Readings for this week were really thought-provoking. It is interesting how, in the recent years, Muslims have turned into new "Blacks"in the United States and in the West in eneral. Islam has turned into a unitary entity that is associated with violence, international terrorism, misogyny, and oppression of women. This blog post goes really well with my last one. By subsuming all Muslims under the rubric of fundamentalism, we, in the West, ignore the fact that Islam, like many religions, is interwoven with mltiple strands of culture, politics, and history. By doing so, we also choose to ignore the fact that Muslims come from many different ethnic backgrounds and, like many of us, might endorse different ideological and sectarian positions.

The article by Saba Mahmood and Charles Hirschkind really opened my eye to our ignorance in the West. The article was about various feminist groups in the US that started a campaign to condemn the Taliban's brutal treatment of women. Well, what can be wrong with a campaign with such good inent. First, these feminist groups were opposing the restrictions that the Taliban had imposed on Afghan women such as forbidding them to go to school or have jobs, and forcing them to wear a burqa, while ignoring the conditions under which such restrictions were imposed.
Second, Western ideals of freedom were used to judge Afghan women's situation under the Taliban. The problem with this approach was that these campaigners totally ignored the fact that such restrictions only affected a minority of urban women in Afghanistan, while making most women entirely safe from rape and violence. The campaigners also closed their eyes to the fact that the US was for the most part responsible for the plight of Afghan women through channeling US arms to the most extreme Muslim group of Mujahedeen as part of a covert operation to harass the Soviet forces that were occupying Afghanistan in 1979.

Where were these campaigners when their government was giving US dollars to a Muslim group that was led by the most fanatic, extremist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar? At that time, US needed these groups to fight its enemies and according to one CIA official in Pakistan, "fanaticts [fought] better." So Afghan women's situation can be seen as a direct result of corrupt US policies. They have turned the region into one of the most heavily armed areas in the world and now these feminist campaigners, instead of worrying about Afghan women's basic needs such as food, safety, shelter and so forth, are fighting for their right to go to school. These campaigners see the veil as a symbol of Muslim women's oppression, but their analysis lacks the understanding that the veil serves different purposes in different contexts. Maybe, it served the purpose of keeping Afghan women safe in the war-torn Afghanistan. Just like not every Muslim is a fanatic, not every woman who chooses to wear the veil is oppressed. What a difficult concept for most of us to understand in the West!!! By banning Muslim girls to wear their headscarves, we are disrespecting their basic right to choose their own clothes. If I have a right to wear my mini skirt, why shouldn't my Muslim sister be able to wear her headscarf? Regarding any group as if all its members are the same leads to ignoring group members' individuality which inevitably leads to discrimination and prejudice.