Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Do Muslim Women Need Freedom: Traditionalist Feminisms and Feminist Politics After Saba Mahmood

Date: 06 July 2015

Time: 12:00

Place: Seminari del Departament de Lògica, Història i Filosofia de la Ciència (4047)

Abstract

The idea that Muslim women need to be liberated from their religious traditions has animated feminist support for imperialist projects. By suggesting that tradition itself is women’s oppressor, this idea prevents Western feminists from perceiving the harms “others” incur when their sources of meaning are destroyed or damaged. Still, traditions can be oppressive, so feminists cannot take an indiscriminate affirmative stance toward them. In this article, I make conceptual space for traditionalist feminisms by showing that feminism does not require any particular stance toward tradition. What should matter to feminists is whether the content of traditions is oppressive—not whether a worldview places a high value on traditional adherence. I show this by arguing that, contra some liberal feminists, opposition to sexist oppression does not entail value for what I call “Enlightenment freedom.” I draw on Islamic feminisms to demonstrate the possibility of grounding opposition to sexist oppression in worldviews that value traditional adherence, and even ones that hold certain traditional dictates to be beyond question.