PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
UNDER WESTERN WOMEN’S EYES: WESTERN INTERVENTION IN LIBERATING MUSLIM WOMEN IN THREE MEMOIRS SET IN ASIA
A Thesis
Presented As Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement
To Obtain the Magister Humaniora (M.Hum.) in English Language Studies
By
Dian Windriani
Student Number: 176332026
THE GRADUATE PROGRAM OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDIES
SANTA DHARMA UNIVERSITY
YOGYAKARTA
2019 PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
UNDER WESTERN WOMEN’S EYES: WESTERN INTERVENTION IN LIBERATING MUSLIM WOMEN IN THREE MEMOIRS SET IN ASIA TITLE PAGE
A Thesis
Presented As Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement
To Obtain the Magister Humaniora (M.Hum.) in English Language Studies
By
Dian Windriani
Student Number: 176332026
THE GRADUATE PROGRAM OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDIES
SANTA DHARMA UNIVERSITY
YOGYAKARTA
2019
i PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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LEMBAR PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN PUBLIKASI KARYA ILMIAH TJNTUK KEPENTINGAI\I AKADEMIS
Yang bertanda tangan di bawah ini, saya mahasiswa Universitas Sanata Dharma:
Nama : Dian Windriani
NIM :176332026
Demi pengembangan ilmu pengetahuan, saya memberikan kepada Perpustakaan Sanata Dharma karya ilmiatr saya yang berjudul:
TINDER WESTERN WOMEN,S EYES: WESTERN INTERYENTION IN LIBERATING MUSLIM WOMEN IN THREE MEMOIRS SET IN ASIA
beserta perangkat yang diperlukan (bila ada). Dengan demikian saya memberkan kepada Perpustakaan Universitas Sanata Dharma hak untuk menyimpan, mengalihkan dalam bentuk media lain, mengelolanya dalam bentuk pankalan data, mendistribusikan secara terbatas, dan mempublikasikannya di internet atau media lain untuk kepentingan akademis tanpa perlu meminta tjin dari saya maupun memberikan royalti kepada saya selama tetap mencantumkan ruIma saya sebagai penulis.
Demikian pernyataan ini yang saya buat dengan sebenarnya.
Dibuat di Yogyakarta
Pada tanggal: 23 Juli 2019
Dian Windriani PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my deepest and sincere gratitude to my thesis advisor, Dra.
Novita Dewi, MS., M.A. (Hons), Ph.D for her expertise and guidance throughout the process of writing my thesis. Thank you for always encouraging me to work harder. My profound gratitude also goes to Paulus Sarwoto, Ph.D. for his knowledge and lecture, especially on Literary Criticism and Critical Theory. My sincere thank also goes to my thesis reviewer and examiner, Sri Mulyani, Ph.D., and Dr. G. Fajar Sasmita Aji, M.Hum. for their valuable suggestion to my thesis. I would like to extend my gratitude to the lecturers of ELS department, F.X.
Mukarto, Ph.D., Dr. B.B. Dwijatmoko, M.A., Dr. E Sunarto, M.Hum., Dr. Fr.
Borgias Alip, M.Pd., M.A., and Dr. J. Bismoko. Writing this thesis would be more difficult without the warmth support from my college friends, especially
Literature Warriors (Anin, Banti, Imam, Mashao, Mike, and Yo). Thank you for learning and struggling together in Literature class.
For my beloved parents, thank you for your everlasting love and support.
In favor of my gratitude, I present this thesis for them.
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BELIEVE YOU CAN, THEN YOU WILL - Mulan
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE ...... i A THESIS ...... iii STATEMENT OF WORK ORIGINALITY...... iv LEMBAR PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN PUBLIKASI KARYA ILMIAH UNTUK KEPENTINGAN AKADEMIS ...... v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... vi TABLE OF CONTENTS...... viii ABSTRACT...... x ABSTRAK ...... xi CHAPTER I ...... 1 INTRODUCTION ...... 1 A. Background of Study ...... 1 B. Problem Formulation ...... 10 C. Benefit of Study ...... 11 D. Thesis Outline ...... 11 CHAPTER II...... 13 A. Review of Related Studies ...... 13 B. Review of Related Theories...... 20 1. Postcolonial Feminism: A Theoretical Reading...... 20 CHAPTER III ...... 35 WESTERN REPRESENTATION ON MUSLIM WOMEN AS THE OPPRESSED ...... 35 A. Burqa Wearing ...... 35 B. Arranged Marriage...... 41 C. The Passive Portrayal of the Muslim Women...... 47 D. Closure of Educational Access...... 50 CHAPTER IV ...... 55 RESCUING OTHERS, PROMOTING SELF: WESTERN INTERVENTION NEGOTIATED ...... 55
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A. Historicity...... 58 B. Intentionality ...... 65 C. Action...... 71 1. Fashion ...... 71 2. Educational Awareness ...... 75 3. Writing...... 78 CHAPTER V...... 85 CONCLUSION...... 85 BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 92
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ABSTRACT
Dian Windriani. 2019. Under Western Women’s Eyes: Western Intervention in Liberating Muslim Women in Three Memoirs Set in Asia. Yogyakarta: English Language Studies, Graduate Program. Sanata Dharma University.
Western’s monolithic portrayals on Muslim women as terrorist, uneducated, passive, and oppressed have already placed them in the triple oppression. They are often seen as being a helpless group that becomes Western responsibility to rescue from their suffering. This study explores how Western women (Debbie, Nawa, Malala) monolithically present Muslim women as the oppressed group in order to intervene Muslim women’s resistance as depicted in Deborah Rodriguez’s Kabul Beauty School (2009), Fariba Nawa’s Opium Nation (2011) and Malala Yousafzai’s I Am Malala (2013). Two issues are discussed in this thesis. First, it reveals Western women’s monolithic representation on Muslim women. Second, it examines the negotiation of Western representation and intervention to liberate Muslim women from their misery depicted in three memoirs studied.
By applying Mohanty’s seminal article “Under Western Eyes”, this study analyses how third world women suffer from not only colonization and patriarchy but also Western women’s monolithic representation on them. Through Bourdieu’s symbolic violence, it can be seen how Islamic and cultural values are unconsciously manipulated by patriarchy to oppress Muslim women. Although Muslim women have already resisted against the oppressive and injustice experience done by colonizers and patriarchy, their resistance will not be taken into account because of their inferiority. In such a case, Spivak’s essay entitled “Can Subaltern Speak?” is used to analyze how Muslim women need intellectual intervention due to the fact that their voice to resist is never heard by the oppressors.
This study reveals that the three memoirs studied have similar pattern, i.e. how Muslim women’s suffering is exaggerated in order to ask Western intervention to liberate them from the Taliban. This study also shows that orientalist thinking operates in the memoirs but it is done for the sake of voicing out Muslim women’s experience and struggle.
Keywords: Western stereotype and intervention, Muslim women, memoirs.
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ABSTRAK
Dian Windriani. 2019. Under Western Women’s Eyes: Western Intervention in Liberating Muslim Women in Three Memoirs Set in Asia. Yogyakarta: Pasca Sarjana Kajian Bahasa inggris, Universitas Sanata Dharma. Penggambaran monolitik Barat terhadap wanita Muslim sebagai teroris, tidak berpendidikan, pasif, dan tertindas telah menempatkan wanita Muslim pada posisi yang tidak menguntungkan. Karena mereka sering dipandang sebagai kelompok yang tertindas, orang Barat merasa memiliki tanggung jawab penuh untuk menyelamatkan wanita Muslim dari penderitaan mereka. Tesis ini membahas bagaimana wanita Barat memberikan stereotip negatif terhadap wanita Muslim supaya wanita Barat dapat mengintervensi perlawanan wanita Muslim seperti yang digambarkan dalam Kabul Beauty School karya Deborah Rodriguez (2009), Opium Nation karya Fariba Nawa (2011) dan I Am Malala karya Malala Yousafzai (2013). Tesis ini menekankan pada dua pokok pembahasan. Pertama, mengungkap kesalahan wanita Barat dalam merepresentasikan wanita Muslim yang terdapat di ketiga memoar. Kedua, menganalisa tentang representasi dan intervensi yang dilakukan oleh wanita Barat dalam membebaskan wanita Muslim dari kesengsaraan mereka.
