The Brewing Geographer

Culture, Colonialism, Misogyny, and the Middle East

The current issue of Foreign Policy magazine features a provocative cover story by the Egyptian-American author and activist, Mona Eltahawy—and it’s not just the cover that’s provocative.

Much of the early attention that Eltahawy’s essay has received has been critical. Eltahawy is accused of painting with a very broad and simplistic brush. Which she does. The “they” whom she describes as hating women are variously identified as Arab, Muslim, and/or Middle Eastern, three diverse and overlapping communities who—in the context of this article—seem to be defined by little else than their apparent misogyny.

A closer, more sympathetic reading of the essay reveals that Eltahawy really isn’t trying to suggest that there is something essentially misogynistic woven, sine qua non, into the fabric of Arab, Muslim, and/or Middle Eastern culture. Indeed, Eltahawy argues quite passionately toward the end of the piece that to believe as such is to submit ourselves to a cultural relativism that apologizes for actions and attitudes we would never tolerate in the liberal, modern West. (Or at least we like to think we wouldn’t.)

First we stop pretending. Call out the hate for what it is. Resist cultural relativism and know that even in countries undergoing revolutions and uprisings, women will remain the cheapest bargaining chips. You — the outside world — will be told that it’s our “culture” and “religion” to do X, Y, or Z to women. Understand that whoever deemed it as such was never a woman. 

But if Eltahawy isn’t exactly saying women are systematically discriminated across the Middle East because of Arab and/or Muslim culture, she also fails to provide an alternative explanation. This is where Max Fisher’s response, posted today at The Atlantic, is a  welcome contribution. Fisher provides neither a defense nor a rebuttal, but rather a reinforcement, of Eltahawy. Despite his headline, Fisher, too, fails to provide a definitive explanation of ”…Sexism in the Middle East,” but he appropriately emphasizes that its “Real Roots…” can be found in the dynamics of colonial and post-colonial society. Fisher’s essay is not without its own problems, in particular a redefinition of the often-used concept of a ”patriarchal bargain“ that strays rather far from the original definition developed by Deniz Kandiyoti, which emphasized the agency of women around the world in negotiating a wide variety of distinct patriarchal systems. But that is a topic for another post, perhaps several more posts. For now, here are a handful of suggestions for additional, more academically oriented, reading on patriarchy, colonialism, Islam, and the Middle East. If you have additional suggestions, please share them below!

• Deniz Kandiyoti, ed., Women, Islam, and the State (1991)
• Inger Marie Okkenhaug and Ingvild Flaskerud, eds., Gender, Religion And Change In The Middle East: Two Hundred Years Of History (2005)
• Sherifa Zuhur, “Women and empowerment in the Arab world,” Arab Studies Quarterly, 25 (Fall 2003)