Western Feminism as Fighters Against Oppression Essay

Introduction

Western feminists have a great impact on the consciousness of Muslim women and their determination. Western feminists brought novelty and the new ideology of life to Muslim countries. The feeling of oppression and submission in many Muslim countries is challenging the newer, but essentially imported, notions about what is most significant that have been put forward by the dominant secular community. The challenge runs through the Muslim countries as a common topic with broad national variations. In the present period, western feminism is a major source of concern for the leaders of Muslim states (Nicholson 82). The rejection of modernization concepts inevitably leads to doubts about and mistrust of relationships with the West, mainly with the developed countries. Thesis Western feminism changed the life and views of Muslim women freeing them from social slavery and exploitation considered as cultural norms and principles.

Western Feminist Movement

Muslim world

The main feminist movements involved in the battle against oppression and patriarchy in Muslim countries are socialist feminists, radical feminists, postmodern feminists and post-colonial groups. Each of these groups has a unique vision of Muslim women and liberty but all of them agree that democratic and modern principles of equality between men and women should be a core of social relations. Postmodern feminists and post-colonial feminists underline that two components of the new ideology are most applicable. The first is the notion of a “unitized community.” Particularly, neither the word “unified” nor “unitary” society can convey the meaning of the term as it is used in Iran’s new constitution. The notion involves not only achieving the aim of a unified or unitary society but also the shaping of the society through ideological indoctrination (Ong 33). For postmodern feminists and post-colonial feminists, it means liberation and gender equality in the Muslim world. For many Muslim countries, such a “Rule of God,” is entrusted with the task of shaping all aspects of women’s life, including the personal sphere, according to the doctrines of Islam and its supporters and embodied in the new “democratic” state ideology (Ahmed, p. 98).

The Role of Culture

For postmodern feminists and post-colonial feminists, the second component of the new women’s ideology is the idea of the responsibility of the state to rule and administer both genders on the basis of their interpretation of the Koran (Naseef 82). The feminist groups support the creation of new institutions for women and involve in political and social movements. They state that the government should create the political “positions and foundations” for shaping the community. But the “front” of the cultural and gender revolution is a change in the life of women and their social position in society (Nicholson 82). Socialist feminists and radical feminists consider that fight against oppression and greater participation of women in labor relations are the main “tools” of women in the Muslim world. These feminists underline that modernization, secularization, and the household and international; policies, as well as the role of those powers that supported them, are considered to have been opposing to the vision of Islam. The same vision is now applied to non-religious or religious individuals or groups in the Muslim world (Ahmed 94).

Socialist feminists and radical feminists state that the ideological foundation of this combative stance should be based on the ruling relating to the victory of the “oppressed” against the “oppressors.” The radical feminists expressed the idea in a well-known statement: “The oppressed women must triumph over the oppressors.” The ideas of the “oppressed women” and the “oppressors” both have been extended to individuals and collectivities of all types. For instance, all men and political leaders are “oppressors,” while all women are the “oppressed.” National liberation activities and many Third World countries are considered as the “oppressed” (Naseef 82).

Radical feminists created a concept of gender resolution. The notion of the “gender revolution” also had a wider political and social meaning. It represents, however, another offer for power by the women as part of their effort to change the revolutionary political process. From the perspective of the women, though, the dislodging of the new women from the universities was a major triumph, for their women supporters had occupied fewer political headquarters. The fundamentalist attack on the extremist left had rarely spared the reasonable liberal elements (Moghissi, p. 43).

Feminist ideologies

All camps of feminists support and educate Muslim women about their rights and freedoms. In such countries as Afghanistan and Iran, the political leaders of Islamic attitudes usually support the idea of having more women technocrats, doctors, and other professionals. In contrast to other Muslim countries, in Afghanistan and Iran women If have voiced any concern, and in some cases it is directed not against science education or technology-oriented education but against by bureaucratization of education. in spite of great changes in these countries, there is the divorce of education and training, at home and abroad, from Muslim moral and spiritual principles which inspire the criticism from Islamic quarters (Moghissi 83). The severe criticisms do not originate from science most probably because of their lack of access to knowledge regarding the condition of modern sciences and the intellectual and cultural challenges currently facing women students in British or American educational institutions. It is not astonishing, thus, that the voices of women are a concern. Regarding the independence of personality and independence of professional disciplines from moral and spiritual principles come largely from the Western-educated women who are the products of international education (Ahmed, p. 37).

Feminists of all camps assume that the consciousness of women’s identity in Muslim countries tends to be stronger among art and humanities women students than among the social science women students, both at home and abroad. One discerns a yearning among the younger women generation of educated Muslims today for inner satisfaction and self-identity (Moghissi 87). Many of these women are seeking direction in the moral and spiritual growth of their personality which, through education, seems to be caught between new cultural ideology operating in an urban community in the form of permissive lifestyles, effective individualism, and the pretentious living of the nouveau riche, on the one hand, and on the other, a spiritual vision of emotional firmness, moderation in expenditure, concern for the underprivileged and undernourished social classes, a reenactment of the timeless worth of moral righteousness in the face of crass and brazen materialism, and an idealistic environment (Ghoussoub, p. 10).

