, of their own free will, to wear the
headscarf. From the perspective of many Muslim women, wearing
the ijb is a way in which to assert ones identity and, more impor-
tantly, to assert ones autonomy and independence. Understood this
way, the ijb is in keeping with feminist ideals insofar as it pro-
vides women the opportunity to reassert their moral and political
agency.
Yet, in the name of womens rights, French feminists advocated
suppressing the individual choice and personal freedom of Muslim
women. With the ban on ijb now in place, thousands of women
are being denied the right to make their own decisions about what
they can or cannot wear.

H C R?
When it came to the ijb, French feminists were unable to understand
the religious issues at stake. On the opposite side of the spectrum,
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though, there are some who would like to take cultural relativism
to its illogical and dangerous extreme. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak,
for example, writes British attempts to abolish sutteea tradition in
which a woman burns herself to death after her husband dies
had the effect of denying the agency and voice consciousness of
the Indian women involved (1998: 297). For Spivak, any cultural
interference on the part of the West is seen with suspicion.
Similarly, Joyce Trebilcot insists: I do not try to get other wim-
min to accept my beliefs in place of their own (1988: 1). This
would be an act of discursive violence. In response to Trebilcot,
Spivak and the extreme relativists, Alison Assiter argues for a more
balanced approach, stressing the need to accept some limitation
on our relativism and suggest, as a minimum, a value is more
emancipatory than another if it has the effect of removing a person
of a group of people from subjugation (1996: 84). Other feminists
try to resolve the dilemma by arguing for an emphasis on empow-
erment rather than emancipation. Empowerment, however, is a
vague term that can be used and understood in a variety of different
ways. Women can, after all, empower themselves to work against
womens equality, as we shall see later in the article.
Similarly problematic is the emphasis on agency and personal
choice that has become the hallmark of recent feminist writing. In
her book At the Heart of Freedom, Drucilla Cornells main argument
is that a persons freedom to pursue her own happiness in her
own way is crucial for any persons ability to share in lifes glo-
ries (1998: 18). Throughout the book, she says that women should
be free to use their freedom in any way they see fit. Her frequently
statedand, in my opinion, incorrectassumption is that freedom
will necessarily lead to equality. What happens when women use
their agency to refuse Western standards of progress? Freedom,
after all, at its very essence, entails the right to make a decision
that others may think of as indisputably wrong or backwards.
Like Cornell, Judith Butler, in Contingent Foundations: Feminism
and the Question of Postmodernism, also privileges agency over
any fixed notion of what a woman should be. Butler seems willing
to accept the logical consequences of a feminism that puts empow-
erment over emancipation, admitting that the category is uncon-
strained, even that it comes to serve antifeminist purposes, will be
part of the risk of this procedure (1995: 16).
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T A-F F
These questions of empowerment versus emancipation and the
nature of freedom are especially thorny in the Middle Eastern con-
text. As I will attempt to show here, many Muslim women exer-
cise their agency in ways that may appear perplexing to even the
most open-minded of Westerners.
. . . She sat elegantly on the floor near the foyer of the house, her
dark, provocative eyes closely monitoring those who entered. When
men were about to pass near her, she pulled the outer layer of the
niqb over her head, completely covering her face (Abdo 2000: 139).
So begins Geneive Abdos description of Mona in No God but
God: Egypt and the Triumph of Islam, her seminal account of Islamism
in Egypt. To call Mona a unique young woman would be some-
thing of an understatement. Could such a woman, so intent on
secluding herself in a sea of darkness, be a feminist?
Mona organizes a dars, or religious lesson, for more than a hun-
dred fellow American University in Cairo students, each week in
her parents luxurious villa. Mona also happens to be the daugh-
ter of a member of parliament from the ruling secular National
Democratic Party. Interestingly, Mona sees her style of dress as a
means of self-empowerment and self-affirmation: After I had my
first baby, I went to a dars and I felt I wanted to be a better
Muslim. Then I promised God I wouldnt go out of the house
without a ijb. Then, gradually, I began wearing the niqb. My
niqb is my freedom, because it lets me choose who does and who
doesnt see me (140).
In Egypt, niqb is well outside the bounds of the Islamic main-
stream and is seen by many as extreme. What, then, explains the
visible minority of niqb-wearers such as Mona who go against the
grain of society? Monas choice to wear niqb can be seen as a
paradoxical act of self-affirmation, political protest, and rebellion
three things usually associated with Western feminism.
In the example of Sudan we see similar tensions. In her essay
Gender, Religious Identity, and Political Mobilization in Sudan,
Sondra Hale (1994) discusses her interviews with three leading
Sudanese women activists, Nagwa Kamal Farid, Wisal al-Mahdi,
and Hikmat Sid-Ahmed. Farid was Sudans first female shariah
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judge, al-Mahdi is a lawyer and activist, while Sid-Ahmed is a for-

