Feminist theory has integrated racial, class, and national difference but neglected religious difference.

Evidence

Over the last two decades, a key question has occupied many feminist theorists: how should issues of historical and cultural specifi ity inform both the analytics and the politics of any feminist project? While this question has led to serious attempts at integrating issues of sexual, racial, class, and national difference within feminist theory, questions regarding religious difference have remained relatively unexplored. The vexing relationship between feminism and religion is perhaps most manifest in discussions of Islam. This is due in part to the historically contentious relationship that Islamic societies have had with what has come to be called “the West, ” but also due to the challenges that contemporary Islamist movements pose to secular—liberal politics of which feminism has been an integral ( if critical) part. — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 39

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to the vault’s postcolonial-theory cluster (Spivak, Ahmad) on which differences Western feminism can and cannot theorize; also pairs with the liberal-secular critique cluster.
• SEED: Angle for an essay: the ‘difference problem’ in progressive politics always stops at religion — why is religious difference the one axis Western theory cannot assimilate without dissolving it into false consciousness?