Dengan menerapkan artikel Mohanty “Under Western Eyes”, tesis ini membahas bagaimana wanita di dunia ketiga menderita tidak hanya dari praktik penjajahan dan patriarki tetapi juga dari misrepresentasi yang dilakukan oleh wanita Barat. Melalui kekerasan simbolik dari Bourdieu, terlihat bahwa nilai-nilai dan budaya Islam secara tidak sadar dimanipulasi oleh patriarki untuk menindas wanita. Oleh karena itu, para wanita ini merasa bahwa mereka sedang menjalankan praktek keagamaan, faktanya mereka secara tidak sadar sedang ditindas oleh patriarki. Meskipun wanita Muslim telah menentang penindasan dan ketidakadilan yang dilakukan oleh penjajah dan patriarki, perlawanan mereka tidak akan pernah diperhitungkan karena inferioritas mereka. Dalam kasus seperti ini, esai Spivak yang berjudul “Can Subaltern Speak?” digunakan untuk menganalisa bagaimana wanita Muslim sangat membutuhkan intervensi intelektual.
Tesis ini mengungkap bahwa ketiga memoir yang dikaji memiliki kesamaan dalam membesar-besarkan penderitaan wanita Muslim agar wanita Barat memiliki alasan untuk membebaskan wanita Muslim dari Taliban. Walaupun tesis ini menunjukkan bahwa ketiga memoar tersebut mengandung pemikiran orientalis, hal ini dilakukan demi menyuarakan pengalaman dan perjuangan wanita Muslim dalam melawan Taliban.
Kata Kunci: Stereotip dan intervensi Barat, wanita Muslim, memoir.
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CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A. Background of Study
Western monolithic1 portrayal of Muslim women2 as the oppressed group under Islamic misogyny needs to be revisited. Such single narrative has already placed Muslim women as if they always become the victims of sexism and religion; actually, that is the problem of representation. According to Stuart Hall,
“Representation means using language to say something meaningful about, or to represent, the world meaningfully, to other people.”3 Hall argues that the process of representation is always complicated because it involves power relation; between the one who is representing and represented.4 Since the representation relates to the power relation, many possibilities of this process are manipulated to maintain the master’s power in the discourse. Similar to Hall, Edward Said also argues that the relationship between the West and the East (representing and
1 The monolithic representation of Muslim is dangerous since it will legitimate that all Muslims are defined by similar identity, history, and experience. In fact, not all Muslims have similar history and experience, such as the Muslim in America that is experiencing racial discrimination in which Muslim in other countries have not experienced it yet. The implications are (1) it creates dichotomy within Muslim; between good and bad Muslim in which the parameter is determined by Muslim in Arabs that is perceived as the authentic Muslim. (2) It strengthens the superiority complex within Muslim in Arab believing that they are better and more authentic. See Edward Said’s Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World. 1981. 2 To contextualize this analysis, Muslim women in this thesis refer to the Muslim women who are the result of Western monolithic construction on them. They are monolithically depicted as the oppressed group under Islamic fundamentalist and misogyny; ignoring the global power relation and the complexity of their history, experience, and struggle. See Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses.” 3 Stuart Hall & Open University, Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage in association with the Open University, 1997, p. 15. 4 Stuart Hall & Open University, 53.
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represented) is a complex relationship of hegemony based on power. Western scholars who have more bargaining position in society try to reconstruct and then represent the East based on what they want to see on them, or as projection or denial of their unwanted characteristics in their discourse.
The manipulation of representation is also applied to understand the relation between the West and Islam/Muslim5 in the Western discourse. After the downfall of communism and the rise of Islam, the West chooses Islam as their new strong opponent by bringing back the cultural and religious issues to trigger the conflict between them. Funk and Said confirm, “Islam has been a factor in the definition of Western identity for centuries, consistently playing the role of “rival” and theological/ ideological other.” 6 By constructing a negative image of
Islam/Muslim in the Western discourse, the West tries to strengthen their power in status quo. In the case of terrorism, for instance, the West uses their discourse to lead the public opinion in which Islam and Muslim are identical to terrorism and extremism. It is true that terrorism done by Islamic fundamentalists cannot be justified; however, it is more problematic when the West neglects the global power relation as the cause of the problem. Funk and Said have this to say:
Middle Eastern Muslim analysts, on the one hand, tend to view militant groups such as al Qaeda as byproducts of foreign hegemony, distorted processes of change, and the defeat of secular Arab nationalist movements in the Arab-Israeli conflict. American commentators, on the other hand,
5 The binary is usually between the West and the East, but the concepts of them are too broad and still progressing. Since this analysis deals with the Western women’s saving project toward Muslim women, the term Muslim is used to substitute the East to fit in the context of analysis. It is justifiable because both ‘Eastern’ and ‘Muslim’ have undergone the ‘othering’ process from the West. By highlighting the difference between the West and Muslim, this analysis does not intend to strengthen the binary and oppression that are experienced by Muslim but to see the connection and the harmonization between both parties. 6 Nathan C. Funk and Abdul Aziz Said, “Islam and the West: Narratives of Conflict and Conflict Transformation.” International Journal of Peace Studies, 9.1 (2004): 5. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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tend to view extremist groups as evidence of inherent backwardness – i.e., of cultural intolerance and an associated inability or unwillingness to assimilate into the international system by adopting Western liberal models of thought and governance.7
Afnan Qutub argues that mainstream media and literature play big role in spreading and maintaining the Western negative depiction of Muslim. Through
Hollywood movies entitled “Sex and the City 2” (2010) and “The Dictator”
(2012), Qutub finds out that the American film industry presents Middle Eastern men as the terrorists or billionaires, and women as the belly dancers and the oppressed group in order to legitimate U.S hidden political and economic agendas in Middle Eastern countries.8 Responding to the Western hegemonic character,
Muslim chooses to resist the West by rejecting everything related to the West.
