THE KNIFE AND THE VEIL: A THEORETICAL FRAME FOR THE CULTURAL-RELATIVIST EXPLANATION OF ISLAMIC FEMINISM
Keywords:
Culture, values, moral standards, universalism, relativism, Islam, women, veilAbstract
Cultural insiders as well as cultural outsiders tend to portrait Muslim woman as a kind of vessel for preserving “authentic” cultural attributes of Muslims. The consequence of this is a wide-scale exploitation of female sexuality, for the purposes of protecting the Islamic cultural identity from the influence of external “corruptive” factors on the one hand, as well as for the goal of legitimization of neo-liberal expansionist ambitions on the other: legitimization that carries on an image of Western cultural values and moral standards as far more civilized and humane than its “Oriental” counterpart. In this article, we will offer a theoretical framework that views the emancipatory aspirations of Muslim women in the way of pointing out the dangers of different “centrisms” enmeshed in the Western perceptions of these processes, as well as in the way of emphasizing a certain number of advantages of more reflexive and more contextual, cultural-relativist approach to interpretation and analysis of Islamic feminism phenomena.
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