This book is about social phenomena that directly acknowledge the structures and ideologies emerging after September 11, 2001. It considers how these structures and ideologies manage, control, and contain specific bodies with respect to race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and citizenship status. Inflections presented via “9/11” come into play against a backdrop shaped by established patterns of behavior and attitudes toward women and particular groups of people within an American landscape. As a result, existing notions of threat combine with 9/11 inflections to shape a specific conception of threat in a context “after” 9/11, and within this context, a feminism “after” 9/11 emerges. This contextualized feminism would have to develop its analysis within the frame of a society fundamentally altered by the events of 9/11, including its ideological aftermath, by foregrounding pertinent social categories as they interplay with women’s bodies.
Following a long historical legacy, Muslim women’s lives continue to be represented and circulate widely as a vehicle of intercultural understanding within a context of the "war on terror." Following Edward Said’s thesis that these cultural forms reflect and participate in the power plays of empire, this volume examines the popular and widespread production and reception of Muslim women’s lives and narratives in literature, poetry, cinema, television and popular culture within the politics of a post-9/11 world. This edited collection provides a timely exploration into the pedagogical and ethical possibilities opened up by transnational, feminist, and anti-colonial readings that can work against sensationalized and stereotypical representations of Muslim women. It addresses the gap in contemporary theoretical discourse amongst educators teaching literary and cultural texts by and about Muslim Women, and brings scholars from the fields of education, literary and cultural studies, and Muslim women’s studies to examine the politics and ethics of transnational anti-colonial reading practices and pedagogy. The book features interviews with Muslim women artists and cultural producers who provide engaging reflections on the transformative role of the arts as a form of critical public pedagogy.
Drawing on interviews and examples from across the globe, this book tackles the shifting narratives surrounding Muslim women Once regarded as passive victims waiting to be rescued, Muslim women are now widely regarded as arbiters of "terror" and a potential threat to be kept under control. Drawing on interviews and examples from around the world including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Europe, and North America, Shakira Hussein shows how this shift in attitude has taken place and how it impacts feminism, multiculturalism, race, and religion on a global scale. She argues that alongside the fear of Islamic terrorism is a growing fear of Islam as a cultural hazard that is undermining Western society from within. Muslim women, the transmitters of cultural practices, are frequently seen to play a key role in this. Hussein’s work makes for a compelling read, offering a unique perspective on what it means to be a Muslim woman post-9/11.
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and bestselling author of Backlash—an unflinching dissection of the mind of America after 9/11. In this most original examination of America’s post-9/11 culture, Susan Faludi shines a light on the country’s psychological response to the attacks on that terrible day. Turning her acute observational powers on the media, popular culture, and political life, Faludi unearths a barely acknowledged but bedrock societal drama shot through with baffling contradictions. Why, she asks, did our culture respond to an assault against American global dominance with a frenzied summons to restore “traditional” manhood, marriage, and maternity? Why did we react as if the hijackers had targeted not a commercial and military edifice but the family home and nursery? Why did an attack fueled by hatred of Western emancipation lead us to a regressive fixation on Doris Day womanhood and John Wayne masculinity, with trembling “security moms,” swaggering presidential gunslingers, and the “rescue” of a female soldier cast as a “helpless little girl?” The answer, Faludi finds, lies in a historical anomaly unique to the American experience: the nation that in recent memory has been least vulnerable to domestic attack was forged in traumatizing assaults by nonwhite “barbarians” on town and village. That humiliation lies concealed under a myth of cowboy bluster and feminine frailty, which is reanimated whenever threat and shame looms. In The Terror Dream, “Faludi provides stunning and depressing evidence of a concerted effort to silence women and roll back women’s rights in the wake of 9/11 . . . She brings in a Mack truck’s worth of testimony and proof” (Amy Wilentz, Los Angeles Times).
This book offers an accessible and timely analysis of the ‘War on Terror’, based on an innovative approach to a broad range of theoretical and empirical research. It uses ‘gendered orientalism’ as a lens through which to read the relationship between the George W. Bush administration, gendered and racialized military intervention, and global politics. Khalid argues that legitimacy, power, and authority in global politics, and the ‘War on Terror’ specifically, are discursively constructed through representations that are gendered and racialized, and often orientalist. Looking at the ways in which ‘official’ US ‘War on Terror’ discourse enabled military intervention into Afghanistan and Iraq, the book takes a postcolonial feminist approach to broaden the scope of critical analyses of the ‘War on Terror’ and reflect on the gendered and racial underpinnings of key relations of power within contemporary global politics. This book is a unique, innovative and significant analysis of the operation of race, orientalism, and gender in global politics, and the ‘War on Terror’ specifically. It will be of great interest to scholars and graduates interested in gender politics, development, humanitarian intervention, international (global) relations, Middle East politics, security, and US foreign policy.