However, Islamic fundamentalists then take advantage from Muslim anger toward the West to justify their group in status quo believing that such rejection is perceived as the only way to purify Islam from Western ideology. The Islamic fundamentalist’s rejection toward Western ideology is used by the West to generalize that Islam/Muslim is barbaric, uncivilized, uneducated while the West is civilized, equal, intelligence, and so on. Howbeit, the one who is strongly affected by the greediness of the West and Muslim men is Muslim women. After the 9/11 attack on World Trade Center and the Pentagon, for instance, Muslim women have received not only a negative depiction of them but also prohibition in practicing their religion in some parts of Western countries; in Jasmine Zine’s
7 Nathan C. Funk and Abdul Aziz Said, 7. 8 Afnan Qutub, “Harem Girls and Terrorist Men: media Misrepresentations of Middle Eastern Cultures.” Colloguy (2013): 139. http://www.calstatela.edu/sites/default/files/users/u2276/qutub_essay8.pdf. 19 February 2019. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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term such prohibition is called as ‘gendered Islamophobia’ 9 . The banning of wearing hijab, niqab, and burqa10 in America and France is the real example of how gendered Islamophobia starts to be internalized. Arezoo Adibeik sees the issue of gendered Islamophobia this way:
I have found that most fears of burqa and niqab have their roots in the events following September 11, 2001 terror attacks and the suicide bombings and hostage takings in different parts of the world. For example the heart-breaking event of ‘Beslan School Siege’ on 3rd of September 2004 which was about Chechen Islamic extremists who murdered 344 people after taking 1200 hostage during just one day and among the hostage-takers were “female suicide bombers wearing the burqa and niqab”11
The media reporting, likewise, is stereotypical as proven in The Guardian, September 15, 2010:
After six months of “mediation” and a period during which police are likely to be given detailed instructions on how to apply the law.. They will consist of fines of Euros 150 for those found wearing a face-covering veil as well as, or instead of, a “citizenship course”. […]Supporters of the ban - including Nicolas Sarkozy, who has said the full Islamic veil “is not welcome” on French soil - say it is a move made primarily in defense of women’s rights and secularism.12
If the Western representation of Muslim women is prolonged such as in the cases above, it will strengthen the binary between Muslim women and
9 According to Jasmine Zine, gendered Islamophobia refers to specific forms of discrimination leveled at Muslim women that proceed from historically contextualized negative stereotypes that inform and sustain the structural conditions of domination. See her “Between Orientalism and Fundamentalism: The Politics of Muslim Women’s Feminist Engagement.” Muslim World Journal of Human Right (2006). 10 According to Beau Donelly, Burqa is a veil that covers the entire body and face; Niqab is a veil covering the head and face, but not the eyes, usually worn with a loose black garment (abaya) that covers from head to feet; Hijab is a general term meaning ‘to cover’ or ‘veil’, most commonly refers to a headscarf that covers the hair and neck, but not the face. See Beau Donelly, “Andrews Government Slam Opposition’s ‘Burqa Ban’ Policy.” The Age, 13 February 2017. https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/andrews-government-slams-oppositions-burqa-ban- policy-20170213-gubrip.html. February 19, 2019. 11 Arezoo Adibeik, “Representation of Burqa in France as Represented in British and Persian Newspaper.” Lancaster University Postgraduate Conference in Linguistics and Language Teaching (2012): 5. https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/events/laelpgconference/papers/v07/Arezoo.pdf. 19 February 2019. 12 A. Adibeik, 15. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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Western women; thus, what is the difference between Western women and colonizers? Responding to this situation, Engmann then argues that the colonial domination does not only rely on violence, dehumanization, and exploitation of the inferior group but also colonizer’s ideology and knowledge that are taken for granted by the colonized knowledge. 13 To prove his hypothesis, Engmann conducts research on a collection of photographs of naked African women in the
British National Archives. He argues that the photograph collections of Asante’s women contain colonial propaganda to justify British colonialism and capitalist expansion in Africa.14 He also relates the African culture to fetishism, the realms of unseen, which is used by European colonizers as a strategy to manipulate and establish the difference between the Self and Others. For instance, the depictions of bare breasts, buttocks, and genitals of Asante’s women by European media are actually the projection of European sexual fear and desire on African women; seen as a part of cheap exoticism that is sexually available to Europeans. Such photograph which is perceived as a symbol of backwardness and cheap exoticism of African women finally justifies the British colonizers to come to Africa in order to civilize them.
Responding to the Western feminist saving project, Mohanty argues that the presence of Western feminist in defending and rescuing third world women will only create the monolithic view that third world women are ignorant, poor,
13 Rachel Ama Asaa Engmann, “Under Imperial Eyes, Black Bodies, Buttocks, and Breasts: British Colonial Photography and Asante ‘Fetish Girls.’” African Arts 45.2 (2012): 46–57. www.jstor.org/stable/23276801. 14 R. A. A. Engmann, 46. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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uneducated, tradition-bond, domesticated, family-oriented, and victimized.15 By representing third world women as the oppressed, Western feminist has already participated in silencing the struggle and resistance of the third world women in fighting against both patriarchy and colonization. Sarrani and Alghamdi’s comments included the following:
Western feminists’ contributions have been regarded as either a planned strategy to destroy the culture and tradition of the Arabic Muslim world, or an attempt to westernize the society. Therefore, Western feminists generally face a two-fold problem when discussing the status of women in the Third World.16
It can be said that the Western feminist saving project becomes justification for the inability of third world women in speaking of and protecting themselves from the oppression. This is how Western feminist is not perceived as a hero but a new kind of colonizer for third world women. For this matter,
Mohanty suggests to Western feminists to contextualize their argument; therefore, they will not become part of people who silence the voice and struggle of the third world women in status quo. Mohanty’s comments included the following:
Feminist work on women in the third world which blurs this distinction (a distinction which interestingly enough is often present in certain Western feminists’ self-representation) eventually ends up constructing monolithic images of ‘Third World Women’ by ignoring the complex and mobile relationships between their historical materiality on the level of specific oppressions and political choices...17
15 Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses,” in Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman (eds.) Colonial Discourse and Post- Colonial Theory. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014, pp. 196-216. 16 Aber Al-Sarrani and Alaa Alghamdi, “Through Third World Women’s Eyes: The Shortcomings of Western Feminist Scholarship on the Third World.” Department of Languages and Translation in Taibah University, (2014): 2. http://www.analize-journal.ro/library/files/alaa.pdf. 19 February 2019. 17 C.T. Mohanty, 211. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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Built on the issue of Western feminist saving project, this thesis examines how Western women (Debbie, Nawa, and Malala) represent Muslim women18 as the oppressed group in order to intervene Muslim women’s resistance persist in three Asian memoirs, namely, Deborah Rodriguez’s Kabul Beauty School (2007),
Fariba Nawa’s Opium Nation (2011) and Malala Yousafzai’s I Am Malala (2013).
The writers of the memoirs studied exaggerate the suffering of Muslim women under the Taliban and post-Taliban regime because they want to have a legitimating to voice out Muslim women’s voices. Memoir as a self-writing is used to be a weapon for women to see the world from their perspective and to break their silence from the writing, knowledge, and reality that are constructed and dominated by men. Jennifer Anne McCue cites Meredith Maran’s idea in this way:
We might miss the chance to change the world – for ourselves, for our daughters, and for our sons. We might miss the chance to finally see who a woman might be, who a man might be, set free from the confines of gender rigidity. And what better way to begin than the way women has always begun: by telling the truth about our lives?19
It can be said that the memoirs studied can be mechanism to break Muslim women’s silent under the Taliban and post-Taliban regime. The problem is that since those memoirs are Western discourse, there will be a possibility of the orientalist thinking operates there. In other words, the writer as the West or “I” or the center of the discourse tends to speak from a position that the West is a superior civilization compared to others whether they realize it or not. However,
18 In order to avoid in generalizing Muslim women, the term of Muslim women in the analysis refers to Pashtun Muslim women who live in Afghanistan and Pakistan under the Taliban and post-Taliban regime. 19 Jennifer Anne McCue, “Empowering the Female Voice: Interdisciplinary, Feminism, and the Memoir.” Journal of Integrated Studies, 5.1 (2014): 2. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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the writers’ struggle in helping Muslim women to resist against the Taliban should be taken into account. The writers who are the Western representatives are indeed the outsiders, but they can also be categorized as the insider since they live in
Pakistan and Afghanistan under the Taliban and post-Taliban regime in order to directly investigate and experience the problem. Therefore, they can understand the real situations there. Relating to the writer’s bias, the bias will still be there, but it is justifiable as long as their main goal is speaking for the oppressed group.
In the memoirs, Debbie, Nawa, and Malala are categorized as Western representatives since they embody the Western characteristics, such as developed, industrialized, capitalist, secular, and modern, and having the responsibility to save the Other. Since the term ‘Western’ loaded with meaning, this study will follow Stuart Hall’s definition of the term ‘Western’. He said:
They were the result of a specific set of historical processes- economic, political, social, and cultural, nowadays, any society which shares these characteristics, wherever it exists on a geographical map, can be said to belong to “the West.” The meaning of this term is therefore virtually identical to that of the word “modern.”20
In other words, the term ‘Western’ refers to the concept or construction rather than the geographical location. To ease the readers, précis of each memoir is necessary. Kabul Beauty School is a New York Times bestseller’s memoir in
2007 written by Deborah Rodriguez (Debbie) and co-written by Kristin Ohlson tells about Debbie’s experience living in Afghanistan under post-Afghan
Taliban’s regime. The writers narrate the Afghan women’s limitation in practicing their freedom under the name of tradition and religion, such as having difficulty to
20 Stuart Hall and Bram Gieben, Formation of Modernity. Oxford: Polity in association with Open University, 1992, p. 186. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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access the jobs; subjugating to the forced-marriage and keeping silent to any domestic violence. Seeing the horror life of Afghan women, Debbie, who is a beautician and writer, builds a beauty school, named Kabul Beauty School, to help
Afghan women to empower themselves and be economically independent.
