Reflection of How Not to Talk About Muslim Women: Patriarchy, Islam and the Sexual Regulation of Pakistani Women

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A Reflection of “How not to talk about Muslim women: Patriarchy, Islam and the Sexual Regulation of Pakistani Women”
Introduction
Saadia Toor’s “How not to talk about Muslim women: Patriarchy, Islam and the Sexual Regulation of Pakistani Women” gives a deeper reflection of how Muslim women are depicted in their societies by explaining the conventional misconceptions held by western cultures. Based on her presentation, Toor reveals that the global landscape particularly western economies consider the Muslim world and therefore Islam as cultural dimensions that treat women as people of “low status” in their immediate societies (1). However, Toor takes advantage of her works of literature to demystify that the existing rhetoric in the global landscape is only ideological as it is based on the traditionally essential and monolithic aspects of Islam that suffers multiple inadequacies in its historical aspects of diversity, rebellion and miscellany.
The scholar adopts critical frameworks such as the ideologies of Orientalism to reveal how European cultures in the colonization era were adopted to justify their ways of life while disregarding the domestically accepted perspectives on the issues of feminism in Muslim economies. As a consequence, Toor explains that non-Western women such as those living in Pakistan were “cast in colonial discourse as victims of their oppressive culture(s) and tradition(s), in a way that allowed colonialism to emerge as their savior” (2). In her interpretation, Toor reveals that the white feminists proceeded with the inherent mission of ensuring that the brown women were saved from their brown men; an aspect that undermined the feminist claims that were initially put forth by the Muslim women in their local communities since the colonial British women were considered to be more superior than other females drawn from the other parts of the globe. As a result, Muslim females “had no cause for complaint and no reason to demand greater rights” (3).
Toor argues that the use of “Islam” as a generalized umbrella of explaining the individual and communal lives of Muslims is one of the sources of the current societal as well as global stereotypes attributed to brown women. While the issues of culture and religion cannot be adequately separated in all contexts, there is need to preempt the decentralized nature of Islam and the misconceptions held on unitary nature of Islamic Law as depicted by the Western economies. As a consequence, Islam needs not to be looked at as the central engine that “explains all aspects of ‘Muslim’ societies” (16). The current study seeks to undertake a critical review of Saadia Toor’s “How not to talk about Muslim women: Patriarchy, Islam and the Sexual Regulation of Pakistani Women” through application of concept analysis.
Supporting Arguments
The effects of colonialism on Islamic feminism
The issues of Islamic feminism in the postcolonial period have put the indigenously upheld identities of Muslim women in countries such as Pakistan at stake. According to Toor (16), mainstream discourses tha...