Book Review: Do Muslim Women Need Saving?, Harvard University Press, 2013 by Lila Abu-Lughod
Lila Abu-Lughod, in her book, Do Muslim Women Need Saving?, boldly challenges the report propagated by the media and human rights groups about the need of Muslim women to be rescued, the frequent message of honor murders, sensational abuse, and disfigurement that both claims have resulted to a rise to a firm consensus in the West. Lila Abu-Lughod is an anthropologist who, in the last thirty years, has been narrating about the Arab women. The author explores the current difficulties of Muslim women while questioning whether generalities on Islamic culture can describe the adversities such women face and asks what motivates specific institutions and individuals to promote their rights In the recent years, Lila Abu-Lughod has been struggling to reconcile the general image of women mistreated by the Islam with samples of complex women she has come across through her study in several societies in Muslim world. Authoritarianism and poverty are common conditions in the Islamic world and made out of world interconnections that finger out the West as more decisive.
Do Muslim Women Need Saving?, by Abu-Lughod, is a fascinating account by a professional who has well spent many years carefully observing women in the and West Middle East, and proficiently owns a crown as a prominent anthropologist and women’s studies professor. Abu-Lughod is a great sharp observer and listener of everyday life. The author recognizes the joys, struggles, and Middle Eastern women’s jealousies and is always informed about the stories that perhaps do not create headlines. The refusal to treat Muslim women as a set of society, Abu-Lughod, focuses on complexities and nuances. In events that others perceive undifferentiated individuals masses, she recognizes genuine women with real stories. The author presents that Islam exists the same way Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism live. Abu-Lughod’s perspective is that there is a need to recognize the existence of an extensive diversity of power relations and practices. This book arises at a critical moment when Muslim women are struggling for their rights to address the hypocrisy of specific individuals and institutions concerned. In Do Muslim Women Need Saving?, Abu-Lughod makes that division clear by demonstrating particular pieces of ordinary Muslim women’s lives, while presenting that the issue about gender inequality can never be associated with religion alone.
Abu-Lughod’s work on Muslim women’s needs for rescue contains a fresh wisecrack to easy religious or cultural explanations for the oppression of women. Do Muslim Women Need Saving? It is as a result of several years of rumination over the contemporary feminist arguments in the 21st century developing world. In this volatile argument, Lila Abu-Lughod often reminds the readers that she argues on this critical matter “as an experienced professional anthropologist.” Thus, in keeping with this responsibility, the author neither provides any simple remedy for the females suffering in the West nor does she overlook the shrug dismissing the indirect discriminations as “just their culture” (Abu‐Lughod 783). However, the author provides an injunction to listen and look carefully for the women suffering in both overseas and at homes and to scrutinize “our accountabilities for the circumstances in which others find themselves in distant places” (Abu‐Lughod 787).
Further, Abu-Lughod reminds her audience that rights may seem universal; however, above all, these rights are developments constrained by institutions, political contexts, and language. Do Muslim Women Need Saving? It is destined to disturb the persuasions of the individuals concerned with Muslim women saving. Several readers may find it dreadful for its categorical critique of the contemporary moral crusades, but the careful readers will beyond a shadow of a doubt find in this great work sufficient ammunition to efforts to deconstruct developments that may be worth pursuing, but eventually are not necessarily focused on enlightening lives of women in overseas as they initially appear. The author melts geographical boundaries and exposes the limitations of universal morality, and criticizes the international authority context that permits Muslim women to continue to be “that distant voiceless other,” (Abu‐Lughod 788) just waiting for intervention to come from nowhere. Therefore, Abu-Lughod invites her audience to think beyond dominant depictions of Muslim women in words and images, but more about their “particular engagement with others, that has constantly taken place in an imbalanced context” (Abu‐Lughod 789)
There is no other person better qualified than Abu-Lughod to take up the challenge of rhetorical questions around Muslim women and their exposure in the international media. The answers confront some underlying assumptions conservatives and liberals hold alike while raising new questions about how the victimized women can be rescued. Thus, this great literary work persuades the readers to reconsider fresh and much more productive approaches to rational and acting. Lila Abu-Lughod successfully lays bare the several aspects that can conspire to yield a hopeless woman in any Muslim society such as distant husband, abusive father, hard personal decisions, obstructive codes of conduct, not forgetting neoliberalism, poverty, politicized private sectors, occupation and war. Do Muslim Women Need Saving? Provides in details multinational stories about critical gender issue that brings together publishers, activists, and women from all corners of the world.