Debbie’s school provides the access for Afghan women to express their inner thought and creativity, such as learning makeup, gossiping, joking, dancing, even criticizing the Taliban, which are prohibited by the Taliban.
Opium Nation is a memoir written by an Afghan-American journalist,
Fariba Nawa, published by Harper Perennial in 2011. She originally grew up in
Herat but she now lives in America due to the fact that she was a refugee in
America when Afghanistan was under Soviet invasion. The memoir is about
Nawa’s struggle in investigating the illegal drug dealer in Afghanistan that leads to her heroic mission in saving Darya, the opium bride, from her misery. Nawa is one of Afghan-American who perfectly internalizes the orientalist mentality in seeing Afghanistan; thanks to the negative depiction from Western mainstream media. When she comes to Afghanistan, she brings the myth which is embodied in Darya; therefore, Nawa has mission in saving Darya from her misery and also revealing the drug trade in Afghanistan. To find the solution in saving Darya,
Nawa goes to the rehabilitation clinics and opium bazaars, visits the warlords’ home and attends the police training sessions to destroy the drug trade. Through her long journey, Nawa realizes on the complexity of Afghanistan and its people.
Nawa then believes that Darya does not need to be rescued since she is capable to PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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opt-out from her oppression by herself. For this reason, Nawa decides to stop her saving project and lets Darya to save herself.
I Am Malala is a memoir written by Malala Yousafzai and co-writer
Christina Lamb. Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani activist for female education and the winner of Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, while Christina Lamb is a British journalist. This memoir has already been translated into over forty languages, sold over a million copies since its publication, and won some awards, like Goodreads
Choice Awards Best Memoir and Memoir 2013 and Specsavers National Books
Awards 2013. I Am Malala tells about a struggle of fourteen years old girl who fights against the Taliban’s regime in order to fight for women’s right, especially the right on education. Although in the middle of the story Malala is shot by the
Taliban in the bus after taking the exam, she does not stop to encourage young girls to pursue education. Because of that accident, Malala and her family move to
London.
By affirming Mohanty’s “Under Western Eyes”, Bourdieu’s symbolic violence and Spivak’s Strategic Essentialism, this study reveals that the memoirs studied depict the struggle of Western women in fighting against the Taliban since
Muslim women are too passive in facing the oppression caused by the Taliban.
B. Problem Formulation
This thesis discusses Western intervention on Muslim women’s resistance against Islamic fundamentalist and patriarchy that is narrated through Western perspective. It highlights the Western representation of Muslim women as being PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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backward, uneducated, voiceless, and victimized, who need Western intervention to rescue them from their misery. To investigate the issue of Western stereotype and intervention on Muslim women resistance, this thesis seeks to answer two main questions:
1. How do Western women (Debbie, Nawa, and Malala) represent
Muslim women as seen in Deborah Rodriguez’s Kabul Beauty School
(2007), Fariba Nawa’s Opium Nation (2011) and Malala Yousafzai’s I
Am Malala (2013)?
2. How and why do Western women (Debbie, Nawa, and Malala)
intervene in liberating Muslim women as shown in three memoirs
studied?
C. Benefit of Study
By analyzing the Western monolithic representation of Muslim women in the three Asian memoirs set in Afghanistan and Pakistan, this study aims to participate in discussing the misunderstanding between Muslim and Western people on the negative portrayal of both countries. Not to mention, this thesis gives contribution to the literary studies, especially on Islamic feminism, since this study highlights Muslim women’s oppression and liberation in the third world countries.
D. Thesis Outline
This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter one is the introduction that consists of background of study, problem formulation, benefit of study, and thesis outline. Chapter two is the reviews of literature consist of reviews the related PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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studies, theories, and theoretical framework. Chapter three is the analysis on how
Western women represent Muslim women as the oppressed. Chapter four analyzes the negotiation of Western women’s intervention in liberating Muslim women from Muslim men. Finally, chapter five is the conclusion. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
CHAPTER II
LITERATURE REVIEW
A. Review of Related Studies
The representation of women in the third world has been much examined.
However, such representation is challenged by a number of studies. Afnan Qutub for example, she opposes the negative portrayal of Western media toward Middle
Eastern people and culture by analyzing two movies entitled “Sex and the City 2”
(King, 2010) and “The Dictator” (Charles, 2012), and newspaper articles like The
Washington Post and The New York Times. 21 She finds out that Hollywood tends to present Middle Eastern men either as terrorist or billionaires and women as belly dancers.22 There are three important issues presented herein. First, American media misrepresentation is used to justify the presence of American armies in the
Middle East in order to intervene in the Middle Eastern policies. Second, media misrepresentation will strengthen Muslim women portrayal as backward, uneducated, oppressed, voiceless, not modern, submissive, and victimized. Using the myth of veiling as an example related to this context, Qutub argues that
Western media falsely associates hijab with the oppression and enslavement toward Muslim women. 23 Western media fails to justify that some Muslim women who wear hijab based on their consideration in accessing their religious
21 Afnan Qutub, “Harem Girls and Terrorist Men: Media Misrepresentations of Middle Eastern Cultures.” Colloguy 9 (2013): 139-155. Print. 22 A. Qutub, 139. 23 A. Qutub, 146.
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practice. Qutub defends her argument by saying, “The truth is that I wear my hijab because it is a right given to me by my creator.”24 Third, the writer suggests society to use Cross-indigenous and ethnographic studies focusing on learning about the ‘other’ from the ‘other’ perspective, for instance, by watching documentary videos, reading Middle Easterner’s published works and voices that will provide an insider perspective. Seeing the ‘other’ through the lens of similarity will provide more accurate understanding between the East and West.
As Qutub says,
Such world created by scholars who had a dynamic relationship through an exchange of cultural perspectives are more likely to offer an accurate portrayal of Middle Eastern cultures. Above all, Boerman and Hammoudi’s use of ethnographic fieldwork in the Middle East captures actual snapshots from the original cultures.25
Qutub’s arguments on the manipulation of Middle Eastern’s image and her contribution in solving the misunderstanding, such as seeing Eastern culture from
Eastern perspective or erasing the difference between the East and West are well presented. However, she neglects the fact that Eastern media also has their own goal and orientation, so how she measures that Eastern media will not fabricate its content in order to construct their good image.
Mohammed Albalawi also conducted research on the problem and solution for the Western negative portrayals of the Arabs which are constantly presented in
American media and journal articles. In American TV series entitled Stan of
Arabia, for instance, Saudi Arabia is depicted as retribution for Americans for their horrible action. Albalawi proceeds:
24 A. Qutub, 146. 25 A. Qutub, 152 PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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In “Stan of Arabia”, Stan and his associates plan a surprise 25th anniversary for his boss, Bullock. At the party, Stan accidentally kills the TV host Jay Leno.. the next day, Bullock relocates Stan and his family to Saudi Arabia as a punishment for what happened at the party... 26
Saudi Arabia becomes a punishment for Stan’s family since they will live in the limitation and danger of Arab; Saudi Arabia is portrayed as a country that is full of sand, desert, terrorist and codes of conduct that are very oppressive toward women. Stoning in public becomes popular retribution for those who conduct wrongdoing. For these matters Albawi says:
Stan’s wife wants to assimilate to the Saudi culture, but later she admits that the culture is “insane”...she tries as hard as she can to leave the country saying, “I’m dying”. Even women can be bought. Wearing burka... In many of the family’s statements, women are totally subjugated, for example, “Women can’t drive or ride bicycles”, “The man has final say on everything”, “Daddy makes decision Mommy makes a sandwich”... “Stan of Arabia” provides so many false beliefs about Saudi Arabia. Almost every Saudi Arabian rides camels and owns a gun. Anyone who does not follow the country’s strict moral codes is stones.27 Albalawi believes that the negative portrayal of Saudi Arabia such as in the American TV series Stan of Arabia has already influenced viewer’s perception and it will remain the same even if it has already been examined by the scholars.
