Week 6 Readings

The readings this week heavily emphasized how Western civilization misinterprets behaviors of Middle Eastern individuals and reveals the motivations behind actions and words that we may not understand, but that make sense to the individual and how he or she wants to live.

Louise Cainkar's "Gendered Nativism, Boundary Setting, and Cultural Sniping: Women as Embodiments of the Perceived Cultural Threat of Islam" explores Western persecution against Muslim women in America who choose to express their religion through their dress, particularly after 9/11. According to Cainkar "the threat of women in hijab rests in perceptions that these women openly, even proudly, conform to a set of prescriptions and values that are interpreted as un-American, a meaning imputed to them by messages diffused throughout American culture." (Cainkar 230). Because the way they choose to express their beliefs does not conform to a set of what is seen as normative behavior, they are seen as evil, or anti-American, and therefore a cultural and political threat, despite lack of behavioral evidence. This assumes that Muslims, in particular Muslim women, can only assume one identity, despite their American citizenship. It throws constitutional freedoms out the window, and in their pursuit to preserve, Americans lashing out against these women and their families are actually

Saba Mahmood's piece "Agency, Gender and Embodiment" explores stereotypes of agency and shows how there are so many motivations in which one can adopt agency. For example, she mentions that Middle Eastern women's motivations for displaying a shy subdued demeanor are not simply religious, as we may interpret. There is also an ethical motivation, a desire to be a better human, not just to be a better person of faith. The wearing of the veil is a way to foster "the careful scrutiny one applies to one's daily actions in order to shape oneself to live in accordance with a particular model of behavior" (Mahmood 187). It is not patriarchally motivated either, another way in which we misinterpret traditions such as the wearing of the hijab. Instead it can also be motivated by family, by wanting to provide the best moral and ethical example for one's children. It is about portraying the "'moral and physical responsibility' that she as a Muslim woman owed to her immediate kin," just as we value teach good, strong values to our own flesh and blood (Mahmood 183).

The motivations Middle Eastern women have for acting the way they do are not that different from the motivations Western women have for acting the way they do. Both parties want to be the best version of themselves, for their own personal fulfillment, for their families, for their faith. They just differ in the ways they choose to achieve such a state.