VEILED INTENTIONS: ISLAM, GLOBAL FEMINISM, AND U.S. FOREIGN POLICY SINCE THE LATE 1970s A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by Kelly J. Shannon August, 2010 Examining Committee Members: Dr. Richard Immerman, Advisory Chair, History Dr. Beth Bailey, History Dr. David Farber, History Dr. Petra Goedde, History Dr. Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, External Member, University of Pennsylvania, History and Middle East Studies © by Kelly J. Shannon 2010 All Rights Reserved ii ABSTRACT Title: “Veiled Intentions: Islam, Global Feminism, and U.S. Foreign Policy Since the Late 1970s” Candidate’s Name: Kelly J. Shannon Degree: Doctor of Philosophy Temple University, 2010 Doctoral Advisory Committee Chair: Richard Immerman This dissertation explores the ways in which Americans constructed a public discourse about gender relations in Muslim countries from the Iranian Revolution through the post-9/11 period. It argues that discourse significantly influenced U.S. foreign policy in recent decades. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, the degree to which women had or lacked rights came to be the barometer by which Americans judged Muslim societies. “Veiled Intentions” demonstrates that perceived women’s oppression became a key feature of U.S. discussions about the Islamic world. Journalists, scholars, women’s rights activists, novelists, filmmakers, politicians, and others in the U.S. created a discourse since 1979 that cast Muslims as particularly oppressive of women. The pervasiveness of such views and lobbying efforts by women’s rights activists pushed policymakers to situate the attainment of rights for women within the constellation of legitimate areas of policy concern regarding the Muslim world. As a consequence, by the 1990s concern for Muslim women’s rights sometimes drove U.S. policy, as when President Clinton chose not to recognize the Taliban regime in 1998; at other times, rhetoric about the oppression of Muslim women became a political tool which policymakers could use to provide legitimacy and moral force for their interventions in the Islamic world. iii For Jay iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Like all works of scholarship, this dissertation could not have been written without input and support from a variety of individuals. I am indebted to all of them. They have provided me with encouraging words, constructive criticism, research funding, inspiring ideas, and information. Many of the strengths of this dissertation are due to my collaboration with others; its weaknesses are my own. I received generous support from several institutions that allowed me to undertake this project. The Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy (CENFAD) at Temple University provided me with both a scholarly community and research funding. CENFAD’s Thomas Davis Fellowship granted me precious time to draft my prospectus and conduct initial research. I am also grateful to CENFAD for awarding me its Marvin Wachman Fellowship, which funded my trip to the archives at Duke University. The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) kindly awarded me its Samuel Flagg Bemis Award, which provided the necessary support for me to conduct the bulk of my archival research. And the Center for the Humanities at Temple (CHAT)’s Graduate Teaching Fellowship gave me the luxury to spend an entire semester writing and another semester teaching an Honors course in which I was able to test out my arguments on a group of bright, motivated undergraduates. To CHAT’s directors Peter Logan and Liz Varon, thank you for your support. Last, Temple University’s College of Liberal Arts provided me with several travel grants. As I scoured the library and internet for sources and visited the archives, several people provided me with invaluable assistance. Archivists and librarians helped me to use archival collections, provided research leads, came to the rescue when microfilm v machines malfunctioned, and reminded me to take lunch breaks as I spent weeks pouring through boxes of documents. Thank you to Kelly Wooten, Zachary Elder, and Eleanor Mills at the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture at Duke University; Tara Craig from the Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Columbia University; John Lynch of the Television Archive at Vanderbilt University; Sheridan Harvey from the Women's Studies, Humanities & Social Sciences Division at the Library of Congress; Linda Leahy and the staff of the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University; and Karen Kukil and the staff of the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College. Aisha Shaheed from Women Living Under Muslim Laws was kind enough to send me copies of over two decades’ worth of WLUML’s dossiers and publications, which saved me a trip to London. Susie Gilligan of the Feminist Majority put me in