Therefore, he proposes literature as another mechanism to solve the misunderstanding since it has the power to change the reader’s perception of seeing others. He says, “Literature trains us to understand people’s beliefs, empathize with whom we have no personal experience, and eventually reduce the bias against out group members...”28 To strengthen his claim, he analyzes Ghassan
Kanafi’s Men in the Sun (1990), a story about the failure, pain, and suffering of
26 Mohammed Albalawi, “Arabs’ Stereotypes Revisited: The Need for A Literary Solution.” Advances in Language and Literary Studies 6. 2 (2015): 202. Print. 27 M. Albalawi, 202-203. 28 M. Albalawi, 204. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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three Palestinian refugees, Abu Qais, Assad, and Marwan, who will be smuggled to Kuwait in order to pursue their freedom. Their pain and suffering show the new face of the Arabs, as a human with their humanity that in the end, it can distort the existing perception of the Arabs as the terrorist, cruel, villain, and greedy.
Similar to Albawi’s argument that literature can be a solution to solve the misunderstanding, Pauline Homsi Vinson also justifies that Leila Abouzeid’s autobiography entitled Return to Childhood: The Memoir of a Modern Moroccan
Woman (1998) can be a challenge toward Western hegemony and representation on Muslim women. Abouzeid’s Return to Childhood is not merely for exposing her inner thought or writing back toward the Western discourse that has already marginalized Muslim women, but it is more used as the representative of her communities’ voices. By examining one autobiography Vinson is afraid that it is not enough to solve the Western monolithic view toward Muslim women in the status quo. However, she believes that Abouzeid’s Return to Childhood is useful as the representation of Abouzeid community’s voice and a counter-example to
Western generalization on Muslim women. Vinson cited Abouzeid, “The Work was meant for a non-Moroccan audience, and I felt it would give me the opportunity to correct some American stereotypes about Muslim women.”29 There are many Muslim women’s writers who write about Muslim women’s experience, such as Huda Shaarawi, Fadwa Tuqan, Fatima Mernissio, Leila Ahmed, and so on. However, Abouzeid’s writing should be taken into account since Abouzeid’s writing is aimed to respond to the Western monolithic depiction on Muslim
29 Pauline Homsi Vinson, “A Muslim Woman Writes Back: Leila Abouzeid’s Return to Childhood.” Arab Women’s Lives Retold: Exploring Identity through Writing. Ed. Nawar Al- Hassan Golley, Syracuse. New York: Syracuse University Press, p.1. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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women. 30 Even further, by writing her autobiography in her native language,
Abouzeid tries to assert her nationalism, similar to African nationalist writer,
Ngungi Wa Thiong’o. For this matter, Vinson said:
By composing her memoirs in Arabic and publishing them in her native Morocco before their appearance in English, Abouzeid establishes her allegiance to her culture and community before exposing them to Western readers.31
Abouzeid frequently says that she does not want to be condemned as a writer who only voices out her own voice, but she wants to be a true representative for her community. Therefore, she does not only write it in her native language but also includes other women’s narrative in her story that is gained through the oral story from her mother and grandmother. Vinson explains:
In so doing, she endows her text with a “polyphonous richness, with internal divergences, with differences and tensions in evidence.” In fact, the inclusion of other women's voices within the text illustrates how the author's sense of herself is interconnected to the voices of others around her, even if those voices are reconstructed and embellished through her selective memory and retrospective stance. The numerous embedded quotations and narrations place Abouzeid's written memoirs within a larger narrative of primarily oral female speech and transform her memoirs from an individual’s chronological review of her childhood into a series of multi-authored interconnected, episodic stories.32
It can be said that if Afnan Qutub proposes “cross-cultural reading”,
Albawi and Vinson prefer to use literature to solve the misunderstanding between the East and the West. Related to women’s resistance against Islamic fundamentalism, Sudip Bhandari, Emma Keiski, Siri Ericson, Grace Freeman and
Katie Studer analyze Malala’s resistance against the Taliban in order to speak for the right of girls’ education in Pakistan. Their study tries to reveal the reasons that
30 P. M. Vinson, 5. 31 P. M. Vinson, 6. 32 P. M. Vinson, 7-8. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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encourage Malala to be a brave resistor when the majority choose to keep silent.
The researchers find out that Malala’s resistance happens because of two points; the context and network. According to the researchers, the literacy rate for the female is low at 35% while for the male is around 62%; the low percentage of woman education is due to the social and economic condition, such as poverty, religious fundamentalism, gender discrimination, and governmental mismanagement.33 For the network, Malala has the chance to adore and follow the path of the first female Prime Minister in Pakistan who is Benazar Bhutto. Not to mention, she was born in a family that highly values education, even her father also one of the activists in defending education for Pakistani girls. Thus, she has the access and network to fight for girl’s education from her father.
However, Ecaterina Patrascu prefers to analyze how International communities react to Malala’s resistance against Pakistani Taliban, both positive and negative reactions. 34 Although Malala, the youngest Nobel Laureate, has already made her nation proud of her action in defending Pakistani the girl’s education, she cannot opt-out from society’s criticism on her heroic action. She is praised, supported, and promoted by the international audiences, such as in 2009
BBC Urdu has positively reported her bravery in voicing girl’s education. Another example, Fatima Bhutto in The Guardian supports Malala because of Malala’s mission as equally significant in the global project of humanity. Bhutto argues, that everyone should fight together with Malala since Malala’s mission as equally
33 Bhandari, Keiski, Ericson, Freeman and Studer, 9. 34 Ecaterina Patrasu, “I Am (Not) Malala – Antagonistic Perception of A Nobel Prize Laureate.” International Conference RCIC’ 17 (2017): 277. http://www.afahc.ro/ro/rcic/2017/rcic%2717/LSDA/276-282%20Patrascu.pdf. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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significant in the global project of humanity.35 In the other side, she is condemned as the betrayal of her country. Patrasu utters:
Yousafzai’s blog, modeled on the diary of Ann Frank (d.1945) written under the Nazi occupation of Holland, provoked the ire of the Taliban who opposed Western forms of education which they regarded as an assault on their traditional values and an extension of the Western hegemony in that region. This blog allegedly led to the attack against her outside her school by the Taliban.36
Western media supports Malala because they think that Malala dares to challenge the extremist’s ideology and fights for girls’ education; in line with the
Western agenda which is eradicating terrorism. However, in the eye of Pakistani society, Malala is perceived as “American spy” and “the symbol of the infidels and obscenity”. Therefore, it justifies Pakistani Taliban to target and shoot Malala under the name of blasphemy and infidelity. Patrascu confirms:
One editor in a newspaper in Mingora, her hometown in Northwest Pakistan, claimed that: “The Americans and Malala’s father conspired to get her shot so she can become a hero”, while Bina Shah, in “The Malala Backlash” (in Dawn, July 16, 2013) mentions another pervasive, more emotional, scheme: “She was being used to make Pakistan feel guilty for actions that were the fault of Western powers in the first place”.37
Previous studies analyze how Western representation on Muslim women as a backward, uneducated, poor, oppressed, contain colonial propaganda in order to justify colonialism and capitalist expansion by maintaining hegemonic construction of difference between colonized and colonizer. The existence of single narration of Western feminism on Muslim women experience does not give the solution for Muslim women but seen as a new kind of colonization toward them. Some scholars have already contributed to solve the issues, for instance,
35 E. Patrasu, 278 36 E. Patrasu, 227. 37 E. Patsaru, 279. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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Mohammed Albalawi provides a mechanism to solve the misunderstanding by using literature by saying this: “Literature trains us to understand people’s beliefs, empathize with whom we have no personal experience, and eventually reduce the bias against out group members...”38 However, some scholars condemn Western intervention in rescuing Muslim women from their oppressive experience done by
Western representation and Islamic fundamentalist. In Ecaterina Patrascu’s argument, for instance, Malala’s action in defending Palestinian girls are condemned by Pakistani society believing that she is as an American spy and the symbol of infidels. Although much has been said about Western representation on
Muslim women by Qutub, Albawi, Vinson, Bhandari, and Patrascu, none of them observe the negotiation of Western intervention. Therefore, this thesis examines the negotiation of Western intervention as a strategic solution in liberating
Muslim women from patriarchal oppression as well as Islamic fundamentalist treatment on women.
