Sarah Robinson GSI Blog Post 1/22/12

The readings for this week prompted the insight for me that unlike the other prominent monotheistic religions (Christianity and Judaism), Islam is the only one whose central figure exhibited any sort of open sexuality, and who even recognized the bond between conjugal partners as a spiritual one. On a deeper level, I began to think about how Islam developed during the lifetime of the Prophet, and how after his death his companions projected his message throughout history within the constraints of their own social and political realm. In her description of an Egyptian television writer she praises his work as showing the "social genesis of human weakness leading to mistakes" instead of using categorical assumptions about religion or culture to place blame. Though it may seem odd, my mind immediately wandered to Muhammad, who after last week's readings struck me a character of weak conviction; specifically one who could not even stand up to his subordinates, let alone verbally admonish them. I then made the logical leap to how he structured the mosque as being contained within oneself and within one's world instead of embodied in the physical structure of a building. It is my theory that Muhammad's vision of the mosque as a spiritual concept rather than religious practice is rooted in his tacit personality. Basically, out of one thing can come both a weakness and a strength.

Likewise, the image of the burqa as a form of "portable seclusion" led me back to Muhammad's philosophical vision of an invisible yet spiritually grounded community. Western feminists, as a symptom of operating within the Western academic institution, have only recast the "ersatz" reality Alloula discusses in the context of colonial postcards. The immediate reason for this blurring between the distinction of perception and reality is the belief that women exist as a "coherent group" that experience a "shared oppression." The meaning of "shared oppression" then transmutes into "sameness of oppression,"and Western feminists subsequently view themselves as warranted analysts of the categorical oppression of the "Other." Inevitably, this also leads to the insertion of a categorical understand of the meaning of freedom, which inverts itself as Western hatred in the vastness of cultural contexts contained by what we know as the "East" or "third world."

One final thing that struck me was the "juridico-discursive model of power" employed by both the government and the media after 9-11. Lila Abu-Lughod brings up the "constant slippage between the Taliban and the terrorists," words which became fused in the minds of Americans, along with their meanings. This nuanced form of censorship is exactly what Foucault is so concerned about. When the government employs such a denigrating and pervasive linguistic metonymy, they are not only catalyzing an unfounded xenophobia in their citizens, but manipulating political discourse in a way which renders selectivity as a way of controlling information presented to the masses.