AWST-115 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Burqa, Cultural Relativism, Arab Spring
8 Jan 2019
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Title: “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural
Relativism and Its Others” by Lila Abu-Lughod
Summary:
This article the War on Terror and how one of the justifications for American intervention in
Afghanistan was that the American government would be liberating, or saving, Afghan women.
Women, the article describes, are “products of different histories, expressions of different
circumstances, and manifestations of differently structured desires”. The article also suggests
that the American approach in this war was to save and this approach not only suggests the U.S.
is superior to the Arab world, but also says this is ineffective. Instead of trying to “save” people,
the author says you should work with them in situations and recognize situations are “always
subject to historical transformation”. The United States should also consider their “own larger
responsibilities to address the forms of global injustice that are powerful shapers of the worlds in
which they find themselves”.
Main Points:
● People, particularly the media, have tried to justify events (like 9/11, US intervention in
the Arab World, the Taliban taking over Afghanistan, etc…) by trying to figure out the
culture
○ “as if knowing something about women and Islam or the meaning of a religious
ritual would help one understand”
● Instead of looking at the "culture" of the Arab World (Islam and the treatment of
women), people should have looked at the history of the how repressive regimes came to
power in the region and the U.S. role in this history
● Laura Bush’s November 17th radio address
○ The address “collapsed important distinctions that should have been maintained”
○ The first lady used the Taliban and the word terrorists as if they were synonyms
○ The speech told women to justify the US intervention and all the violence because
the Americans are “freeing women”
○ These words are eerily similar to colonialism justifications: the white man saving
the “uncivilized” black and brown people
● The burqa is so central to contemporary concerns about Muslim women
● The burqa, sadly, became the sign of the oppression of Afghan women under the Taliban
and terrorists because they were forced to wear the burqa
● many saw the burqa as a liberating invention because it “enabled women to move out of
segregated living spaces while still observing the basic moral requirements of separating
and protecting women from unrelated men”
● What had happened in Afghanistan under the Taliban is that one regional style of
covering of veiling, associated with a certain respectable social class, was imposed on
everyone as "religiously" appropriate
○ there had been many different styles of the burqa, popular or traditional with
different groups and classes—different ways to mark women's propriety, or, in
more recent times, religious piety
○ many forms of covering have different meanings in the communities in which
they are used
