Post-9/11 Discrimination, Weblogistan, and Persepolis

The difference between discrimination against Arab women and Arab men that Caintar documents shows that Islamophobia isn't as simple as "white Christian Americans hate Arab (American) Muslims because of terrorism fear". It's fascinating how different Arab-American men and women have been treated, both before 9/11 and in the past ten-plus years, partially based on dress choices (rhetorically toward men and women both but practically against women) and partially on racial profiling (primarily toward men). Gender differences also play a role in western interpretations of "Weblogistan", according to Sima Shakhsari in Feminist Review, in that male bloggers are considered revolutionaries and poltical activists, while female bloggers are seen as more culturally subversive (she "write[s] about sex"! How scandalous!), but not political actors. Put together these imply that western gender norms are at play in how westerners (Americans or Canadians) view Muslims.

On a not very related note, I found in Persepolis that the depiction of the young narrator's relationship with God was interesting. Obviously the "old man with a beard" meme exists in western non-orthodox Christianity as well, but it implies either cultural exchange or some sort of common understanding of anthropomorphism based on religious traditions with staunchly invisible gods. On that same note, her initial desire to become a prophet and its rejection made me wonder if the reasoning was primarily that there was a rejection of the possibility of new prophets or if it was a sexist ideation based on the fact she was female.

Week 6 Response

In regard to the first reading by Cainkar, I wanted to make two points. First, I thought it was interesting to think about the use of American flags as protection for Arabs or Muslims who felt targeted. I compared the physical presentation of flags to what Mahmood has been saying about wearing the veil. While she argues that women wear the veil to THEN feel modesty, not the other way around, I wonder how this theory could apply to Cainkar's documentation of placing flags outside of houses. Do the Arabs and Muslims do this in order to truly assimilate into American culture, or do they simply go through the actions to protect themselves? Maybe a combination of both? This would have been a great question to ask the interviewees.

Also, although I really enjoyed Cainkar's article, I would have appreciated a larger sample size to back up the claims she made, in addition to a better survey method. Her argument would have carried more weight with me had she talked to people outside of just Chicago. Moreover, although I do believe what her interviewees said, I do want to shed light on the fact that self-reported hate crime incidents COULD be exaggerated or underreported. For example, women often experience events more emotionally and have the tendency to dramatize stories, whereas men may feel embarrassed by hate crimes and feel the need to hide them. I don't know if this necessarily happened with Cainkar, but it could be a potential problem with her methods in dealing with such a sensitive topic. I would have liked her to address this issue.

Finally, I thought it was interesting that all three readings for Monday dealt with a theme we've been talking about for quite some time: namely, that grouping people or an action into one interpretation reduces who they are or what they do into that interpretation only. We saw this in Cainkar's article, where all women in hijab were painted as the "ultimate symbols of foreignness" to facilitate discrimination against them (Cainkar 261). We saw this in Shakhsari's article, where blogs were often simply grouped as "complicities" and "resistances," and not individual works of self expression (Shakhsari 16). Lastly, we saw this in Mahmood's chapter, where she posited that many people see Muslim women "through the lens of resistance" instead of truly examining their individual actions (Mahmood 175). The authors have been trying to emphasize that taking the easy route and categorizing people ignores their vast differences and nuanced opinions, or that it allows hate and stereotypes to be propagated more easily.

Week 6 Post

Cainkar points out that in dominant Western discourses, wearing a hijab is represented as an act of oppression enforced on Muslim women by Muslim men. Mahmoood, along with other authors we have read, have argued that values expressed by the hijab emerge from the context in which they were created. In general for these authors, it is a non-Western context through which we can see how the hijab is empowering rather than oppressive. However, as they argue a set of Western values should not be transplanted into a Middle Eastern context the reverse is also true. It would be hard to transplant the set of values, where the hijab is understood as empowering, into dominant Western ideology. How do we change a symbol? While it is hard, it is not impossible. For example, the word queer has gone through a transformation where it went from being a derogatory word to a progressive academic word. However, these Muslim women in America are using very American symbols to negotiate being Muslim in America by putting American flags on their cars, etc.

This is also a counter example to Mahmood who asserts that theory can be limited by its examples. While this is true, it does not necessarily mean one theory cannot apply in a different context. For example, displaying a flag to demonstrate patriotism is one way to use the symbols and values relevant to a particular context to demonstrate a certain quality (e.g. patriotism, loyalty) in order to navigate a particular context. This is true in the West, just as it is true of the hijab in a Middle eastern context. Therefore, while I agree with Mahmood’s general argument that theory should be situated within a particular place and system of representation and meaning-making, but through that situation it can be limited, I would not agree that every theory is as limited as she suggests they are.

I would not agree that Mahmood is necessarily negating and extending other feminist theorists. For example she says that the body of literature asserts patriarchal ideologies work to objectify women’s bodies and subject them to masculinist systems of representation, thus disturbing women’s experience of corporality and subjectivity. One of the people she sites here is Bordo, who writes about women with eating disorders. These are generally upper middle class, Western women. While Bordo’s theory may not be applicable to the practice of al-haya and the practice of veiling in the Middle East, it is striking that Mahmood similarly fails to qualify her theory with a statement that it too may not be a universal theory. She says, “I believe that the body’s relationship to discourse is variable and that it seldom simply follows either of the paths laid out by these two perspectives” (419). While I would agree with that statement, I think particular theories, specific to certain situations, can be more useful than a theory stating relationships are variable, because theories that are too general tend to be less useful in paractice. If theory should come out of the particular context to which it is relevant, then there is nothing wrong with Bordo’s and other’s theories, they just may not be applicable to the situation Mahmood is trying to discuss. However Mahmood might argue they probably should not be transplanted into a different context anyway. Therefore, I do not understand why Mahmood is situating herself among other feminist theorists that she then argues she is extending or disputing, when it is not useful to extend or dispute a theory that is not really relevant to the context/situation you are trying to explore anyway.

