Monday, May 7, 2012

Retiring my fandom of Mona Eltahawy

    Parting ways with your heroes is never an easy task, but after the publication of Mona Eltahawy's article "Why Do They Hate Us?" in the May/June 2012 issue of Foreign Policy, such a parting feels regrettably in order.
    Anyone who's read my blog history is well aware of my former fanboy-like admiration for the renowned journalist and speaker, and I will continue to harbor the utmost respect for her ability to carry forward in spite of atrocities perpetrated on her in Egypt last year. However, both my feminism and my staunch opposition to Islamophobia are now at odds with several assertions that her article places on the record. 
    First, the article claims, immediately following its title, that, "The real war on women is in the Middle East." While Mona later acknowledges (grudgingly) that women in Western countries also suffer from oppression, the use of "real" in connection with Middle Eastern misogyny by its very nature deprives of legitimacy the struggles of women everywhere else in the world. Given the massive legislative assault, in the U.S. alone, on birth control, abortion access, and the legal recourse available to sexual assault survivors, the statement is grossly insensitive. 
    Second, while the article appears to attack not Islam but the Middle East's political, cultural, and socioeconomic structures, the distinction is not nearly clear enough for the article to avoid reinforcing Islamophobic beliefs. 
     In the second paragraph, for instance, she refers to "a trifecta of sex, death, and religion, a bulldozer that crushes denial and defensiveness to get at the pulsating heart of misogyny in the Middle East. [Emphasis added.]" Later, when speaking of child marriage, she discusses the disputed claim that the Prophet Muhammed married his second wife, Aisha, when she was a child. Neither statement is countered in any capacity in the balance of the article, which creates the impression that Islam itself partly to blame for the situation. Considering that Mona identified emphatically as a Muslim at the 2011 presentation that introduced me to her, and considering that Islam, as a first order of business at the time of its inception, banned female infanticide, granted women the right to divorce, and made measures to protect women and girls from sexual harassment and assault, this is both lamentable and ironic.        
    Third, her emphatic reinforcement of the Muslim world as the misogyny-capital of the planet are all too reminiscent of the cries to liberate Muslim women that were used to legitimize the invasions of of Afghanistan and Iraq. While it was likely not her intention to do so, Mona appears to leave just such a door open when, at the conclusion of the article, she calls for her readers to, "amplify the voices of the region and poke the hatred in its eye."
    Finally, the series of photographs depicting a plainly naked woman in a veil scattered throughout the article seem an odd aesthetic choice given the subject matter. Their purpose is (I'm guessing) to create an atmosphere of feminine vulnerability and exploitation, and yet they themselves are exploitive, as is any attempt by the media to capitalize on the female form for purposes of grabbing attention. How much creative control did Mona actually have over this? I can't be certain, but it's a testament to my shaken trust that I don't feel comfortable giving her the benefit of the doubt. 
    The statistics presented in the article are indeed compelling, and Mona is right to attest that any feminist should be horrified by the status of women in the Middle East. Statements such as these very much need to be made. However, the article's Islamophobic nature, its ironic objectification of women, and its trivialization of the victims of the (Unreal?) war on women deprive its author of at least one fan.
    There were far, far better ways to approach this.