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Assignment 12: LILA ABU-LUGHOD

In the reading,” Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?”, Lila Abu-Lughod critiques on how Americans have the tendency to think that they are saving the Muslim women. She mentions how rather than “saving” them, they should be more interested in  learning the history of the development of repressive regimes in the region and the U.S. role in this history. Abu-Lughod talks about an interview where the reporter from the PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer and First Lady Laura Bush’s radio were going  to talk about women and Islam and contacted her to see if she was able to give some background. She looked at the questions that they were going to ask the panelist and Abu-Lughod commented that the questions were  hopelessly general. She stated how if you would to replace the word Muslim with any other religion it would not make any sense. She also mentions “Most pressing for me was why the Muslim woman in general, and the Afghan woman in particular, were so crucial to this cultural mode of explanation, which ignored the complex entanglements in which we are all implicated, in sometimes surprising alignments”( Abu-Lughod, 784). She follows up by asking why were these females being mobilized in the war against terrorism. Abu-Lughod  mentions how there was a constant slippage between the Taliban and the terrorists in Laura Bush’s radio. This slippage made it seem as if they were one word. Also there was a blurring of the very separate causes in Afghanistan of women’s continuing malnutrition, poverty, and ill health. Laura Bush speech mentions how the American bombing in Afghanistan and military gain was the reason to why women are no longer imprisoned in their homes. Abu-Lughod mentioned how that statement haunts any person that has studied colonial history do to the fact that it had no outside knowledge of the topic. To conclude from this reading it, it appears that Abu-Lughod wanted to stress that instead of thinking about “saving” the women, educate yourself first.