AN EXERCISE IN WORLDMAKING 2009 - ISS

166 UMME BUSRA FATEHA SULTANA
by Edward Said’s (1979) ‘orientalism’. Said’s employment of orientalism
from the perspective of Foucault’s notion of ‘discourse’ reveals that the
whole European scholarly work which intrinsically viewed Islam and
Muslims as inferior and sub-human has created a discourse of the “Muslim
Other” (Musallam, 1979: 25) to establish the “Western Self” as “civilized”
and the unique possessor of hegemonic knowledge (de Sousa Santos
et al., 2007: xxxv).This identity of superior culture at the same time
gives the West the authority of symbolizing veil as the ultimate marker of
Islam’s resistance to modernity (Scott, 2007 : 2), backwardness and Islam’s
degradation of women (Butler, 2008: 13; Ruby, 2006 : 62). Thus,
from a simple piece of cloth veil becomes the fixed icon of “oppressed
Muslim culture”, which at the same time denies the numerous ways
through which it has been practiced by Muslim women. Likewise,
though Rozario (2006) explores several reasons behind Bangladeshi
women’s adoption of burqa, she ultimately brings all burqa users under
the same category and claims that such adoption is the result of an increasing
Islamic movement and as a women’s rights activist she concludes
“however empowering the burqa might seem to the women who
take it up, in reality it contributes to the ongoing violation of women’s
rights in Bangladesh” (Rozario, 2006: 378). Consequently, ideas like
“women’s rights”, “emancipation” and “empowerment” are only limited
to hegemonic Western perspectives, and remain ahistoric. Whatever
“emancipatory” was the history of burqa in Bangladesh (Feldman and
McCarthy, 1983: 953-54; Abu-Lughod, 2002: 785) has totally a reverse
association with present notions of feminist thinking of burqa.
The description of the worldviews of civilized versus backward, morally
upright versus ideologically compromised, modernity versus traditionalism,
inferiority versus superiority, fundamentalism versus secularism,
oppression versus emancipation as ‘the dangers of dichotomization’
by Scott (2007:19) is perfectly apt for these feminists who fail to see beyond
the oppressive nature of veil. They leave no room for self criticism,
no acceptance of the diversity of knowledge, no ability to see beyond the
prisms of right versus wrong, tradition versus modernity and so on. Such
dichotomizations are so pervasive sometimes women have to sacrifice
their burqa to get attractive and challenging jobs. One of my friends had
a keen desire to be a part of the women’s movement; however, she was
perceived as a fundamentalist and conservative due to her burqa, and at
last she had to replace her burqa with a high neck, long sleeves and a