The Universality of Women's Rights
and Post modern Theories
Until the mid-70s, women's rights concepts were not
considered as culturally specific and were not divided into
eastern or western, rather they were seen as something
universal, and secularism and the separation of religion
from the state were seen as pre-conditions for women's
liberation.
In the mid-70s, the idea of cultural Imperialism became a
dominant discourse amongst nationalist/ anti-imperialist
intellectuals and political and cultural circles in the west
and the so -called Third World countries alike.
The idea of cultural Imperialism supposedly had a
progressive and militant guise: as part of the populist
struggle in the so-called Third World countries against
imperialism. In the Middle Eastern countries, opposition
to 'imperialist culture' has been considered as an element
of the fight against imperialism. Women have been the
victims of the struggle against 'imperialist culture' and
"Westernism". This is because women's liberation and
women's rights were seen as imperialist and western
concepts. Traditionalist, religious and reactionary forces
opposed women's liberation in the name of fighting
Imperialism and the West.
The idea of cultural Imperialism was the beginning of
revising the idea of universality of women's rights. The
rise of political Islam and the anti-secularist backlash in
the 1980s and 1990s imposed serious setbacks on civil
rights especially on women's rights in the so-called Islamic
countries. These setbacks laid the framework for the idea
that women's rights in the Middle Eastern countries are
culturally bound and should be defined according to
religious and traditionalist values. This reactionary trend
stamped on the concepts of women's rights and equality in
those societies in Ideology, thoughts and discourse.
During the 1990s, post-modern theories particularly the
theories of identity politics and cultural relativism, became
the dominant discourse in academia and various Middle
Eastern study centres in the West. Under the guise of
avoiding orientalism, racism and Euro-centerism, these
theories have justified and continue to justify the attacks
on women's rights, and have been haunting studies of the
Middle East and particularly the study of women's
experiences in various Middle Eastern countries.
Post-modern theories emerged in the 1980s; at the time of
the rise of conservatism, the attacks of capitalist market
economy, the international ideological shifts and
imbalances, the anti-secularist backlash and the rise of
political Islam. These theories were the by-products of a
time of uncertainty, darkness, setbacks and backlash.
Post-modern theories have increasingly questioned the
project of Enlightenment. These theories criticize the
ideals of truth, rationality, system, foundation, certainty
and coherence. They refute a universal view on history, the
world, and society as a whole and believe in fragmentation
and differences, since according to these views, the history
of humanity does not evolve in a universal direction
toward modern and secularist norms and values. These
theories doubt system and a universal truth, and base their
essence on differences and fragmentation. From this
standpoint the history has reached to its end, modernism
failed to achieve its commitments, and secularism and
universalism, all became empty words and terms.
According to post-modern views, the dichotomy of
oppressed and oppressor, oppressive regimes and people
under their rule, backward cultural and religious values
and women's liberation, are invalid and do not exist
anymore.
These theories tell us that the universality of women's
rights, modernity and secularism are all products of the
evolution of western societies and therefore inapplicable
and incompatible to non-western societies where
indigenous cultural and religious values and norms are
different than the West. Therefore, dominant secularist
ideologies must be questioned and resisted where the
viable traditions of social organization such as Islam can
lay the framework for a more humane and egalitarian
society.
John Esposito formulates this view as follows: "At a time
when the ideology of capitalism has desacralised all of
human life for the sake of a destructive acquisitiveness,
the need to open up non-capitalist spaces is more urgent
than ever. The insistence on establishing alternative social
imagery sakes Islam appears as the perennial threats it has
always been. Especially because Islam may well be the
most authentic voice of the South in its struggle against the
western inspired and racially informed hegemonic aims of
trans-national capital. Whatever the case, it has become
quite clear that the nationalist secularist model of the post-
independence period has utterly failed to emancipate the
people and is now seen as a dismal failure."
And he continues: "Secularism is not a separation between
religion and the state, as propagated in both western and
Arab writing. Rather, it is the removal of absolute values-
epistemological and ethical- from the world such that the
entire world-humanity and nature alike- becomes merely a
utilitarian object to be utilised and subjugated. From this
standpoint, we can see the structural similarity between
the secular epistemological vision and the imperialist
epistemological vision. We can also realize that
imperialism is no more than the exporting of a secular and
epistemological paradigm from the western world, where
it first emerged to the rest of the world."
According to identity politics and cultural relativism,
women's quest for legal, political and economic equality is
considered as culturally specific. It permits the
justification of practices that oppress and dehumanise
women in non- western cultures, when similar practices
would be condemned as outrageous, unacceptable and
barbaric in western culture.
What is disturbing in reflecting women's demands and
struggle in the study of and by women in the Middle East
is the attempt to refute women's rights concepts and
theories altogether as western ideas and incompatible to
women's situation in non- western countries. The
suggestion is that the ideas of women's rights and equality
essentially functioned to provide moral justification for the
attack on native societies or their indigenous culture and
traditions.