touch with Roy Gutman, a journalist and author who generously shared with me transcripts of interviews he conducted with FMF leaders and who pointed me toward key documents from the Clinton Administration pertaining to Afghanistan. Dr. Jack Shaheen pointed me toward several of the films discussed in this dissertation. Just when I was about to give up on finding a recording of the Law & Order episode discussed in Chapter 4, Prof. Kenneth Pybus of Abilene Christian University shared his copy with me. Caleb Mayo and Gabriel Tigerman also shared their expertise of the U.S. entertainment industry. And I am very grateful to Tyler Lopez at the Women’s Learning Partnership for Rights, Development, and Peace and to WLP’s President, Mahnaz Afkhami, who was kind enough to set aside a whole day to speak with me about her life’s experiences. Throughout my entire intellectual journey which culminated in this dissertation, I had the opportunity to learn from and collaborate with an incredibly gifted community of vi scholars. My greatest debt is to my mentor, Richard Immerman. He has read multiple drafts of every chapter, pointed me toward key sources, shared his vast historical knowledge, pushed me to clarify my ideas and arguments, and challenged me to become a better historian. He knew when to provide gentle guidance and when to let me make mistakes. I am grateful to him for devoting so much time and effort to my intellectual development. He has been my greatest supporter, and it is his scholarly example I have striven to follow. Thank you for everything. To the other members of my dissertation committee I also owe a debt of gratitude. Beth Bailey not only produces elegant and brilliant studies of U.S. cultural and gender history, but she also is a gifted teacher. I learned a lot simply by watching her in action. She also provided me with thoughtful and incredibly helpful feedback on my writing. She taught me that language matters and pushed me to articulate “what’s at stake” in my story. David Farber challenged me to sharpen my arguments and to provide relevant context for my research. He is himself a master story-teller, and he consistently reminded me to keep my own narrative clear. He asked big questions that helped me to articulate exactly what it was I was trying to do and why my story should matter to other scholars. Petra Goedde helped teach me how to combine cultural analysis with foreign relations history. She challenged me to keep the transnational dimensions of my project in focus and helped remind me that real people populated the story I was telling. She pushed me to think more about the messiness of my topic. In this dissertation, I deal with complex and emotion-laden issues, and Petra’s guidance has helped me to embrace that complexity. Last, Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet of the University of Pennsylvania shared with me her expertise as a historian of the Middle East. She provided strong support for my vii project while pushing me to write about Muslim women more confidently and accurately. To Beth, David, Petra, and Firoozeh, thank you. You have made me a better historian in so many ways. Many other scholars helped me to hone my writing skills and to think more deeply about my research and history in general. At Temple University, Will Hitchcock, Todd Shepard, Harvey Neptune, and David Watt allowed me to pick their brains on a regular basis. Thank you so much for your support and input. I am also grateful to the participants in CHAT’s bi-weekly research seminar for teaching me how to speak to an interdisciplinary audience. My fellow graduate students at Temple gave me both friendship and invaluable feedback on my work. I’m especially grateful to my fellow writing group members: Cathy Dignaz, Kate Scott, Holger Löwendorf, Abby Perkiss, Ben Brandenberg, Matt Johnson, Sarah Hughes, Wendy Wong, and Michele Louro. Michele has been the friend who has gotten to know my project most intimately. She allowed me to talk obsessively about my research for many hours. Michele’s own work also taught me about how exciting international history can be. Thank you. Outside Temple, I am grateful to Frank Costigliola at the University of Connecticut for being my first graduate mentor. He taught me how to be a historian of American foreign relations. He instilled in me a passion for tackling tough questions. And Frank showed me how cultural and gender analysis, when done well, can teach us to look at foreign relations history from new and illuminating perspectives. My friends at UConn, especially Tom Westerman and Mike Neagle, have allowed me to test out my ideas and arguments on them and cheered me on for the last 7 years. Thanks, guys! I am also grateful to the residents of Swift Hall at Vassar College for instilling in me a love of viii history, teaching me how to “go to the source,” and encouraging me to become a professional historian.