B. Review of Related Theories
1. Postcolonial Feminism: A Theoretical Reading
Postcolonial feminism is a criticism toward Western feminism that only focuses on highlighting the Western women’s experiences and their tendency in misrepresenting the third world women as ‘the other’ in their discourses.
According to Mohanty, the term “third world women” refers to the underdevelopment, oppressive traditions, high illiteracy, rural and urban poverty, religious fanaticism, and “overpopulation” of particular Asian, African, Middle
38 M. Albalawi, 204. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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Eastern, and Latin American countries.39 The term “third world women” is not only referring to a certain location but also the concept of unwanted characteristics of the superior party (the West). Therefore, in order to make the
“Other” subconsciously internalize and be co-opted by the master’s knowledge and power, the West tends to present such concept in the discourse. Edward Said also argues that the binary between Occident and Orient is intentionally made by the Western scholars in order to reconstruct the Orients based on what they want to see or as the projection of Western unacceptable characteristics. Said uttered:
To believe that the Orient was created, as I call it, ‘Orientalized’ – and to believe that such things happen simply as a necessity of the imagination, is to be disingenuous. The relationship between Occident and Orient is a relationship of power, of domination, of varying degrees of a complex hegemony.40
It is applied to the term “Muslim women” that is mostly represented as the victim of Islamic misogyny in the Western discourse. It is true that Muslim women are committed and caring, but it does not mean that they have already internalized orientalist stereotype. To strengthen such idea Akbar S. Ahmed cited
Hussein this way:
In our society, women are very much respected and they are treated as a special sacred type of people. They are provided special protection. The husband, or the son, or father, or brother, they are responsible for all the needs of women.41
Therefore, postcolonial feminism attempts to embrace the diversity of culture and history among the third world women that has been neglected by the
39 Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Ann Russo, and Lourdes Torres, Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism. United States: Indiana University Press, 1991, pp.5-6. 40 Edward Said, 6. 41 Akbar S. Ahmed, Islam Today: A Short Introduction to the Muslim World. New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 1999, p.159. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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Western feminism. Responding to this situation, Mohanty criticizes the hegemonic character of Western feminist in universalizing third world women as the other presented in the Western feminist discourses, i.e. in Zed Press publication, without considering the complexity and diversity of women in the third World countries. The dangers of Western’s monolithic view of the third world women as homogeneous ‘powerless group’42 are that it breaks the unity among women, and strengthens the binary between Western woman as the
‘liberated’ and third world woman as the ‘oppressed’ and ‘backward’ who needs
Western salvation. The third world women are defined as following:
“This average which, in turn, produces the image of an ‘average third- world woman’. This average third-world woman leads an essentially truncated life based on her feminine gender (read: sexually constrained) and being ‘third world’ (read: ignorant, poor, uneducated, tradition-bound, religious, domesticated, family-oriented, victimized, etc).43
The bad tendency of Western feminist in presenting third world women without contextualizing their argument will only worsen the status quo, i.e. silencing the third world women’s struggle in any discourses. To strengthen her argument, Mohanty criticizes Juliette Minces who fails to contextualize the oppression experienced by Arab and Muslim women believing that they always become the victim of the patriarchal kinship system.44 Mohanty emphasizes:
Without addressing the particular historical and ideological power structures that construct such images, but to speak of the particular family
42 According to Mohanty, Western people always stereotype third world women as powerless group believing that these women always become the victim of male violence, colonial process, the Arab familial system, economic development process, and the economic basis of the Islamic code, and so on. See “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses,” p. 201. 43 Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses,” Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman. Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014, p. 199. 44 C. T. Mohanty, 204. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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or the tribal kinship structure as the origin of the socio-economic status of women is again assume that women are sexual-political subjects prior to their entry into the family. So while on the one hand women attain value or status within the family, the assumption of a singular patriarchal kinship system is what apparently structures women as an oppressed group in these societies!45
Related to the idea of veiling in Muslim countries, Mohanty points out that
Fran Hosken fails to understand the essence of veiling since Hosken always equates veiling with rape, domestic violence, prostitution, sexual segregation and control over women’s body.46 Similar to the current status quo in which many
Western feminists who believe that veiling is the symbol of women’s submission.
One of them is Elizabeth Badinter, she elaborates her argument in this way:
The veil is the symbol of the oppression of a sex. Putting on torn jeans wearing yellow, green or blue hair, this is an act of freedom with regard to social conventions. Putting a veil on the head, this is an act of submission. It burdens a women’s whole life. Their fathers and their brothers choose their husbands, they are closed up in their own homes and confined to domestic tasks.47
Seeing the history, the practice of veiling in Iran is not a form of oppression but solidarity among Iranian middle-class women during the Iranian revolution in 1979. In contrary, in the post-Iranian revolution veiling becomes a symbol of oppression since Iranian women are forced to wear veils by the government; once they break the law, they will be punished. Mohanty comments this way:
Iranian middle-class women veiled themselves in 1979 revolution to indicate solidarity with their veiled working class sisters, while in
45 C. T. Mohanty, 204. 46 C. T. Mohanty, 209. 47 Sonya Fernandez, “The Crushade Over the Bodies of Women.” Patterns of Prejudice 43.3-4 (2009): 276. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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contemporary Iran mandatory Islamic laws dictate that all Iranian women wear veils.48
El Guindi also argues that “Islamic veiling” in Egypt in 1979 is not about oppression but more on the “affirmation of Islamic identity and morality and a rejection of Western materialism, consumerism, commercialism, and values.”49
The practice of veiling does not always symbolize backwardness or support
Islamic misogyny, but it is more as resistance against Western materialism and acceptance of their identity as Muslim. Through the practice of veiling, Islam does not intend to support Muslim women’s oppression or to imprison them in the four walls at home. Islam always embraces the idea of freedom and equality, in fact,
Khadijah, the first wife of Muhammad, becomes a successful businesswoman and
Aisyah has a chance to pursue education. It shows that Islam does not want to limit Muslim women’s movement, but according to El Guindi, what Islam disallows is ‘the public flaunting of sexually’.”50
In line with Mohanty and El Guindi, Islamic feminist51, such as Jasmine
Zine, also argues that the problem is not on the veiling but the Western imagination of Muslim women as the objects of sexual desire, so they need to be
48 C. T. Mohanty, 209. 49 Fadwa El Guindi, “Gendered Resistance, Feminist Veiling, Islamic Feminism.” The Ahfad University for Women: Gender across Space and Time 22.1 (2005): 58. Print. 50 P.E. Guindi, 58. 51 The term “Islamic feminism” refers to the feminist discourse and practice that is derived from Quran, Sharia, and Islamic teaching in order to bring all Muslim women together in criticizing both patriarchal Islamism and secular feminism, in the end, Muslim women can achieve their right and freedom in society. Historically, Islamic feminism was pioneered by Zaynab Al-Ghazali in order to emancipate and liberate Muslim women under the spirit of Islam. Therefore, Zaynab rejects the existence of Western and secular Egyptian feminist, such as Egyptian Feminist Union (UFO) founded by Huda Sharawi, as the symbol of Western imperialism that can break Islamic tradition and religion. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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covered. 52 In secular countries, such as France, they manipulate the idea of
‘gendered Islamophobia’ to ban the practice of veiling in order to liberate Muslim women since Islamic scarf not only covers woman’s head but also women’s mind.
