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assignment 11

In the essay, “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving,” Abu-Lughod challenges the common stigmas attached to Muslim women. She says that despite being a cultural relativist society, westerns have been more gravitated to being ethnocentric. Westerners have this superiority complex according to Lughood. She furthers her explanation saying, for us to think that Muslim women need saving, it implies that they are victims of oppression and we must intervene to “save” them. The burqa worn by females is often viewed, by us, to be a symbol a oppression. Lughood says we ignorantly see the burqa and believe that the woman wearing it is being deprived of her human rights. Women that are seen wearing a burqa are misjudged and viewed as victims rather than humans for wearing a representation of their culture. We are reducing their culture by the standards of our own, and Lughood says this is injust of us. The burqa is a choice, not a symbol for oppression. Lughood claims that those from the west and middle east have clashing definitions of feminism. She emphasizes that westerns are pushing their ideas of what it means to be a feminist upon them and this also is wrongful of us. We continue to oppose our own beliefs, because we think they are the only accurate ones. We are consumed with the idea that we must save Muslim women of their oppression, before even realizing they might not want our saving. Lughood says we have to be more educated in their history to understand their culture today. In the end, the only oppressing thing really is the westerns misconception to believe that Muslim women are oppressed. The misrepresentation, in the western society, of their culture is  what is conflicting them. It is difficult for them to identify themselves if we are constantly pushing our perceptions upon them.