New Imperialists : Ideologies of Empire

MOJAB: Gender, Political Islam, and Imperialism 81
Bush administration. In an excellent study of the media coverage of the
war in Afghanistan, Stabile and Kumar “unveil” the U.S. imperialist
misogynist project in the region. They write that “[A]s long as women
are not permitted to speak for themselves, they provide the perfect
grounds for an elaborate ventriloquist act, in which they serve as the
passive vehicle for the representation of U.S. interests.” 39 In this project,
the role of Islam in governing gender relations looms large. Kurdish
women activists have also made a major strategic mistake. Their
feminized nationalism has impeded their ability to build alliances with
Arab women in Iraq. They have made Islam and Arabs their enemy,
rather than patriarchy (with its religious-feudal-nationalist-imperialist
characteristics) and capitalist forms of exploitation.
Patriarchy has survived two centuries of feminist theory and practice,
and two centuries of women’s and feminist struggle against it. Not only
has it survived, it has launched a new round of offensives against women
both in the developed capitalist world and in the developing world. Patriarchy
has powerful allies in the developing world – these allies are
imperialism, religion, nationalism, ethnic belonging, tribalism, and
feudalism. In the West patriarchy also has powerful allies in capitalism,
colonialism, religion, nationalism, and racism. Patriarchy, in the East and
the West, reproduces itself through every means possible, but especially
through mainstream media, popular culture, and the educational system.
However, we should note that the liberal feminist project of achieving
legal equality in the Western world has to a large extent been realized, but
this historical project is at the end of its journey. The challenge is to
achieve gender equality outside the sphere of charters, constitutions, and
the law. I have argued that post-structuralist feminism fails to take us
beyond liberal feminism. It is, in my view, no more than a form of
sophisticated liberal feminism. We need materialist, socialist, Marxist,
secular, and radical feminisms informed by complex dialectical-historical
and materialist methodologies and modes of thinking in order to revive
the international feminist movement.