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Abu-lughod Assignment

In her piece “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others”, Lila Abu-Lughod poses the issue of using the state of Muslim women in the Middle East in order to justify America’s war on terror. Abu-Lughod questions the ethics of the war on terrorism, claiming that the actions of the U.S. military, which often leads to shocking and appalling results, cannot be reasonably justified by the plight of women in nations where the US military is active. In order to support her claim, Abu-Lughod looks to Anthropology rather than politics, and offers a theory on how American sentiment and misunderstanding shapes our view on how to approach our relationship with muslim majority states. She posits that American’s, particularly the American Government, views toward Islamic culture are largely parochial and narrow. Abu-Lughod says that the supposed “oppression” of muslim women is not a mandatory coercion to live a certain way but rather a willing method for women to express their own culture, an ancient and proud culture with deep roots in history.

The author compares the American Government’s facade to “save” muslim women harkens to an earlier period in history, the Colonial Era, in which international powers pillaged and oppressed many different populations around the world under the guise of helping them with “education and civilization”. Abu-Lughod offers an alternative for the U.S. Government, saying that rather than focus on trying to “save” muslim women, they should not only recognize that cultures develop with widely different histories and social dynamics, since their actions are in essence an imposition of their own culture. On top of this, The Government should focus its resources toward actual humanitarian crises on the planet, like the prevalence of starvation or the massive wealth gap between western and eastern nations, or even the accommodation of millions of displaced refugees from war-torn countries.