Jan Schakowsky of Illinois is a leftleaning congressperson. But the other day
to fund the Afghanistan war. And she was a
cosponsor of the bill denouncing
the landmark Goldstone report. Oh my! Last week I saw Jan Schakowsky at the Nation Institute dinner. She expressed
genuine skepticism about Obama’s plans in Afghanistan,
but also held up a blue burqa that she had gotten in Afghanistan. She pointed out the small space that women get to look out when they wear a burqa. A couple of my friends groaned. As if this justifies killing civilians,
which we’ve gotten really good at.
The burqa moment was regrettable but it also touches on my apprehensions about women’s freedoms in the Muslim world. It looks like I’m going to Gaza with the Freedom March, and I wanted to put down a few thoughts ahead of time, on a subject that causes me considerable distress.
–Schakowsky is expressing widespread feelings among American feminists and liberals, including many Jews, of disturbance-to-repulsion at mores in the Arab and Muslim world. These feelings bleed easily into intolerance, and neoconservative justifications for invading those countries. Indeed, I have noticed that cultural issues are a royal road for liberals to become neocons.
–I liked Obama’s Cairo speech. He addressed women’s rights in the Muslim world in a gentle manner. He
respected Muslim customs of women covering
themselves, but also spoke of the need for female equality, empowerment. And he said the U.S. is engaged in this struggle itself. The hall at Cairo University was quiet and respectful. Some cheered.
–In preparing for my trip to the Middle East, I have heard several people I trust talk about the issue of sexual harassment of women in Egypt and Palestine. It is a real issue, and is one reason women cover themselves. I have been upset by the absence of women at public events, like big soccer games on TV and New Year’s celebrations. I feel a need to address these issues in my work, from time to time, because intellectual honesty is a goal of mine as a journalist, and because it strengthens my outreach on Palestinian rights to liberals and lefties in this country who sometimes close down on the Arab world precisely over gender dynamics. Yes, these societies are struggling with sexual issues; I think my society is more advanced in that area. But that is no reason to deny these people basic freedoms, occupy their lands, destroy their way of life, murder them, imprison their nonviolent leaders, decapitate their families on a gender-discriminatory basis, let alone act out Jewish revenge fantasies (involving the effete diasporic male in European society) on Muslim men.
–At some level we have little power over other cultures. I spent months in the South Pacific. They have many customs I found strange, even unhealthy, and overly-traditional. I learned to walk on by and try and set my own example, even as I, at times, wore traditional dress, a cloth tupenu skirt and woven-grass ta’ovala over the skirt. A friend advised me the other day that the best thing I could do on this issue of women’s freedoms in the Arab world was to attempt to reciprocate their famous hospitality, and listen. To offer women in these societies an opportunity to tell their stories, and thereby empower themselves, even inside their families. To treat them as fellow travelers in human history, who can learn from us, as we can learn from them.
On that cultural-relativist note, I close.