Analyzing women labeled as terrorists in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Gender and the Political examines Western cultural constructions of the female terrorist. The chapters argue that the development of the discourse on terrorism evolves in parallel with, and in response to, radical feminism in the US during this time.
Between 1985 and 2008, female suicide bombers committed more than 230 attacks—about a quarter of all such acts. Women have become the ideal stealth weapon for terrorist groups. They are less likely to be suspected or searched and as a result have been used to strike at the heart of coalition troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. This alarming tactic has been highly effective, garnering extra media attention and helping to recruit more numbers to the terrorists' cause. Yet, as Mia Bloom explains in Bombshell: Women and Terrorism, female involvement in terrorism is not confined to suicide bombing and not limited to the Middle East. From Northern Ireland to Sri Lanka, women have been engaged in all manner of terrorist activities, from generating propaganda to blowing up targets. What drives women to participate in terrorist activities? Bloom—a scholar of both international studies and women's studies—blends scrupulous research with psychological insight to unearth affecting stories from women who were formerly terrorists. She moves beyond gender stereotypes to examine the conditions that really influence female violence, arguing that while women terrorists can be just as bloodthirsty as their male counterparts, their motivations tend to be more intricate and multilayered. Through compelling case studies she demonstrates that though some of these women volunteer as martyrs, many more have been coerced by physical threats or other means of social control. As evidenced by the March 2011 release of Al Qaeda's magazine Al Shamikha, dubbed the jihadi Cosmo, it is clear that women are the future of even the most conservative terrorist organizations. Bombshell is a groundbreaking book that reveals the inner workings of a shocking, unfamiliar world.
Linda Sarsour, co-organizer of the Women’s March, shares an “unforgettable memoir” (Booklist) about how growing up Palestinian Muslim American, feminist, and empowered moved her to become a globally recognized activist on behalf of marginalized communities across the country. On a chilly spring morning in Brooklyn, nineteen-year-old Linda Sarsour stared at her reflection, dressed in a hijab for the first time. She saw in the mirror the woman she was growing to be—a young Muslim American woman unapologetic in her faith and her activism, who would discover her innate sense of justice in the aftermath of 9/11. Now heralded for her award-winning leadership of the Women’s March on Washington, Sarsour offers a “moving memoir [that] is a testament to the power of love in action” (Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow). From the Brooklyn bodega her father owned, where Linda learned the real meaning of intersectionality, to protests in the streets of Washington, DC, Linda’s experience as a daughter of Palestinian immigrants is a moving portrayal of what it means to find one’s voice and use it for the good of others. We follow Linda as she learns the tenets of successful community organizing, and through decades of fighting for racial, economic, gender, and social justice, as she becomes one of the most recognized activists in the nation. We also see her honoring her grandmother’s dying wish, protecting her children, building resilient friendships, and mentoring others even as she loses her first mentor in a tragic accident. Throughout, she inspires you to take action as she reaffirms that we are not here to be bystanders. In this “book that speaks to our times” (The Washington Post), Harry Belafonte writes of Linda in the foreword, “While we may not have made it to the Promised Land, my peers and I, my brothers and sisters in liberation can rest easy that the future is in the hands of leaders like Linda Sarsour. I have often said to Linda that she embodies the principle and purpose of another great Muslim leader, brother Malcolm X.” This is her story.
DIVEssays that examine the Bush adminstration's deployment of feminist rhetoric and the effects of the administration's policies on women, feminism, and gender roles in the U.S./div
Sara R. Farris examines the demands for women's rights from an unlikely collection of right-wing nationalist political parties, neoliberals, and some feminist theorists and policy makers. Focusing on contemporary France, Italy, and the Netherlands, Farris labels this exploitation and co-optation of feminist themes by anti-Islam and xenophobic campaigns as “femonationalism.” She shows that by characterizing Muslim males as dangerous to western societies and as oppressors of women, and by emphasizing the need to rescue Muslim and migrant women, these groups use gender equality to justify their racist rhetoric and policies. This practice also serves an economic function. Farris analyzes how neoliberal civic integration policies and feminist groups funnel Muslim and non-western migrant women into the segregating domestic and caregiving industries, all the while claiming to promote their emancipation. In the Name of Women's Rights documents the links between racism, feminism, and the ways in which non-western women are instrumentalized for a variety of political and economic purposes.
