Week Eight Blog Post

The modern notion of vatan is female, a concept cribbed off Western bimodal gender (Najmabadi, 97). This parallels heteronormalization resulting from Western criticism of Middle Eastern pederasty. The fetishization of land (111) is seen in ancient times, with Artaphernes request of earth and water from the Athenians as a symbol of submission. It would be interesting to investigate the pagan origins of this. Vatan was not ethnically bound (114), unlike most other manifestations of nationalism.
In Kandiyoti's piece, feminism is correlated to secularism (3). There's an inability to escape from the influence of Islam (3). This creates a fundamental conflict. If there were an empirical way to measure zeal, it would be interesting to measure religious conviction in those that accept a conservative interpretation of Islamic canon and those that are more liberal, and less literal. Is there a necessary questioning of the faith itself, if only rudimentary, to subscribe to feminist thought? Cultural identity is related to the rejection of feminism (7). I thought the 1917 code concerning polygyny's restrictive rather than prohibitive nature (11) interesting, as this implies a facile consideration of Islam, and no spiritual conviction. As happens often in compromise,  commitment to religion and feminism is watered down.