Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Religious Studies – Anthology
230T he Islamist posit ion regarding women is also problemat ic in t hat , essent ially
reac tive in nature, it traps the issue of women with the struggle over c ulture – just
as t he init iat ing c olonial disc ourse had done. T ypic ally, women – and the
reaffirmat ion of indigenous c ustoms relating to women and the restoration of the
customs and laws of past Islamic societies with respect to women – are the
centerpiece of the agenda of political lslamists. They are the centerpiece of the
Islamist agenda at least in part because they were posed as central in the colonial
disc ursive assault on Islam and Arab c ulture. I desc ribed in an earlier c hapter how
in the late nineteenth c entury the disc ourses of c olonial domination c oopted the
language of feminis m in at t ac king Muslim soc iet ies. Male imperialist s known in t heir
home soc iet ies for t heir int ransigent opposit ion t o feminis m led t he at t ac k abroad
against the "degradation" of women in Muslim societies and were the foremost
c hampions of unveiling. The c ustom of veiling and the position of women in Muslim
societies became, in their rhetoric, the proof of the inferiority of Islam and the
just ific at ion of t heir effort s t o undermine Muslim religion and soc iet y. T his t hesis
and t he soc iet al goal of unveiling were, in addit ion, adopt ed and promoted (as I
also described earlier) by the upper classes in Arab societies whose interests lay
with the colonial powers; and they were opposed and the terms of the thesis
inverted (and the importanc e of veiling and other indigenous prac tic es insisted on)
in the disc ourse of resistanc e.
The notion of returning to or holding on to an "original" Islam and an
"authentic " indigenous c ulture is itself, then, a response to the disc ourses of
c olonialism and t he c olonial at t empt t o undermine Islam and Arab c ult ure and
replace them with Western practices and beliefs. But what is needed now is not a
response to the colonial and postcolonial assault on non-Western c ultures, whic h
merely inverts the terms of the colonial thesis to affirm the opposite, but a move
beyond c onfinement within those terms altogether and a rejec tion or inc orporation
of Western, non-Western, and indigenous inventions, ideas, and institutions on the
basis of t heir merit , not t heir t ribe of origin. Aft er all and in sober t rut h, what
t hriving c ivilizat ion or c ult ural herit age t oday, West ern or non-Western, is not
c rit ic ally indebt ed t o t he invent ions or t radit ions of t hought of ot her peoples in
other lands? And why should any human being be asked to do without some useful
invent ion, polit ic al, t ec hnologic al, or of any kind, bec ause it originat ed among some
other tribe or, conversely, be compelled to practice a custom that has nothing to
rec ommend it or even muc h against it for no better reason than that it is
indigenous?
Rejection of things Western and rage at the Western world – an attitude that
not ic eably does not inc lude t he refusal of milit ary equipment or t ec hnology – is
understandable. Arabs have suffered and c ontinue to suffer injustic es and
exploit at ion at t he hands of c olonial and post c olonial Western governments. But
neit her rage as a polit ic s nor t he self-dec ept ion and doublet hink involved in relying
on Western tec hnologies – and indeed drawing on the intellec tual and tec hnic al
paraphernalia of t he West ern world in all aspec t s of c ont emporary life while
c laiming to be intent on returning to a c ulturally pure heritage – and in selec t ively
choosing which aspects of the past will be preserved (for example, the laws
c ont rolling ' women) are persuasive as polic ies c apable of leading t he Arab world
from entrapment in powerlessness and economic dependence.