In fact, veiling banning is only a form of their denial of Muslim women autonomy in making their own decision. Therefore, many Islamic feminists, such as Leila
Ahmed, Asma Barlas, Amina Wadud, and Azzizah Al Hibri, challenge the idea of veiling as a form of the Islamic threat and oppressive practice. They believe that veiling is a form of self-identity and expression, so there is no one who can force them since it is an individual journey in following the words of God. Tonnessen says the following:
For veiled women, veiling is a question of their identity as Muslims and they defend their mode of dress as a basic right to show their affiliation with Islam. However, it is also a practical measure, and can be viewed as a kind of uniform which make it easier for women to move about in the streets without being disturbed by men. In other words, veiling is a sign of women’s social respectability.53
According to the Islamic codes of conduct, veiling is in line with the dress code of Muslim women. El Guindi cited the Holy Quran about Muslim dress code:
And say to the believing men that they should lower their gaze and guard their genitals [and] say to the believing women that they should lower their gaze and guard their genitals, draw their khimar to cover their cleavage [breast], and not display their beauty, except that which has to appear, except to their husbands, their fathers, their husbands’ father, their sons, their husbands’ sons, their brothers or their brothers’ sons, or their sisters’ sons, or their women, or the slaves, or eunuchs or children under age; and they should not strike their feet to draw attention to their hidden beauty. O ye believers turn to God, that ye may attain bliss (Qur’an 24:30,31).54
52 Jasmine Zine, 35. 53 Liv Tonnessen, “Islamic Feminism.” Regional Institute of Gender, Rights, Peace, and Diversity, Ahfad University for Women, Sudan (2014): 52. Print. 54 F. E. Guindi, 57. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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Western’s condemnation of veiling caused by gendered Islamophobia is easy to be challenged since it clearly shows the Western’s denial on Muslim women’s right and freedom in having full authority over their life. However, the
Western’s condemnation of burqa wearing under the Taliban regime as the symbol of the Islamic extremism and Muslim women’s oppression is still debatable. Islamic teaching only encourages Muslim women to cover their aurah, not all over their body.55 Juan E. Campo explains:
No explicit religious injunction for the burqa is found in the QURAN or HADITH, and the ULAMA generally agree that it is not required dress for women. In contemporary contexts, Muslim women wearing modest dress most often choose to cover the entire body except the face and hands.56
As a result, the rule of burqa wearing such as in the Taliban regime, can be categorized as an internalized oppression since Muslim women tend to blindly follow the rule as if it is their responsibility as a Muslim to cover all over their body; they forget the fact that the Taliban have fabricated the culture and religious values. This situation in Bourdieu’s term is called as “symbolic violence”.
Bourdieu defines symbolic violence as, “the invisible power which can be exercised only with the complicity of those who do not want to know that they are subject to it or even that they themselves exercise it.”57 It is symbolic because it uses an unconscious mechanism in order to manipulate the violence. People who undergo this oppression still think that they are exercising their free will; in fact, they are subconsciously oppressed. Bourdieu proceeds:
55 F. E. Guindi, 57. 56 Juan E. Campo. Encyclopedia of World Religions: Encyclopedia of Islam. New York: Fact on File, Inc, 2009, p. 119. 57 Piere Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power. London: Polity Press, 1991, p. 164. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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Symbolic violence, gentle, invisible violence, unrecognized as such, chosen as much as undergone, that of trust, obligation, personal loyalty, hospitality, gifts, debts, piety, in a word, of all the virtues honored by the ethic of honor, presents itself as the most economical mode of domination because it best corresponds to the economy of the system.58
According to Connolly and Healy, Bourdieu’s symbolic violence is different from Gramci’s hegemony or “the idea of working class being purposely manipulated in order to manufacture their consent.”59 Symbolic violence is a more natural process; through social experience supported by institutions and structures, people start to take everything for granted without realizing that they are oppressed under the certain belief, treatment, etc. In order to explain how the practice of symbolic violence within society, Bourdieu uses doxa. Bourdieu said,
“doxa is the pre-verbal taking-for-granted of the world that flows from practical sense,”60 and he believes “doxa is the relation of immediate adherence between habitus and field.”61 In the field, the agents can build mutual relation to exchange their collective experience and history or habitus, and the habitus will change into doxa when symbolic violence starts to be injected in the field. For instance, when collective experience and knowledge of the agents in the field develop into common sense and the agents feel natural and comfortable with it, this is how doxa start to be internalized. In this field, doxa develops its authority using scheme of thought that has already been injected in dominated mind, so the dominated agents will lose their critical thinking and attitude to the dominant
58 Piere Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 127. 59 Paul Connolly and Julie Healy, “Symbolic Violence, Locality and Social Class: The Education and Career Asporations of 10-11-years-old boys in Belfast.” Pedagogy, Culture and Society 12. 1 (2004): 16. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14681360400200187?needAccess=true. 60 Piere Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice. Trans. Richard Nice. California: Stanford University Press, 1992, p. 68. 61 Piere Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, 68. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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party and culture as if there is no oppression, everything run logically and naturally. Bourdieu defines doxa this way:
Scheme of thought and perception can produce the objectivity that they do produce only by producing misrecognition of the limits adherence in the doxic mode, to the world of tradition experienced as a “natural world” and taken for granted.62
In the case of burqa wearing in Afghanistan for instance, the Taliban as the powerful group integrate their rule in burqa wearing with Islamic principle, as if it is the responsibility as Muslim women to cover all over their body. When these women have to take off their burqa in public, they feel naked and shamed since the knowledge that they believe is they are prohibited to show their face and body in public; that is how burqa wearing can be a form of symbolic violence.
It can be said that not all Western representations of the third world women’s characters and cultures cannot be justified, such as in the case of burqa wearing. One thing that is totally problematic is the act of Western feminists in essentializing the third world women as the helpless group without contextualizing their argument. Facing this problem, Mohanty continuously suggests that although there is a potential of male violence against the female in the third world cultures and practices, it is better for Western feminists to still contextualize their argument; therefore, there is no third world women history or struggle that will be silenced. Mohanty has this to say:
Feminist work on women in the third world which blurs this distinction (a distinction which interestingly enough is often present in certain western feminists’ self-representation) eventually ends up constructing monolithic images of ‘Third World Women’ by ignoring the complex and mobile
62 Piere Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, Trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge: Cambridge, 1977, p.164. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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relationships between their historical materiality on the level of specific oppressions and political choices...63
In responding to the problem, Mohanty paradoxically proposes universalism on women experience and condition as a mechanism to challenge patriarchy and colonization, regardless of class, ethnicity, identity or geographical context; in Mohanty’s term, it is called as “feminist without border”. Feminist without border prefers to focus on gaining collective struggle, interest, and solidarity of women among the diverse community in fighting together rather than assuming the commonality of the oppression. Mohanty explains the concept of
“feminist without border” in this way:
Feminism without borders is not the same as “border-less” feminism. It acknowledges the fault lines, conflicts, differences, fears and containment that borders represent. It acknowledges that there is no one sense of a border, that the lines between and through nations, races, cases, sexualities, religions, and disabilities, are real- and that a feminism without borders must envision change and social justice work across these line of demarcation and division. I want to speak of feminism without silences and exclusions in order to draw attention to the tension between the simultaneous plurality and narrowness of borders and the emancipatory of crossing through, with, and over these borders in our everyday lives.64
This universalism remains a debate since it is impossible to generalize women’s experience and condition. If they want to apply this strategy, Mohanty always reminds the third world women to be aware of the hegemony of western scholar in producing the texts in which emphasizing on the monolithic term of
‘third world woman’ that can create another form of colonization.
