Feminist anti-Sharia campaigns silenced the Muslim women they claimed to protect

Evidence

Feminist rejection of faith-based arbitration left no room to stand for women seeking to live a faith-based life, a schism that was clearly in evidence at a community forum to discuss Sharia. At a public meeting sponsored by Arjomand and the International Campaign to End Sharia, a group of young veiled women from a Somali youth group repeatedly asked questions relating to the need for religious tolerance, arguing that their Muslim faith and their Muslim youth group was a refuge from the racism they experienced in high school. Speaking of teacher and principal surveillance, police surveillance, and the media demonizing of Muslims, the young women argued that Sharia would be more applicable in their lives should they choose to use it for family issues. Most of their remarks were dismissed by the speakers on the platform on the basis that the young women did not know how fundamentalism operated. Dismissed as naive, and told that they had been coerced into wearing the veil, some of the young women chose to leave the meeting. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 357

Categorization

• XREF: Mirrors the rhetorical move in ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ where moral guardians claim to protect women while dismissing their stated agency — same pattern, different arena. — connects to: Muslim women veil for varied personal-political reasons silenced by rescue discourse
• SEED: Article angle: the recurring reflex by which self-appointed protectors of women discount the testimony of the very women they claim to save — from veils to Sharia to anti-trafficking crusades.
• DEEPTHINKING: The scene — teenage Muslim women being told they’re too naive to know what they want, that their hijab is coercion — is a dense, resonant moment about who gets to claim knowledge of women’s true interests.