mer government representative for the National Islamic Front (NIF),
the most prominent Islamist party in the country.
Sid-Ahmed, in the interview, explains her views on female equality:
We know that women are different from men. Women, by their
nature, sometimes forget (Hale 1994: 158159). al-Mahdi goes fur-
ther, spewing the standard male-dominance talking points: In a
situation of somebody taking a . . . knife and stabbing another, a
woman would be so much excited that she would not recognize
exactly what happened, because after all, a woman is weaker than
a man and all her nervous system is made different (160). This is
blatant anti-feminist rhetoric. Yet, later in the interview, all three
agreed that men oppress women. al-Mahdi, in particular, says some-
thing that would make any feminist proud:
[Arab men] are against women, and that is why we are much against
them. We know our rights; we have learned the Quran and Shariah;
we know what Shariah gives us . . . and . . . we are standing up
for our sex. We are working in the NIF to praise women and to
make women have a better status and to tell the world that we
are as equal as men and are as efficient as men and we are as edu-
cated as men and we are as good as men and as great as men (160).
Such contradictions leave the casual observer confused. What is
going on here? As Hale remarks, these women activists have accepted
a patriarchal discourse that sees women as weak, emotional, and
irrational. At the same time, in their public lives, they show a patent
disregard for traditional gender boundaries and are known for their
militancy and defiance (161).
In Kuwait, we see perhaps the most perplexing examples of
women mobilizing to ensure their continued domination under men.
Two Islamic feminist groups, Bayadar al-Salam and Islamic Care
Society actually made their opposition to womens suffrage one of
their signature issues (al-Mughni 1997: 203). A petition was signed
by more than 1000 women declaring that true believing Muslim
women support the rejection [of the womens suffrage bill] and dis-
approve of any debauchery. We ask that the debate on this mat-
ter be closed forever (203). Nearly all feminist organizations in
Kuwait agree that womens primary role is in the home. Numerous
groups came together in 1994 to form an umbrella coalition called
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the Federation of Kuwaiti Womens Associations (FKWA). Their

mission was to raise womens awareness of their religion, their
identity, and their role in the family (205). The ostensibly more
secularist Womens Cultural and Social Society (WCSS) was the
only group that did not join FKWA. And, indeed, WCSS does
support equal political rights for women, yet even it buys into a
distinctly patriarchal paradigm, emphasizing womens mission as
mothers, wives, and paid workers (206).
What we are seeing here, are examples of what has been termed
contradictory consciousness (MacLeod 1991: 160). Women are
saying one thing, but acting in a way that implies the opposite of
their stated opinions on gender. Azam Torab refers to this con-
fusing phenomenon as an ethnographic situation in which an indi-
vidual accepts dominant cultural version of gender, yet also speaks
and behaves in ways which contest them (Quoted in Hegland
1994: 198).
I have gone through these fascinatingand troublingexamples
in order to convey the complex nature of womens issues in the
Middle East. My aim is simply to demonstrate that understanding
womens movements in the region is not necessarily an easy task
even for the most informed observer. Too often, we in the West
are tempted to look at Muslim women as a homogenous group of
powerless women. Instead, the examples above illustrate a more
nuanced, complicated picture. On the one hand, Muslim women
do have a clearly discernible desire to assert themselves as women,
yet at the same time they feel that they must stay true to certain
rigid gender constructions in order to hold on to a cultural and reli-
gious identity they see as being under attack. The paradoxes of
womens activism that I outlined above are a reflection of this very
conflict. They are also a reflection of the processes of negotiation
and renegotiation that are continuously taking place in a rapidly
changing world.

