I recently watched a film called, The Stoning of Soraya M., which is an American film produced in 2008. The film takes place in a small village in Iran and portrays a journalist (Freidoune) who is approached by a woman (Zahra) who wants to talk to him about the circumstances surrounding her niece, Soraya’s death. Freidoune agrees to tape record Zahra’s story, which is a tale of a married woman, Soraya, who was charged with adultery. Despite being innocent, she is convicted of the crime and is sentenced to death by stoning.
I believe that the film misrepresents Iranian society and particularly Iranian women because it reinforces the misconception that women in the Middle East need to be liberated and saved by Westerners from the restrictions and violence inflicted on them by the men in their communities. In the concluding scene, as Freidoune drives away with the tape recorder in his hands, Zahra screams that God is great and how the whole world will know of the injustice that took place in this village. This scene suggests that Iranian women must seek help from complete strangers, in other words, foreigners who live outside of such a corrupt and secretive country, because people in their own community fail to provide them with the necessary assistance and protection. This depiction of Iranian society perpetuates Islamophobic representations of the Middle East as a “backwards culture” that promotes the suppression of women as opposed to “the West,” which is characterized as a “progressive society” that encourages the liberation of women.
The idea that women in the Middle East need saving was also used by First Lady, Laura Bush, in her radio address to the nation on November 17, 2001. Bush stated that “the fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women… [and] [that] Afghan women were rejoicing in their liberation by the Americans” (Abu-Lughod). This statement not only reinforces notions of Western superiority, but it also, implies that Afghan women have no ability or agency to speak for themselves. What is also important is Bush’s use of the term, “rights,” which homogenizes women in the Middle East (reducing all cultural difference to similarity) and places feminism and liberation on the side of the West. Her speech made me ask myself, do women in the Middle East really need saving? And if so, how can we protect these women without confusing rights that are universal with localized social and cultural customs as Bush did in her radio address?
According to the anthropologist, Lila Abu-Lughod, Bush’s speech blurred “the very separate causes in Afghanistan of women’s continuing poverty and their more recent exclusion under the Taliban from employment, schooling, and the joys of wearing nail polish” (Abu-Lughod). I believe that it is important to distinguish between the right to be educated from the right to dress as one wants, including nail polish or not, because “every [individual] [should] [have] the right to education” (The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 26), whereas the rights to certain ways of dress are determined by the social and cultural norms within each community. What is notable, however, is the ways in which “women of color” are misrepresented by White feminists.
Journalist, Mariana Ortega, describes how many White feminists have “an ignorance of the thought and experience of women of color that is accompanied by both alleged love for and alleged knowledge about them” (Ortega). She refers to this ignorance as a “loving, knowing ignorance.” What she means by this is that White feminists often assume that they understand what “women of color” are experiencing and what they are thinking when, in fact, they are making assumptions based on what they see in the media or read in literature. For instance, students in my classes (and myself included) often use topics focusing on Aboriginal people and their histories, current predicaments living on reservations, and being discriminated against and marginalized by the rest of Canadian society. However, as a biracial, partly White female, I wonder to myself, how well do I really understand these social and political issues because I have not experienced them, myself. All that I can do is to try to understand by educating myself through the use of various academic literatures and be careful not to homogenize and misrepresent the communities I am discussing.
Therefore, I believe that we need to be careful when making claims about saving women who are “oppressed” because it represents the fallacy that these women are invisible and that they have no voice, when, in fact, they can make equally meaningful contributions to their own societies, in ways that are not necessarily validated by Western perspectives.
Abu-Lughod, Lila. “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and its Others.” American Anthropologist 104.3 (2002): 783-790.
Ortega, Mariana. “Being Lovingly Knowingly Ignorant: White Feminism and Women of Color.” Hypatia 21.3 (2006): 56-74
The Stoning of Soraya M. Dir Cyrus Nowrasteh. Perf Mozhan Marno, Shohreh Aghdashloo, James Caviezel, Parviz Syyad, Vida Ghahremani, Navid Negahban. Roadside Attractions, 2008. DVD
Sexism and Other Issues in Today's Society 
Women in the Middle East are just beginning to be allowed an education. It is because of a lack of education that women are unaware of their constitutional and civil rights. Women who are able to become educated often find better employment and therefore are less likely to allow injustices to be committed in their country. I am not necessarily advocating that these women are all in need of saving but rather that full access to education will empower them. Armstrong wrote in her book Bitter Roots, Tender Shoots: The Uncertain Fate of Afghanistan’s Women, “Denying girls an education is a trick as old as Methuselah. As the women in the literacy class said, if you can’t read, you may as well be blind because you can’t see what is going on. …What happens to the girls in these schools will affect the future of the country.”
She, and many others, strongly believe in the use of education to help women become aware of their rights and to one day be able to stand for themselves. Only 12.6% of the women in Afghanistan are literate and if the number of educated and literate women increases, then more women are empowered and can speak up for themselves and their country. Many people condemn education for women as being anti-Islamic and yet the Islamic text supports education for all. Education for women in Afghanistan is increasing but more female oriented school facilities as well as female teachers are needed to encourage young women to continue their schooling. As education for women becomes increasingly available, Middle Eastern countries will progress.
I agree with the idea that education is necessary for women in the Middle East, such as Afghanistan, to become aware of their constitutional and civil rights. However, the idea that an increase in the number of educated women will lead to “progress” in the Middle East implies that they are “backwards” and “uncivilized.” In other words, although I do believe that education is an important tool that can be used to improve the living conditions of women in the Middle East, we have to be careful not to impose Western values on them and expect them to discard various localized customs and cultures and adopt a Western lifestyle. We also have to be careful not to assume that North American countries are progressive because there are still many sexist and racist laws, practices, and behaviors that occur in Western countries as well.