Gender, Orientalism and Religious Fundamentalism International Perspectives on Gender

Week 13

Structure of lecture Introduction and Context What is religious fundamentalism? How is it typically gendered? What is Hindutva and how is it gendered? What is Islam and what is Islamic

fundamentalism? What is Orientalism? How does Orientalism link to western

perceptions of Islamic women? Conclusions

What is Religious Fundamentalism? Gita Sahgal and Nira Yuval-Davis: all fundamentalist religious movements: - claim theirs is the only true version of the religion

- are orthodox (maintaining tradition)

- or are revivalist (returning to the ‘truth’)  

- use political means to impose their version on all members of the religion

- attempt to merge religion and state

- are patriarchal Islam has no monopoly on fundamentalism -

fundamentalist movements in Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism etc.

Gender & Religious Fundamentalism Fundamentalist movements are patriarchal and seek to: Emphasise women’s ‘natural’ role as mothers control women’s sexuality and fertility maintain the patriarchal family exclude women from leadership/ public sphere

Women’s bodies become a key site for the articulation of religious fundamentalism

Example from Haredi, ultra-orthodox Jewish sect: Women must dress modestly, be segregated and not sing in

public

Defaced billboard, Jerusalem

2009 cabinet – 2 papers airbrushed women out

Haredi Gender Politics

Anti-fundamentalism Campaign

Rise of the Hindu Right: Hindutva Hindu right came to for in late 1980s India

Mobilizing in pursuit of a Hindu state BJP, the Bharatiya Janata Party

- formed government 1998-2004

- lost election to Congress in 2004

- further loss of seats in 2009 election- main opposition to Congress Party  

Destruction of Ayodyha Mosque Muslim mosque at Ayodyha destroyed in 1992

Hindu belief that Ayodyha was birthplace of Lord Ram (7th incarnation of Vishnu) and that mosque was built on top of temple to Ram

Mobilization in late 1980s by Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) to build new temple

Culminating in destruction of mosque on 6 Dec 1992

Before After

Mobilization Against the Film Fire Fire, 1998, directed by Deepa Mehta

Widespread demonstrations Attacks on cinemas Explores women’s sexuality within unhappy marriages, featuring two sisters-in-law falling in love

Gujerat Violence Sparked by fire on a train that killed 58, many

Hindu activists Blamed on Muslims but probably an accident Ensuing violence saw deaths of 790 Muslims and

254 Hindus, many atrocities Was this communal violence or state terrorism?

Hindutva Discourse History is 1000 year struggle between indigenous Hindu people and Muslim invaders Post-independence appease- ment of minority groups by Congress perpetuated oppression of Hindus A Hindu state (rashtra) must be established in India But there are 154 million Muslim people in India, 13%

of the population

Emergence of Hindutva After independence Nehruvian nationalism dominated,

militant Hindu nationalism went underground Economic crises of 1980s provided conditions for re-

emergence of Hindu nationalism Defined in opposition to Islam: Muslims represented as the ‘other’ and blamed for all ills in society Shiv Sena in Mombai claim Muslims hogging jobs/opportunities Whipping up fear of Muslim population growth

Gender and Hindutva Patriarchal controls over women Positive gendered representations of Hinduism vs.

negative gendered representations of Islam Must recognize active participation of many Hindu

women in the Hindutva movement Sadhvi Rithambara and Uma Bharati are prominent

female leaders of Hindutva Participation of Hindu women in violence undermines

assumptions that women are ‘natural’ pacifists or refuse to engage in violence as recognise have most to lose (‘social’ pacifists) 

Sadhvi Rithambara Uma Bharati

Female Leaders

What’s in it for Hindu women? Offers women a legitimate, if limited, space in the public sphere, an escape from domestic drudgery and hardship

Women re-enact their private roles in the public arena

Is it seen as a way for Hindu women to seek new rights?

