Feminism, Islamism, Etc. (Valentine M. Moghadam & Bronwyn Winter)

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

An interesting & important dialogue between feminists on feminism,
Islamism, Islam, Islamic feminism, orientalism, multiculturalism,
secularism, etc. in _Journal of Women's History_....

*****   Valentine M. Moghadam, "Feminism and Islamic Fundamentalism:
A Secularist Interpretation," _Journal of Women's History_ 13.1
(Spring 2001): 42-45, at
<http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_womens_history/v013/13.1moghadam.html>.

Bronwyn Winter's thought-provoking and timely article offers a
measured feminist critique of the study of women and fundamentalisms.
It compels those of us who have previously written on Islamic
fundamentalism to reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of our
analyses.  And it comes at a time when Iranian expatriates are
debating the reality or illusion of an Islamic feminism.  For these
reasons, I welcome the opportunity to respond to Winter's article,
"Fundamental Misunderstandings."

Winter identifies three discursive frameworks -- orientalist,
multiculturalist, and pluralist -- within which key issues related to
the study of Islamism have developed.  I suspect that there are at
least two additional frameworks that may be identified: feminist
atheist and secular feminist.  The feminist atheist stance informs
Winter's approach, and the secular feminist approach I will describe
here.

There is much about Winter's critical analysis and overall politics
with which I agree -- such as her cogent comments on cultural
relativism, Islamism as a patriarchal and right-wing political
movement, and the silence on Algeria and pre-Taliban Afghanistan.
The absence of articles on Algeria in well-known feminist journals
raises questions about how editors decide on submissions dealing with
non-Western women's issues.  As for Afghanistan, I am as frustrated
today by the American feminist preoccupation with the Taliban's
gender apartheid as I was by the total silence of feminists in the
late 1980s and early 1990s, when the Mujahideen, the precursors of
the Taliban, revolted against the left-wing government.  Some
feminists even wrote sympathetically about the freedom fighters; I
may have been the only one emphasizing the reactionary and
patriarchal character of the Mujahideen.  Not only mindless cultural
relativism but also willful anticommunism lay behind the silence and
sympathy.  Today's self-righteous breast-beating allows U.S.
complicity in Afghanistan's tragedy to remain unexamined.

My major disagreement with Winter's article concerns her conflation
of Islam and Islamism.  Ironically, the equation of Islam with
Islamism is precisely the claim of Islamic fundamentalists.  This
claim dehistoricizes Islam and confuses the issues.  I also believe
that Winter is too dismissive of the sociological approach that
correctly explains Islamism in terms of contemporary crises of
modernization and modernity.  Because of space limitations, I will
focus the rest of my comment on the question of Islam versus Islamic
fundamentalism, while also examining the debate on Islamic
feminism....

Valentine M. Moghadam is director of the women's studies program and
associate professor of sociology at Illinois State University.  She
is author of Modernizing Women: Gender and Social Change in the
Middle East (1993); Women, Work, and Economic Reform in the Middle
East and North Africa (1998); "Revolution, Religion, and Gender
Politics: Iran and Afghanistan Compared," Journal of Women's History,
10, no. 4 (1999): 172-95; and other articles and edited books.
<vmmogha@xxxxxxxxx>   *****

*****   Bronwyn Winter, "Fundamental Misunderstandings: Issues in
Feminist Approaches to Islamism," _Journal of Women's History_ 13.1
(Spring 2001): 9-41, at
<http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_womens_history/v013/13.1winter01.html>.

Abstract: Within feminist debates on Islamism, many issues remain
both contentious and insufficiently explored, including the
relationship of fundamentalism to religion, the situation of Islamism
in relation to a supposed crisis of modernity and search for
authenticity, its legitimation through "democratization" and
"multiculturalism," the connection between fundamentalisms and
extreme right politics, and the qualitative value attributed to
women's widely acknowledged centrality to Islamism and cultural
identity.  This article explores these issues and, in doing so,
discusses three problematic discursive frameworks within which the
subject is generally approached: an "orientalist" discourse, which
demonizes and essentializes Islam and the Muslim world; a
"multiculturalist" discourse, which legitimates even the most
fundamentalist Islamic voices in the name of "cultural difference"
and "women's agency"; and a "pluralist" discourse, which distances
itself from overtly right-wing political uses of Islam while
maintaining an apologist stance in relation to Islam....

Bronwyn Winter is a lecturer (professor) in the Department of French
Studies at the University of Sydney.  She identifies as a radical
feminist political scientist and likes to stir up debate in the
pursuit of what Somer Bodribb has called "the feminist potential to
make sense."  Her publications focus on such themes as culture and
consent in human rights discourse on women, the politics of race and
culture, issues in women's political representation, what counts as
feminist theory, and why what is generally known in the United States
as "French feminism" has little if anything to do with what French
feminism actually is.  <bronwyn.winter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>   *****
--
Yoshie

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