L A: P P
It is clear that Muslim women are struggling to find a place for
themselves. With this in mind, Western feminists have the poten-
tial to play an important role in the ongoing process of change in
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the Muslim world. With financial resources and organizational know-

how, they can provide much needed assistance on the ground to
local activists. Western feminists, though, will hurt their own cause
if they do not make an effort to understand local customs, tradi-
tions, and religious practices. In order to change a society, one
must work within that societys cultural and religious framework.
As the Sudanese activist-intellectual Abdullah An-Naim notes:
To seek secular answers is imply to abandon the field to the funda-
mentalists who will succeed in carrying the vast majority of the pop-
ulation with them by citing religious authority for their policies and
theories. Intelligent and enlightened Muslims are therefore best advised
to remain within the religious framework and endeavor to achieve
the reforms that would make Islam a viable modern ideology. (Quoted
in Voll 1990: vii)
It is no accident that, historically, the most successful feminist organ-
izations in the Muslim world have been those with an Islamic flavor.
Huda Sharawis secularist Egyptian Feminist Union (EFU) of the
1930s and 40s usually receives the most academic attention in the
West. Yet records indicate that Zaynab al-Ghazalis Muslim Womens
Societyan explicitly religious organization affiliated with the Muslim
Brotherhoodwas exponentially larger than Sharawis (El Guindi
2003: 602). The smallest feminist organization in Egypt at the time
was headed by Doria Shafik, who was, not coincidentally, seen as
extremely Europeanized and not grounded in the religious and cul-
tural milieu of Egypt.
Most Western feminists tend to be secular in orientation and this,
not surprisingly, creates problems when dealing with the deeply
religious societies of the Muslim world. Drucilla Cornell, for exam-
ple, remarks that for many women throughout the world, the real
struggle is for freedom from religion, not tolerance of it (1998:
152). One hopes she isnt referring to the Middle Easta region
of the world where secularism has played its course and now is, as
a blueprint for society, weak and discredited. To publicly declare
that one is a secularist is an easy way to commit political suicide
in the Muslim world. A case in point is Nawal al-Saadawi, the
renowned author and feminist and once a towering figure in Arab
politics. While she is often hailed in the Western press as a feminist
hero, she has, because of her aggressively secular views, found herself
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increasingly isolated and with few allies. With this in mind, Western
feminists would be well-advised to tread carefully when addressing
religious concerns in the Muslim world.
It is also important to realize that there is a historical legacy which
has negatively shaped Muslim perceptions of Western feminism. As
Leila Ahmed notes, the colonial powers and their agents, and in
particular the missionaries through the schools they founded did
indeed explicitly set out to undermine Islam through the training
and remolding of women (1989: 144). Women, because of the
symbolic and cultural power invested in them, have been the battle-
ground on which the epic struggle between Islam and secularism,
East and West has been fought. More generally, given the Wests
history of colonial and post-colonial dominance in the region,
it should not be surprising that anything even vaguely associated
with the West is looked at with suspicion. As a result, Western
feminists, before they even begin, are already starting from a
disadvantage.
A keen awareness of the Wests destructive role in the region
coupled with a pronounced sense of liberal guilt has pushed many
postmodern feminists to disengage from cross-cultural interaction
with the Muslim world. What right do we have to tell others what
they should do? is the common refrain. But this seems little more
than a reactionary posture. If we take this line of reasoning to its
logical conclusion, then ultimately each person will only be able to
speak for him or herself. The end result is a debilitating form of
reverse orientalism. Ranjana Khanna puts it eloquently when she
observes that postmodern sensitivities can often lead to paralysis,
or a rather self-satisfied navel gazing on the part of some who ago-
nize about how to be ethical when it comes to dealing with gen-
der politics outside of ones own context (2001: 101). This
postmodern silence, although masked in good intentions, is ulti-
mately no different in effect than the silence of right-wing isola-
tionists who scream America first.

C
People of conscience, no matter what their ethnic or religious back-
ground, have a duty to speak out against oppression when they
see it. To turn ones cheek in the name of relativism is morally
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irresponsible. By virtue of their relative privilege, it would seem