Gender and Islam: An Introduction

Key Questions The Prophet of Islam is Mohammed, the holy book is the Qur'an Does Islam oppress women or does it

empower them? Is the hijab (‘veil’) an impingement on

women’s freedom or does it protect them? It’s crucial not to generalise across all Islamic

countries. Disaggregation is essential

Islamic Fundamentalism A revival of the Islamic religion along strict

patriarchal lines Dates from the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and the

overthrow of the Shah Characterised by conflict between fundamentalists

and modernisers about merging of religion and state

Turkey - still secular but in struggle Afghanistan - fundamentalist Taliban-ruled

government, overthrown following western invasion

Perceptions of Gender and Islam Generally homogeneous and negative

Afshar: ‘imaginative and misleading literature... that in the past century has been presented in the West in lieu of research’ (3)

Afshar criticises representations of Muslim women as ‘backward’, passive, unsuitable for emancipation in some Western feminist writing

Moghissi: gaze of West on Islam been both inferiorizing – women’s subordination taken as symptomatic of the degeneracy of the whole – and imbued with European male sexual fantasies

 Lord Cromer: condemned women’s treatment in Egypt but founder member and one-time President of Men’s League for Opposing Women’s Suffrage in UK 

Orientalism

Edward Said’s (1935-2003) Orientalism (1978) The West (Occident) produced itself discursively in opposition to the East (Orient)  Orientalist accounts divide the world into two: the civilised,

rational, scientific, cultured and moral ‘west’ (Occident), and the uncivilized, irrational, unscientific, culturally inferior and immoral ‘east’ (Orient)

Said’s evidence: mainly 18th and 19th century English and French literature, Eg. Victor Hugo’s ‘Les Orientales’

 Orientalism homogenizes, stereotypes, ‘others’ a vast region and all its people

Scholarly control is linked to political and economic control

The Snake CharmerJean Léone Gérôme c1870

‘The Snake Charmer focuses on a naked boy handling a python while an old man plays a fipple flute. Watching intently is a group of mercenaries differentiated by the distinctive costumes of their tribes, by ornaments, and by weapons. Such erotic and exotic imagery of Near Eastern subjects was very popular in the late nineteenth century. Despite the nearly photographic realism employed by Gérome, the painting is a pastiche of Egyptian, Turkish, and Indian elements that have no basis in reality.’Source: The Clark Institute

Pool in a Harem

Jean Léone Gérôme

1876

Illustrations from The Arabian Nights, or 1001 Nights

Orientalism in Film

Significance of Orientalism Orientalism has legitimated colonialism and imperial expansion

Forces of ‘right’ and ‘civilization’ construct a duty to ‘civilize’ and ‘bring light’ to the ‘backward’ parts of the world

‘Western academics had created a history of the Orient which they ‘gave back’ to Orientals’ (Liddle and Rai, 1993, p. 12)

Critique: has Said been over-general? Has he himself homogenized?

Gender and Orientalism Feminist appropriations of Orientalism concentrated on the

way gender relations operate as marker of western ‘civilization’ and eastern ‘barbarity’

Binary constructed whereby civilized nations identified through their good treatment of women, uncivilized nations through their mistreatment of women

John Stuart Mill in The History of India: ‘The condition of women is one of the most remarkable circumstances in the manner of nations. Among rude people the women are generally degraded, among civilized people they are exalted’.

But not all women in the West were exalted, and exaltation didn’t mean equality

Some western feminist writings peddle Orientalism

Consequences of Feminist Orientalism Perpetuates discourse that West is superior to East

Puts (white) Western feminists in (powerful) position of ‘knower’ Puts majority world feminists in very difficult position – discussing

patriarchal aspects of their society provides ammunition for orientalist discourse

Recognising differences between women is vital, but how can this be done without undermining prospects for a global women’s movement?

How can we hear majority world women’s own voices as they typically lack access to publishing outlets – those privileged by class often speak for them

Can’t expect western black women to speak for all majority world women

Implications for IPG How do we look at the lives of women in non-

western parts of the world and understand them without reproducing the binary of ‘civilized’ west and ‘uncivilized’ east?

How do we hear women’s own voices and accept their right to look back and ‘know’ us?

How do we recognise that silence about gender inequalities may not mean there are none?

Conclusions All religions can take fundamentalist forms RF claims to have true version of religion; attempts to

merge religion and state; follows patriarchal gender norms Hindutva can be seen as a form of RF in India today, led

by BJP Destruction of mosque at Ayodyha was key moment Hindutva tells a story justifying Hindu state and

scapegoating Indian Muslims Hindutva has attracted many Hindu women – why? Islam generally is perceived in West as oppressive to

women Are these ideas the latest contributions to Orientalism, the

way the ‘West’ produces itself as superior to the ‘East’? Orientalism is problematic within feminism, and also

challenging to avoid