Cultural framings of Muslim women obscure the actual causes of their suffering

Evidence

Abu Lughod itemizes here what both the cultural and the feminist explanation so neatly dislodge. A cultural framing has ‘prevented the serious exploration of the roots and nature of human suffering in this part of the world.’ Of the West’s insistence that its values represent progress, Abu Lughod insightfully asks: ‘[M]ight other desires be more meaningful for different groups of people? Living in close families? Living in a godly way? Living without war? Why presume that our way, whatever that is, is best? The historical record of the secular humanist West is far from unblemished, with genocides, colonialism, world wars, slavery, and other forms of inequality deep parts of it.’ — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 249

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to my work on who gets framed as needing rescue and who does the framing — same logic as savior narratives in development discourse. — connects to: European portraits of oppressed Muslim women projected fantasy without evidence or access.
• DEEPTHINKING: The question ‘might other desires be more meaningful… Living in a godly way? Living without war?’ is a genuinely paradigm-shifting challenge to the assumption that Western secular progress is the default telos — pushes past most postcolonial critique.