that Western women have a responsibility to consider the plight of
the less privileged. Yes, we have done wrong in the past, but why
must we remain prisoners to history and hostages to the past?
Disengagement is the postmodern option. The more prudent option,
however, would be for Westerners to engage the Third World more
intelligently and with an eye to the cultural and religious com-
plexities of the societies they are trying to change.
For decades, the oppressed of the Third World have all too often
been victims of the discursive violence of Western intellectuals.
Letting oppressed peoples speak for themselves is vital, but that
does not mean that what they say is necessarily right or true. The
risk always exists that the hegemonic discourse of a given society
can potentially distort peoples perception to the point where pri-
orities become muddled. In this sense, outsiders have the advantage
(and, sometimes, disadvantage) of external perspective which may
reveal something which would otherwise remain hidden from those
on the inside ( Jaggar 2000).
Western feminists also have a tendency to exaggerate the revo-
lutionary potential of womens groups in the Third World. Drucilla
Cornell argues that Third World feminists do not need us as sav-
iors, particularly as the United States has one of the highest incest
and rape rates in the world (1998: 171). Surprisingly, an argu-
ment as tenuous as this one is often used in this and many other
contexts. The logic goes that if Westerners have their own problems
which they certainly dothen they have no right to speak about
problems in other parts of the world. This is a convenient excuse
for inaction. In any case, it is not altogether clear what the cor-
relation is between rape rates in the US and helping Third World
nations.
Another commonly cited argument against engagement is that
America should not impose its values on non-Western countries.
Although such an argument would on the surface appear to be rel-
ativist, it actually reflects a kind of Eurocentric condescension. There
is, after all, nothing intrinsically Western about freedom, democracy,
or gender equality. To deny the universality of these values is to
say that some people can have freedom but others cannot, that
some women can free themselves from the shackles of patriarchy
but other women cannotsimply because the latter happened to
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not have been born in the West. For too long, cultural specificity
has been used to justify pervasive double standards in Western
approaches to human rights abuses in the Middle East.
It is true that the notion of gender equality arose out of a
specifically Western Enlightenment context. But, as Abdullah An-
Naim remarks, we must appreciate that the specific origin of an
idea or institution does not mean that it cannot achieve universal
acceptance (1997: 17). Moreover, the West should not be ashamed
of its values and ideals. Nor should we avoid the undeniable fact
that women have more rights and freedoms in the West than they
do in any other region of the world.
The discourse of Enlightenment rationalism has often led to
the oppression and subjugation of non-Western peoples. But this
doesnt mean that the Western faith in the continuing progress of
mankind is a sham. Rather, recent events have borne out the
impressive ability of the West to evolve and change for the better.
The very fact that we have moved from a racist, exclusionary, colo-
nialist discourse to a more diverse, accepting, and culturally sensi-
tive discourse proves the power of emancipatory progress. All we
need to do is look at America ninety years ago and look at it today.
Then, African-Americans were treated as subhuman, not allowed
to drink out of the same water fountains as whites. Women were
not allowed to vote. Although we still have much work to do, it
would be hard to deny that we have come a long way.
But then comes the inevitable question: doesnt Islam stand in
the way of such progress? After all, there are many who would
argue that Islam and gender equality are incompatible. Islam,
though, is not a static religion, although ironically, both Western
feminists and Islamic fundamentalists seem to think that it is. In
the post-colonial context, Islamists have tied the Muslim worlds
failures to its contamination with what they see as foreign, alien
sources. But this hostility to anything Western is not so much a
religious act as it is political. And in any case it wasnt always like
this. It was precisely their tolerance of non-Islamic viewpoints
and their embrace of intellectual diversity that helped propel the
Muslims of the Abbasid era to unparalleled heights during the 9th
and 10th centuries. It was then that the Islamic world reached its
zenith. Far from isolating itself, Islamic civilization was absorbing
other cultures and evolving as a result, resulting in a remarkably
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rich synthesis. Specifically, the influence of Greek thought played

a central role in the development of early Islamic philosophy.
Just as Islam was able to absorb non-Islamic ideas in the 9th
century, there is no reason to think that it cannot do the same
today. There is nothing in the Quran or in the example of the
Prophet Muhammad that necessarily contradicts the notion of gen-
der equality. In fact, I would go further and argue that the equal-
ity of women has always existed as a potential possibility within Islamic
scripture. For more than thirteen centuries, this potentiality has
been denied. That is where the West can play a pivotal role. The
West can remind the Muslim world of its own potentiala poten-
tial in which Islam becomes not a source for regression, but a
source for change, innovation, and progress.
However, I do not believe that the West should remake the
Middle East in its own image. Rather, I believe that, because the
notions of freedom, equality and womens rights are universal, they
can be re-interpreted and articulated in ways that recognize the
importance of cultural context. As An-Naim argues, local accept-
ance enriches the universal idea by giving it meaning and relevance
to peoples lives (1997: 2).
Thus far, the efforts of Western feminists have not been partic-
ularly successful in the Muslim world. But, in this article, I hope
that I have provided a paradigm and a vision that outlines some
broad parameters for cross-cultural engagement. In recent decades,
Western feminists have had a tendency to superimpose their own
culturally specific notions of equality on the Muslim world. Now,
there is the risk that a new generation of postmodern intellectuals
will decide to slowly disengage. With this in mind, finding the mid-
dle ground has never been more urgent.

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