Orientalist Feminism, Secularism, and the Construction of Muslim Women as Oppressed
Abstract
This article seeks to analyze how the Western, liberal, white, Orientalist feminism constructs Muslim women as oppressed because of their religious adherence. Victimization that leads to a view of Muslim women as lacking autonomy and agency, thus requiring (by maintaining a white salvation complex) the help of the West to free themselves from the backwardness of islam and the supposed impositions of Muslim men such as the harem and the hijab. This leads to the fact that for Orientalist feminism the only way a Muslim woman can emancipate herself is if she ceases to be a Muslim. The article ends by pointing out the reasons why, at present, a number of Muslim women who fight for the emancipation of women do not consider themselves feminists.
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