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The Double-Edged Sword of Transnational Feminism: A Comparative Analysis of the Politicization of Veiling in Iran and in the United States
Abstract
This research compares the implications of Islamic veiling in Iran and the United States, and explores how the Islamic hijab becomes controversial in these two countries in different ways. Depending on the geopolitical situation of a region and cultural background of a nation, Muslim women have different experiences regarding Islamic veiling. Many transnational feminists, such as Chandra Mohanty, believe in the necessity of the contextualization of social and cultural phenomena (Mohanty 1988, 75). I argue that the way some feminist activists defend Muslim women’s community in the United States blocks any possibility of constructive critical thinking about Sharia Law and its impacts on many women’s lives outside the United States. The fear of being accused of promoting Islamophobia affects many feminist activists’ efforts for achieving women’s rights in other Islamic countries. On the one hand, since January 2017 and the beginning of President Trump’s administration, some Muslim women who wear Islamic hijab have encountered new challenges. On the other hand, The Islamic Republican government’s enforcement of Islamic hijab on women has revived and perpetuated a form of Islamic patriarchy in Iran since the early 1980s. In response, Iranian women have contested Islamic hijab law through collective resistance and manipulation of clothing styles. However, since the last Iranian presidential election in May 2017, Iranian women have started to systematically challenge Islamic hijab. This research examines Islamic hijab from two perspectives. First, I argue that Islamic hijab as a social practice is politicized differently in Iran from how it is in the United States, and women are always the societal group most affected by such politics. Second, I argue that during this political struggle, fear of being accused of being an Islamophobe obstructed transnational support of the Iranian feminist movement. Drawing on the approaches of transnational feminists such as Breny Mendoza and Richa Nagar, and using the recent feminist movement in Iran as a case study, I want to elucidate the necessity of accountable solidarities among feminists across and beyond borders, regardless of attaching to any system of belief. This paper does not offer any solution or prescription, and does not take any stand toward Islam either. However, it examines how the over-defensive stance toward hijab and Sharia Laws exemplified by activists like Linda Sarsour, who was a well-known character in the January 2017 women’s rights march, overshadows the struggles of other feminists against discriminatory Sharia Laws in other countries.
Discipline
Sociology
Geographic Area
Iran
Sub Area
None