Do Muslim Women really need to be saved? Anthropologic Considerations on the Cultural Relativism and its Others

Abstract

This article explores the ethics of the current “War on Terrorism”, asking whetheranthropology, the discipline devoted to understanding and dealing with cultural difference, canprovide us with critical purchase on the justifications made for American intervention in Afghanistanin terms of liberating, or saving, Afghan women. I look first at the dangers of reifying culture,apparent in the tendencies to plaster neat cultural icons like the Muslim woman over messyhistorical and political dynamics. Then, calling attention to the resonances of contemporary discourses on equality, freedom, and rights with earlier colonial and missionary rhetoric onMuslim women, I argue that we need to develop, instead, a serious appreciation of differencesamong women in the world – as products of different histories, expressions of differentcircumstances, and manifestations of differently structured desires. Further, I argue that ratherthan seeking to “save” others (with the superiority it implies and the violences it would entail) wemight better think in terms of (1) working with them in situations that we recognize as always subjectto historical transformation and (2) considering our own larger responsibilities to address theforms of global injustice that are powerful shapers of the worlds in which they find themselves. Idevelop many of these arguments about the limits of “cultural relativism” through a considerationof the burqa and the many meanings of veiling in the Muslim world.