Week 5, Day 2

 This week’s reading perfectly cemented all that we have learned into one key concept: Transnational Feminist and Queer Movement. That said, Abu Lughod’s writings about “Do Muslim Women Need Saving?” especially appealed to me. Lughod first introduced her piece mentioning her invitation to panels that wanted her to speak about Muslim women. And she brought up a key question, “If you [the panelist questioner] were to substitute Christian or Jewish wherever you have Muslim, would these questions make sense?” Her question is a question that continually pops into my mind whenever I see videos “critiquing” religions other than Christianity, lifestyles other than this upper-middle-class white American lifestyle. If the tables were to be turned, what would the response be? All too often, people take one seemingly related event and use it to homogenize an entire diverse population and critique them. It almost seems as if they are waiting for these sorts of terrorist events to give them grounds for harassing and dismissing “the other.” 

Throughout her entire piece, I was reminded of many of the comments sections and the “For You” page of TikTok and my own thoughts. Lughod mentions how after 9/11, many questions concerned the life and beliefs/values of Muslim people. However, it is critical to point out that people in America began to connect Muslim people (sometimes just Middle Eastern people in general) with this idea of terrorism. To the point where it became a social war on people who seemed Middle Eastern or Muslim. Hundreds of TikToks and other social media posts recount how the parents and other family members and friends were continually harassed after 9/11. They often include physical harassment, people refusing to serve them, and many actions along those lines. Even larger organizations like airports (TSA, more specifically)  tend to pick out who they assume fit this “terrorist profile.” Following 9/11, I remember seeing a post about how people were just scared to hear a Middle Eastern language in public. They were called many terrible things and blamed for the events that occurred. People want someone to blame, they want to take anger and hatred out somewhere. And they use this extremely toxic and unsafe outlet of taking it out on people who scare them, people they do not know about. This idea of knowing especially resonated in Lughod’s piece as she mentioned that many of these interviews and panelist questions were happening in a vacuum of sorts that ignored all the complexities of the situation. These ideas reminded me about how people often view countries as “ahistorical” and put them into this single time and place. 

But, I wonder even if they took into account the complexities of the situation, would their attitude change? Personally, I do not think that they would. I believe this sort of hatred might have already been there and they took the incident as a way to categorize an entire region and put it down. It was not some white Christian American doing this act of terrorism. In fact, if it were, the incident probably would not get labeled as terrorism in the first place. A fair amount of social media posts back this idea as this past year (and even before then) showed the disparities between a POC person committing a crime versus a white person committing one in America. 

However, I would like to go back to this idea of “Do Muslim Women Need Saving?” My thoughts remain the same as at the beginning of this paper. The question merely answers this homogenized, ashitorical version of Muslim women. The pretense into the question is a weak link between 9/11 and the treatment of women in Muslim culture. Many people tend to have this idea that Muslim women are being forced into these seemingly submissive roles. As Lughod mentions, things like veiling are completely voluntary in the Muslim religion. That is not to say however that some families or governments will not force, but even then, that ought to be a critique on a government organization rather than the religion which has already proved it does not force veiling. Moreover, this conversation reminded me of TikToks that talks about how nuns from the Catholic Church continually cover themselves. But when people think of that idea, it does not have the same connotation as a Muslim woman covering up. This stems back to this idea of the freedom of choice, or lack thereof. And so, it begs the question, if these Muslim women were middle-class white people, would their want to cover up still seem like a forced procedure? 

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed Lughod’s writing over “Do Muslim Women Need Saving?” I believe it raised excellent points concerning the history of Muslim women and addressed many counterarguements. I am only left with “What if” ideas about how these questions would be addressed if it was a white, middle class American doing them.