A source on politics, war, the Middle East, Arabic poetry, and art.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Is this colonial Feminism or Trash Feminism?
"Why would a Western woman forgo the security and freedom of her home country and relocate with a Muslim husband to an Islamic nation? For an answer, I phoned the feminist author Phyllis Chesler, who has written on the subject. “There is a self-destructiveness in this attraction, a temptation on the part of some women to go to a place where they have servants; or maybe a large extended family that might be wealthier than the one you were born into, or the idea that you yourself might go there and bring change and evolution to a backward country,” says Chesler. “You might say there are horrible things that happen to Muslim women in Muslim countries, and that’s true. But the Muslim woman expects it, she’s used to it—it’s terrible but it is something she already knows about. That is not the case with the foreign or Western wife in a Muslim country.”" (thanks Dylan)