The New Arab World

Education

In general, Western feminists changed the life and ideology of many Muslim women and their self-identity. Without this insight into the social and spiritual direction of the present-day Muslim women who are witnessing the grave consequences of the process of oppression and gender inequity in national development efforts, it would be difficult to explain fully the case of women of university graduates deciding to leave their professions and lucrative jobs in Muslim countries (Chatty, p. 32). Many young women immigrated to western countries searching for equal opportunities and personal growth opportunities (Bhabha, 11). Also, it would take more than employing the structural opposition concept of some social scientists to try to understand the case of several university students in the natural sciences and in the humanities joining a large “fundamentalist” religious community on the outskirts of the city. This society aims at self-sufficiency and self-reliance in its economic actions and runs a clinic and a school system of its own to provide the kind of education that it perceives as most relevant to the needs of society (Ahmed, p. 55).

Western feminists open new schools and educational institutions for many Muslim women in Afghanistan. The revival of women’s educational tradition in Muslim countries, though on a small scale, is significant because of another traditional religious educational system common to Afghanistan and Iran. This once-flourishing, rural-based and privately owned voluntary educational institution concentrating around the personality of the religious leaders is indeed an endangered native educational system (Chatty, p. 43). This has happened because it has not been able to alter itself — in terms of curriculum development, structure, and physical growth — to the needs of rural growth, rural-urban migration, the winds of political transformations, and the expansion of the modern education system including schools and colleges. Many women leaders and educators in Muslim outcries express regret at the loss of an energetic religious education which was usually pursued not because of its economic worth, but for the sake of knowledge and piety (Bhabha, p. 65).

Family

To some extent, western feminists have transformed the Muslim world and its ideas about a woman. As a result of socioeconomic, historical and political issues, the most important being the “pull” driver of rapid ideological change in the urban areas which had to depend on plentiful cheap labor to sustain the new growth centers, and the “push” driver in the increase of landless peasants, rural unemployment and rural poverty in general, Kabul and its outskirts have the highest number of squatter families in the state (Chatty, p. 76). About one-quarter of the populace of the Afghanistan and Iran is situated is made up of squatters, many of whom are poor women who migrated from the villages to work as manual laborers, factory workers, office women, washer women, bus drivers, gardeners, etc. Living in illegal squatter settlements and slums in the region, these rural-urban migrants and their issues accentuate the “culture of poverty” as one of the results of unbalanced development which gives priority to industrialization (Freedman, p. 170). The Muslim women entangled in this new Western culture of poverty live in constant fear of the disruptive elements that are involved in crimes and other forms of deviant activities, such as drug abuse, robbery and extortion and prostitution. Home education for women still prevails in Muslim countries helping somewhat in keeping the family together, and the impact of Islamic traditions and norms regarding the relationship between the men and the women in the Muslim context cannot be underestimated (Bhabha, p. 55).

Conclusion

In sum, western feminists including socialist feminists, radical feminists, postmodern feminists and post-colonial groups bring new ideology and understanding of the world to Muslim countries. As far as changes in the function of the Muslim women in society are concerned, there are feminists to show that with the increasing trend toward the new position of women among Muslim urban citizens, the family as an economic cooperative unit is declining. The great benefits and opportunities proposed by the gender revolution in Muslim countries concern education and workforce relations. There has been increasing concern, still, about the gender differences in the well-to-do sections of the Muslim society, but the influence of religious doctrines transmitted through informal education methods, such as secular reading and home education. With the rising consciousness of the relevance of new ideology and gender revolution in all aspects of life, women in Islam can expect stronger pressure in the future for a greater adjustment between Islamic principles and democratic society and culture. Equal education opportunities, as well as secularizing urbanization, would have to come to terms with the constant Muslim need for the mixture of Islamic moral principles in the process of economic, political, and socio-cultural changes in the life of women. There is, thus, an urgent need for the government and the Muslim male society to accept a position of women in society as equal to men.

Works Cited

1. Ahmed, Leila. Women and Gender in Islam. Yale University Press, 2002
2. Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge, 2004.
3. Chatty, Dawn, and Annika Rabo, eds. Organizing Women: Formal and Informal Women’s Groups in the Middle East. Oxford: Berg, 2000.
4. Freedman, J. “The Headscarf Debate: Muslim Women in Europe and the ‘War on Terror’.” In Kim Rygiel and Krista Hunt, eds, (En). Gendering the War on Terror: War Stories and Camouflaged Politics, Ashgate, 2007, pp. 169-190
5. Ghoussoub, Mai. “Feminism –or the Eternal Masculine- in the Arab World.” New Left Review 161 (1987): 3- 18.
6. Moghissi, Haidah. Feminism and Islamic Fundamentalism: The Limits of Postmodern Analysis. London: Zed, 2003.
7. Naseef, Fatima Umar. Women in Islam: A Discourse in Rights and Obligations. Cairo: International Islamic Committee for Woman and Child, 1999
8. Nicholson, Linda, ed. Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange. New York: Routledge, 2003.
9. Ong, A. “Sisterly Solidarity: Feminist Virtue under ‘Moderate Islam’” in Neoliberalism as Exception, Duke University Press, 2006, pp. 31-52.