Lila Abu-Lughod: Do Muslim Women Need Saving?

(http://www.missionofgod.org/2013/11/01/no-woman-no-drive-do-muslim-women-need-saving/)
no copyright infringement intended

Abu-Lughod's scholarly work on the image of Muslim women in western society is an important text for post-9/11 discussions on the Middle East, Islam, women's rights, and media. Specifically, Abu-Lughod questions whether western ideas of the abused Muslim women who need to be saved are correct. She concludes that Muslim women, like women of other faiths and backgrounds, need to be viewed within their own historical, social, and ideological contexts. Furthermore, saving these women plays into racist ideas which see Muslim societies as barbaric. Religion is not the main factor in global inequality, which is due to a combination of poverty and governmental abuses coupled with global tensions.

(wiki)

Frequent reports of honor killings, disfigurement, and sensational abuse have given rise to a consensus in the West, a message propagated by human rights groups and the media: Muslim women need to be rescued. Lila Abu-Lughod boldly challenges this conclusion. An anthropologist who has been writing about Arab women for thirty years, she delves into the predicaments of Muslim women today, questioning whether generalizations about Islamic culture can explain the hardships these women face and asking what motivates particular individuals and institutions to promote their rights.

(Harvard University Press)

(video by Harvard University Press)

(Lila Abu-Lughod)