Anti-Malala vitriol is a direct expression of misogyny
“When I was born, people in our village commiserated with my mother and nobody congratulated my father.” This is how Malalala Yousufzai describes the reaction to the birth of a girl in her memoir I Am Malala.
Malala, a young heroine from Swat, Pakistan, has rightly risen to international acclaim. At the age of 11, she defied a terrorist organisation and stood up for the rights of girls to education. At 16, she has sparked a dialogue about children’s education on a global scale that led the UN to recommit to the Millennium Development Goal 2. She has put her words in action and created the Malala Fund, helping to empower other girls. Malala has become an agent of change, bettering this world.
But while Malala is admired by millions of people from all corners of the world, in her homeland, her noble struggle is variously derided as a conspiracy, a meaningless drama or even a mendacious attempt to defame Pakistan. People in the West are genuinely perplexed by the toxicity of the vitriol thrown at this brave young woman by her countrymen.
As a woman also born and raised in Islamic culture, I am not surprised. The backlash against Malala follows a very familiar script. It is a small part of a larger anti-feminist narrative that seeks to discredit any push for gender equality within Muslim societies as an act of Western Imperialism, thus indefinitely preventing the emancipation of Muslim women.
This narrative absolves oppressors of their responsibility. Muslim women don’t suffer at the hands of patriarchal men, militants and terrorists nor are they victimised by the societies and laws deliberately stacked against them — instead they and their oppressors are both victims of an abstraction; sometimes described as Western Imperialism, neo-colonialism, neo-liberalism on so on.
Direct actions of the West such as military interventions and drone warfare shoulder the blame for all that is wrong in Muslim societies. This myopia is only concerned with perceived wrongdoing of the West, while native misanthropic practices, such as violence against women, clerical tyranny, sectarianism, militancy and terrorism, are ignored or even excused as an understandable response.
Anything, even the attempted assassination of a young girl, can be explained this way. Criminals, in this case the Tehreek-i-Taliban become the victims of Western imperialist violence, while women activists who resist their anti-women agenda are discredited as collaborators and pawns of the Western Imperialism. This effectively shuts down any debate on women rights. Women can only be victims of direct or indirect Western violence, while violence committed against them by the native patriarchal men is conveniently overlooked.
This notion of permanent Muslim victimhood at the hands of the menacing West can be traced back to the work of the highly influential academic Edward Said. According to Said, the West is engaged in a sustained and systematic attempt to diminish and subjugate Islamic society and culture. Thus, Western attitudes towards the Orient can only ever be racist, imperialist, exploitative and ethnocentric in nature.
While most Muslims probably, have never read Said, his premises have become widely circulated memes, are repeated endlessly by various commentators, and internalised by Muslim masses to the point where they are accepted as unquestionable truths. This has had catastrophic consequences for Muslim societies. First, it has fostered a collective inability to recognise and address the fact that it is religious dogmatism and reactionary cultural practices, not the West, that have plunged the Muslim world in state of stasis and decay. Second, it has bred a rejection of the universality of the human rights and individual freedoms, which are wrongly and maliciously labelled as tools of Westernisation.
The conflict between Malala and Taliban is a conflict between inalienable, universal human rights, on the one hand, and “rights” as defined and limited by religious authorities on the other. The position of the Taliban on this matter is one shared by all Islamist and religious/cultural conservatives who are reluctant to cede the obvious benefits of male supremacy. Anti-women practices are rationalised and excused as a “divine” and/or an opposition to Western Imperialism.
The argument that universal human rights and personal freedoms are expressions of the Western culture is profoundly untrue. Rather, universal human rights transcend culture by elevating the rights of the individual above it, irrespective of race, creed, sexual orientation or gender.
In opposition to universalism, relativists argue that human rights are subservient to culture and religion. It is important to note that, as Michael Ignatieff has correctly observed, cultural relativism an argument is almost exclusively used by those who wield power in cultures and who commit human rights abuses; those they oppress, whose human rights are compromised, are rendered powerless.
Thus, the rejection of egalitarian universalism — the very values Malala espouses — protects the interests of patriarchal men whilst simultaneously disempowering women. When this is done under the guise of anti-imperialism, misogyny acquires the legitimacy of moral righteousness and, in case of Pakistan, a reactionary religio-nationalism. The result is that feminism and women rights are disparaged as treachery — a vey cunning political defence of women hatred, indeed.
Talk of Western Imperialism, “Malala Drama-zai”, colonialism, drones and ridiculous conspiracy theories is simply misdirection designed to hide and deny the obvious — that there exists within Pakistani society a deep and abiding contempt for women and notions of female equality and emancipation. This is clearly illustrated in the derisive propaganda comparing Malala to Mukhtaran Mai, another incredibly brave woman who refused to bow down to violence and be reduced to a mute victim.
As Andrea Dworkin, a feminist writer, noted:
“Feminism is hated because women are hated. Anti-feminism is a direct expression of misogyny; it is the political defence of women hating.”
Lejla Kurić writes on women rights, human rights and social justice for Left Foot Forward, Britain’s No 1 left-wing political blog.