LILA ABU-LUGHOD AND JULIET A. WILLIAMS ARGUMENTS-

        Lila Abu-Lughod and Juliet A Williams are both making a claim of points of similarities between marriage practices in Iran and the Unites States in Julie Willaims article, Egypt in Lila Abu- Lughod and the United States—that cannot be rejected. Both authors critical analysis reveal how these cultures in the Middle East have intertwined with Western Ideology, but are either ignored or denied due to orientalism for the West and the East wanting it to be their own cultural authenticity. 

   

     Lila Abu-Lughod article looks at the historical roots in her argument to show the link how the vision of marriage In Egypt is and aspects of it is influenced from the West. For a critical examination of ideology Lughad looks at the Egyptian elite reformer Qasim Amin who many has consider him the father of Egyptian feminism under British occupation. One of the examples Lila states that Amin echoes the European Christian marriages vows—he quotes a prominent British thinker, John Stuart Mill, “What better situation is there for a man than living with a companion who accompanies him day and night, at home and aboard, in sickness and in health, through good and bad (pg.257).” Another link she makes is how he calls to end veiling and seclusion as well as to ban polygamy to nurture martial bond, which also can be linked to European Western influence.  

      In Juliet A Williams article she is arguing how temporary marriage in Iran should not be looked as inferior and in negative, immoral way that U.S. media frames it to be. U.S. media reinforces this unmoral- barbaric image of temporary marriage by omitting and manipulating information—although the United States, she claims bears a striking resemblance to Shiite temporary marriage. Lila asserts that a temporary marriage refers to the contract made between a man and unmarried woman specifying the duration of a union and an amount of money to be given by a man to his temporary wife (pg.612). One of her critical examples she points out about temporary marriage in Iran being not so ideologically different to the marriage institution in the United states is the growing reliance on prenuptial and postnuptial agreements, where thinking about marriage is not just about living together forever about also planning for strategies for a marriage that could ended up being impermanent—plans for separation.

    What I find significant in Lila Abu- Lughod’s argument is her emphasis on looking at the historical context of feminism in Egypt and to be have an open awareness of how certain elements of culture that have been burrowed, imported or heavily influenced by Western and European occupation of the East-to not be denied. To be able to stand outside of your inherent subjective assumptions about a culture and to be mindful of all the different historical stages it went through to how it become to be the way it is now.

    Similar, to Juliet A Williams argument of how temporary marriage in Iran being similar to the U.S—what I found significant about her argument is that their needs to be a double critique before there is a disregard or disdain for a certain a way a culture does something—“ In a double critique, the act of translation itself becomes the object of critical analysis, where translation is understood not as a means to the end of true understanding but rather as an occasion for the translator to, in the words of Talal Asad, “test the tolerance of her own language for assuming unaccustomed forms (pg.629). “  I found this statement valuable and valid that when we are trying to make sense of another culture and their unfamiliar and “exotic” ways and to translate it, we need to analyze or own translation of a culture and to challenge our own assumptions to why we disregard elements of culture that isn’t familiar to what we know.