Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Religious Studies – Anthology
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Extract 4: L eila Ahmed, ‘Conclusion’ (1992).
Taken from: Women and Gender in Islam by Leila Ahmed (Y ale Universit y Press,
1992), Conc lusion, pp.235-248.
In the discourses of geopolit ic the reemergent veil is an emblem of many
things, prominent among whic h is its meaning as the rejec tion of the West. But
when one c onsiders why the veil has this meaning in the late twentieth c entury, it
bec omes obvious t hat , ironic ally, it was t he disc ourses of t he West , and spec ific ally
the disc ourse of c olonial domination, that in the first plac e determined the meaning
of t he veil in geopolit ic al disc ourses and thereby set the terms for its emergence as
a symbol of resistance. In other words, the reemergent veil attests, by virtue of its
very power as a symbol of resistanc e, to the unc ontested hegemonic diffusion of
the disc ourses of the West in our age. And it attests to the fact that, at least as
regards the Islamic world, the discourses of resistance and rejection are
inextricably informed by the languages and ideas developed and disseminated by
the West to no less a degree than are the languages of those openly advocating
emulation of the West or those who, like Frantz Fanon or Nawal El-Saadawi, are
c ritic al of the West but nonetheless ground themselves in intellec tual assumptions
and polit ic al ideas, inc luding a belief in t he right s of t he individual, formulated by
Western bourgeois capitalism and spread over the globe as a result of Western
hegemony.
Islamic reformers such as al-Afghani and 'Abdu and t he milit ant lslamist s of
t oday; int ellec t uals radic ally c rit ic al of t he West , inc luding Marxist s suc h as Fanon,
Samir Amin, and El-Saadawi; and liberal int ellec t uals wholeheart edly embrac ing t he
c olonial t hesis of West ern superiorit y and advoc at ing t he import anc e of emulat ing
t he West all differ fundament ally in t heir polit ic al st anc e, but t hey do not differ in
the extent to whic h, whether they ac knowledge it or not, they draw on Western
t hought and West ern polit ic al and int ellec t ual languages. T he revit alized,
reimagined Islam put forward by t he Islamic milit ant s or by 'Abdu and his
c ont emporaries is an Islam redefining itself against the assaults of the West but
also an Islam revit alized and reimagined as a result of it s fert ilizat ion by and it s
appropriation of the languages and ideas given c urrenc y by the disc ourses of the
West. In the disc ourses of the Arab world comprehensively, then, whether they are
disc ourses of c ollaborat ion or resist anc e, t he goals and ideals t hey art ic ulat e and
even the rejection of and often-legitimate anger at the West that they give voice to
are formulated in terms of the dominant discourse – West ern in origin – of our
global soc iet y.
T his is of part ic ular relevanc e t o Islamist posit ions. Marxist s, sec ularist s, and
feminist s generally c onc ede, t ac it ly if not overt ly, t heir grounding in West ern
thought, but Islamists, arguing for what they claim to be a restoration of an
"original" Islam and an "authentic " indigenous c ulture, make their c ase, and
c onduc t the assault on sec ularism, Marxism, or feminism on the grounds that these
represent alien Western importations whereas Islamism intends the restoration of
an indigenous t radit ion. But t oday, willy-nilly, as t he Indian psyc hologist and c rit ic
Ashis Nandy has remarked, the West is everywhere, "in struc tures and in minds,"
and West ern polit ic al ideas, t ec hnologies, and int ellec t ual syst ems comprehensively
permeate all societies. There is no extricating them, no return to a past of
unadulterated c ultural purity – even if in this anc ient and anc iently multi-c ult ural
part of the world suc h a projec t had ever been other than c himeric al.