The Subject of Freedom

In the subject of Freedom, Saba Mahmood discusses freedom from a Muslim feminist view, whereas women are not just “pawns in a grand patriarchal plan, who, if freed from their bondage, would naturally express their instinctual abhorrence for the traditional Islamic mores used to enchain them” (Mahmood 2004, 1-2). The text gives insight into why women of the Muslim world actively supports a movement that through Western eyes can be seen as oppressive towards women. Mahmood builds parts of the chapter on a fieldwork she conducted with a women’s mosque movement, and other parts on secondary sources, of which she discusses their validity, strengths and weaknesses. She also brings her own approach to the table, and discusses the critique she is expecting others may have towards it.

I am going to discuss the women’s mosque movement and Islamic revival, or Da’wa, which she describes as both state-oriented activities as well as a broader religious ethos aimed to increase the Islamic knowledge in society. The Women’s mosque movement emerged as a part of the response to the westernization of the governmental structures, a process which they state has reduced Islamic knowledge throughout Egypt. Da’wa has also transformed social and political structures, from how to dress and entertain oneself properly, to household management and the provision of care for the poor in society. The author brings up the issue of equalizing this trend in Islamism with fundamentalism or cultural backwardness, and the problem of other (mainly western) authors on the subject treating it as facts. Mahmood’s own framework and arguments discusses how important it is to have a proper grasp of the ethics in a political agency to really understand it – ignoring this and only seeing it as a reaction to the secular-liberal governance of Egypt means you are missing an entire dimension of the issue.

The text mentions some similar issues as some previous critique we have red on Western feminism, like Mohanty’s text Under Western Eyes – the view of women as a homogenous group with identical values and ambitions is misleading, and the look we get into a women-led movement through Mahmood’s work gives insight into this. As she puts it, “the majority of the participants of the mosque movement […] argue that the veil is a necessary component of the virtue of modesty […] they draw, therefore, an ineluctable relationship between the norm (modesty) and the bodily form it takes (the veil) such that the veiled body becomes the necessary means through which the virtue of modesty is both created and expressed” (Mahmood 2004, 23). Mahmood finally states clearly that she does not expect or ask for people to stop looking critically at oppressive systems in society, but that we should study those systems and practices with an open mind, leaving the possibility to transform our own analytical and political certainties according to the new information we are given. This makes me think of Abu-Lughod’s text as well as our discussion in class about cultural relativism.