The pressure on women living in the Middle Eastern
countries to denounce concepts of women's rights as
western, as ethnic specific and irrelevant to non- western
contexts is one of the destructive and damaging
consequences of these views. Sometimes even the
previously accepted minimal elements of women's rights
in a non- western context are called into question. For
example Patricia Higgins suggested that the plight of
women in Iran concern only middle - and upper - class
women, implying that the horrendous consequences of
Islam in power were not significant for most Iranian
women.
Others have questioned maturity of Middle Eastern
societies, and their women to enjoy such rights as sexual
equality. Juliette Minces has argued that they are not ready
"to undergo an emancipation which throws into question a
non - secular equilibrium which has the full backing of
religion"
One dramatic example is the silence of feminists in the
West in face of systematic suppression of women's basic
human rights in Iran and countries under the rule of
Islamic regimes and under the pressure of Islamic
movements. Another example is the denial of asylum
rights to people especially women fleeing oppression and
gender-based persecution such as honour killing, forced
marriage, stoning to death, veil and other Islamic practices
and oppressive customs, under the name of respecting
indigenous culture and religion. The third example is the
way Western governments and their judicial systems treat
the basic human rights of women and girls in the Islamic
families and Islamic communities in the West, in face of
forced marriage, honour killing, imposing the veil on girls
under 16 which deprives them from social activities and
enjoying their basic rights.
Presumably what is happening to women in those
countries and communities is what they deserve and is
more than enough for them. Why should geographic
borders and the oppressive ruling reactionary culture and
religion make what is conceived as oppressive in one
culture an acceptable cultural norm in another? In fact
none of women's rights would have existed in the West if
the concept of women's equality were defined as and
limited to Christian values and backward Victorian norms
in Europe. Cultural relativism suggests that it is not
acceptable to criticise the misogynist, sexist and
derogatory religious and nationalistic culture and
traditions that have been preserved, celebrated and
reproduced as part of an untouchable national or cultural
heritage generation after generation. If Islamic beliefs and
the indigenous national culture in the Middle Eastern
countries are not oppressive and therefore important
barriers against development in women's rights and
liberation, why are women's individual rights and social
position worse in those countries than anywhere else?
The conceptual frameworks laid by identity politics and
cultural relativism prevent many western intellectuals
including women's rights activists from seeing and
appreciating the diversified women's movements in the
Middle East. The hegemonic influence of the western
image of Middle Eastern women as veiled, obedient,
subservient and backward, overshadows the mounting
evidence of their intellectual, cultural and political
changes in the region. This distorted understanding of
women's life experiences, concerns and expectations is
reproduced and repeated in this stereotype. The idea is
that, because socio - economic problems are more
pronounced in the region and because traditionalist gender
roles and male dominance are more rigidly maintained and
reproduced, issues of concern to western women such as
freedom from sexual oppression and women's complete
equality with men are irrelevant to Middle Eastern women.
*****************
Identity politics and cultural relativism are covers to create
a comprehensive social, legal, intellectual, emotional,
geographical and civil apartheid based on distinctions of
race, ethnicity, religion and gender. This complete system
of apartheid attacks women's basic rights and freedom and
justifies savagery and barbarism inflicted on women by
Islamic movements and Islamic governments in the region.
The idea of women's liberation and equality for women is
a universal one. There should not be any cultural or
religious restriction on it. Any attempt to restrict these
rights in the name of culture and identity and religion, or
defining freedom and equality according to different
cultures and religions, puts a major obstacle in the way of
women's liberation.
Egalitarianism, secularism and modernism are important
elements of people's values and experiences in the Middle
Eastern countries. The efforts made by women in those
countries to struggle for a secularist family law in Egypt,
Lebanon and Morocco, in Sudan to secure women's
employment in a mixed public sphere, women's struggle in
Jordan to abolish the law of honour-killing, Kuwaiti
women's fight for getting the right to vote and the most
significant of all, women's movement in Iran are all the
signs of a powerful egalitarian and secularist women's
movement in the region. The development of this powerful
movement would definitively shake the basis of these
societies and revolutionaries men and women's lives alike.
Total failure of post- modern theories is one of the
significant consequences of this movement's advancement.
While women are fighting against traditionalist, religious
and reactionary laws, rules and customs, there would be no
legitimacy and space for these theories to justify the
reactionary and misogynist religion and culture under the
name of closure, expansion, linguistic turn, discourse, and
dichotomy, identity politics, and cultural relativism.
Women's rights are universal and women's liberation can
only be achieved under an egalitarian, progressive and
secularist form of government. These are the basic
prerequisites of women's liberation in the Middle Eastern
countries. These are what women and progressive
movements in those societies struggling and fighting for.
References:
S. Best & D. Kellner, Post-modern Theory. MacMillan,
London, 1991
Esposito, J. The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? Oxford
& New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
P. Higgins, Women in the Islamic Republic of Iran: Legal,
Social and Ideological Changes, in Signs: Journal of
Women in Culture and Society. 10,31 (1998)
J. Minces, The House of Obedience. London & New
Jersey. Zed Books, 1982.
Azam Kamguian's speech in the First Annual Conference
of the Middle Eastern Centre for Women's Studies - 10th
December 2000 - London, England
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