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.

Gendered Nativism explains a problem that we’re all familiar with. Cainkar points out the parallels with Japanese internment, which goes to show this is a pattern that happens over and over again (232). It happened to Catholics in the 1850’s (237). The Other is a societal avocation all too easily obliged by those who are different. So it’s really no surprise hijab wearers were easy targets for bigotry and knee-jerk jingoism, post 9/11. Considering the predictability of alienation, I thought the most interesting point of the article was the woman who thought there was Qu’ranic precedent for wearing hijab; according to Cainkar it isn’t (252), so maybe Muslim women shouldn’t wear hijab, but then again this ignores the elephant in the room—that judging people based on a piece of cloth is absurd. Capitulation would be just as absurd.
Weblogistan reminded me of Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? in its point that Iranian bloggers’ intentions are sensationalized by western media (Shakhsari, 12). Although blogs are an outlet for criticism, it’s farfetched to think Iranians believe Iran to be the anti-democratic disaster seen by Westerners.

Body vs. subject, (neo)liberalism, & notions of "Performativity"

Mahmood analyzes the body's role in the formation of an ethical subject or self, emphasizing the fact that action precedes (and is the basis for) subject formation (in this case, the pious female subject). The key, she notes, is the work that bodily acts/practices perform as not only "critical markers of piety as well as the ineluctable means by which one trains oneself to be pious" (158) in the creation of the subject. She brings our attention to an endogenous cycle: while the veil itself provides the potential for "a modest bodily form" (161), the act of wearing it simultaneously provides not only the means for the acquisition of such modesty but solidifies the creation (and therefore future expression) of the pious subject.

One of the most important take-aways of this piece for me was an expansion of our discussion in class last week concerning Mahmood's analysis and use of Butler's framework. Mahmood contextualizes Butler by emphasizing the need to analyze performatives in relation to one another and to the context in which they are situated. She applies Butler's notion of "performativity" - namely a "reiteration of norms" that extends beyond the performer (162) - to the wearing of the veil by "mosque women," in doing so, highlighting the role of such an act in consolidating (rather than a challenging of) structures of normativity.

Cainkar applies a strain of Mahmood's argument to her analysis of the role the hijab plays in the backlash against Muslims in the southwest Chicago suburbs post-9/11. She notes that women in hijab were perceived as "cultural threats," targeted due to their perception as "the ultimate symbols of foreignness" and visible markers of "un-American values" (261). It is this American culture - rooted in assumed (neo)liberal notions of what we interpret to be choice and freedom (Cainkar 230; Mahmood) - that is being "threatened" by everything the hijab symbolizes post-9/11, thus prompting the violence against women over men. This calls into question an application of Mahmood's distinction between body vs. self, and in what ways such a dichotomy applies to this scenario.

Shakhsari also expands upon similar neoliberal notions of the subject, bringing to light the important role technology can play in not only creating "gendered civilizational discourses" (10) but providing a transnational site through which such discourses can proliferate and produce "gendered political interventions" (9). By focusing on the production of knowledge in such a unique and relevant context, Shakhsari (in addition to the other authors we've read) brings our attention to and questions how notions of citizenship and the state utilize gendered sexual discourse, a topic I hope we'll get to delve into further in the future.

Week 6 Blog Post

I found the first two of Monday's readings to be the most interesting of the week, as Mahmood's piece mostly elaborated upon issues we had already discussed, while both Cainkar and Shakhsari addressed gender in contexts that I had not previously considered. All three authors, however, reflect on the issue of gender and agency in evolving modern contexts, especially when it comes to expressing one's religiosity - even if they do all approach these issues through very different examples and with varying vantage points.

Discrimination against women in hijab has been an issue I've heard about for much of my life, since it seems to have increased after 9/11, an entire decade ago. Similarly, images of Muslim men as terrorist threats are easy to spot. Before reading Cainkar's piece, however, I had never considered how Muslim and Arab men and women were treated so differently - with the men with violent tendencies fitting masculine stereotypes, if not Western ideals, and women wearing hijab in some way actively thwarting Western ideals of femininity and freedom of choice. It's very ironic that this idea of freedom of choice actually limits women's choices, by denying them social acceptance should they choose to wear the hijab. That more women would be discriminated against then men because they are easier targets in suburban areas is simply not something I had ever considered, and I found the dichotomy between "freedom" and "subordination" here both interesting and disturbing (in that Americans who do not recognize the paradox continue to press their own form of subordination upon Muslim women).

Similarly, I have never been forced to consider the different prescribed roles for men and women in the blogosphere. Although I have heard the term "Weblogistan," I had never considered it from a gendered perspective, with men being responsible for political reform and women in the diaspora often being expected to express their freedom in terms of sexual liberation. The latter expectation discursively implies that these women have a repressed counterpart in Iran that needs a liberal discourse on sexuality to truly attain liberation. I agree with Shakhsari when she says that this call for an Iranian sexual revolution "oversimplifies politics and sexuality,"(15) as if writing about sex somehow breaks down the regime. Limiting women as agents on the internet only in terms of sexuality, or even limiting them to the internet at all (Shakhsari points out that women also participate in organizations in rural areas that have less internet access (17)), robs them of political participation beyond the realm of their own sexuality.