Similar to Mohanty, Spivak, an outstanding postcolonial feminist, also points out there is a colonial project behind Western’s civilizing mission that
63 C. T. Mohanty, 211. 64 Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. London: Duke University Press, 2003, p. 2. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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severely oppresses the subaltern woman. When Spivak questions herself ‘Can
Subaltern Speak?’ she clearly answers by saying that the subaltern cannot speak due to the political and historical aspects that hamper the chances for the subaltern to speak. The term ‘cannot speak’ should not be understood literary but metaphorically as the inability of the subaltern to voice out their voice due to their inferiority and the unwillingness of superior party in listening to their voice. In the context of postcolonial feminism, subaltern means a group that belongs to the inferior position due to the long process of patriarchy and colonization.
According to Louai El Habib, the term ‘subaltern’ is originally invented by
Antonio Gramci, an Italian Marxist political activist; it refers to any “low rank” person or group of people in a particular society who is suffering under hegemonic domination of a ruling elite class. 65 Based on Spivak, the inferior position of subaltern can be maintained through not only violence but also discourse. They become the object of writing (rewritten, translated, or analyzed) by the elite class that in the end, make them lose their voice in the discourse. To make it concrete, Spivak provides the example of Sati66. According to Indian man,
Indian woman conducted Sati voluntarily in order to show their loyalty and love to their dead husband, in contrary, the British colony believed that it was a form of killing under the name of tradition. It clearly shows how in the process of investigating the tradition, people never ask Indian women’s consent on Sati,
65 Louai El Habib, “Retracing the Concept of the Subaltern from Gramci to Spivak: Historical Development and New Applications.” African Journal of History and Culture 4.1 (2011): 5. Print. 66 Sati is the practice of the Hindu widow ascends the pyre of the dead husband and immolated herself upon it. See Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman. Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014, p, 93. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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whether they do it in order to protect their tradition or they are forced to do it. The only one who gives testimony of Sati is either British colonizers or Indian man.
To strengthen her idea, Spivak provides another example which is the case of Bhuvaneswari Bhaduri who was hanging herself in her father’s modest apartment in North Calcutta in 1926.67 Some parties believed that Bhuvaneswari committed suicide because of illicit pregnancy. Another party argued that it was impossible an illicit pregnancy became the cause of her suicide since she was still menstruating. Finally, society knew the truth that she committed suicide because of her inability to conducting a political assassination. Spivak’s comment included the following:
Nearly a decade later, it was discovered that she was a member of one of the many groups involved in the armed struggle for Indian Independence. She had finally been entrusted with a political assassination. Unable to confront the task and yet aware of the practical need for trust, she killed herself.68
Through Spivak’s examples on Sati and Bhuvaneswari’s suicide, it can be concluded that how Indian woman successfully internalizes the subaltern values in which they have to be silent in every condition. The inability of the subalterns in voicing their inner thought and desperation is because both patriarchy and colonialism are together in muting the subaltern. As a result, it is impossible for the subaltern to be a subject for themselves. Therefore, Spivak suggests them to ask the intellectual intervention in voicing their voice; Spivak calls it as strategic essentialism or the strategy in essentializing the subaltern as the other or the
67 G. C. Spivak, 103. 68 G. C. Spivak, 101. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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inferior in order to show their existence and express their idea and voice. Spivak clarifies the idea of strategic essentialism in the following explanation:
So, I am fundamentally concerned with that heterogeneity, but I chose a universal discourse in that movement because I felt that rather than define myself as repudiating universality – because universalisation, finalization, is an irreducible moment in any discourse – rather than define myself as specific rather than universal, I should see what in the universalizing discourse could be useful and then go on to see where that discourse meets its limits and its challenge within that field. I think we have to choose again strategically, not universal discourse but essentialist discourse. I think that since as a deconstructivist – see, i universal just took a label upon myself- I cannot on fact clean my hands and say, “I am specific.” I fact I must say I am an essentialist from time to time.69
Spivak’s strategic essentialism is derived from Derrida’s Deconstruction which is breaking the problem from the inside rather than outside. Spivak said:
When I first read Derrida I didn’t know who he was, I was very interested to see that he was actually dismantling the philosophical tradition from inside rather than from outside, because of course we were brought up in an educational system in India where the name of the hero of that philosophical system was the universal human being, and were taught that if we could begin to approach an internalization of that universal human being, then we would be human.70
The problem with Spivak’s strategic essentialism is that it can become the absolute affirmation that subaltern belongs to the other since the intellectuals act as the subjects and the subalterns as the object in the Western discourse. Linda
Alcoff also elaborates about the problem of speaking for other, she said:
In particular, the practice of privileged persons speaking for or on behalf of less privileged persons has actually resulted (in many cases) in increasing or reinforcing the oppression of the group spoken for.... whether I am speaking for myself or for others, that this representation is never
69 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues. New York: Routledge, 1990, p. 11. 70 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues. New York: Routledge, 1990, p. 7. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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simple act of discovery, and that it will most likely have an impact on the individual so represented.71
Despite of the limitation of speaking for, not all the practices of speaking for should be condemned. One thing that should be considered is that the intellectuals do not always work on their own self-interest. If society is afraid of the intellectual bias, the bias will still be there but it is justifiable as long as they are truly speaking on the behalf of the subaltern’s voice. Therefore, Spivak always argues that rather than the subalterns deny the risk from speaking for them, it is better for the subalterns to accept the temporal essentialism from the intellectuals in order to utter the subaltern voice. Even further, Spivak said that being the intellectuals means they will be interviewed, asked to lecture, write and soon but one thing that they have to clearly do is “avoiding in some ways becoming someone who takes on a master discourse.”72
As the previous chapter has proposed, the aim of this study is to analyze
Western stereotype and intervention toward Muslim women liberation depicted in
Deborah Rodriguez’s Kabul Beauty School (2007), Fariba Nawa’s Opium Nation
(2011) and Malala Yousafzai’s I Am Malala (2013). Mohanty’s “Under Western
Eye” is useful to see how third world women suffer from not only colonization and patriarchy but also the Western monolithic representation on them. Through
Bourdieu’s symbolic violence, it can be seen how Islamic and cultural values are unconsciously manipulated by patriarchy to oppress the women, so Muslim women who undergo this oppression still believe that they are practicing their
71 Linda Alcoff, “The Problem of Speaking for Others.” Cultural Critique (1991): 7-10. 72 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues. New York: Routledge, 1990, p. 6. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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religious codes of conduct, in fact, they are subconsciously oppressed. Although
Muslim women have already resisted against the oppressive and injustice experience done by colonizers and patriarchy, their resistance will not be taken into account because of their inferiority. In so doing, Spivak essay entitled “Can
Subaltern Speak?” is used to analyze how Muslim women need intellectual intervention due to the fact that their voice to resist is never heard by the oppressor. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
CHAPTER III
WESTERN REPRESENTATION ON MUSLIM WOMEN AS THE OPPRESSED
This chapter is to answer the first research question on how Western women (Malala, Debbie, and Nawa) represent Muslim women73 as the oppressed group. This discussion is divided into three parts: first, it discusses how Muslim women are homogenized as the victim of burqa wearing. Second, it analyzes how
Muslim women are oppressed under arranged marriage, polygamy, and domestic violence. The third discussion is examining how Western women depict Muslim women as passive. The fourth discussion is exploring on how Muslim women are portrayed as being uneducated since they do not have access to pursue formal education.
A. Burqa Wearing
Pashtun is the biggest tribe in Pakistan and Afghanistan. As Pashtun, they must live according to their code of conduct named Pashtunwali,74 once they break the codes, they are punished according to Jirga or elder council. One of its codes is that they have highly valued of nang or honor due to the fact that Pashtun people are afraid of losing their face in society.
73 The term of Muslim women in the analysis of study refers to Pashtun Muslim women who live in Afghanistan and Pakistan under the Taliban and post-Taliban regime. 74 Pashtunwali is a set of unwrtten Pashtun’ traditional code of conduct. They are honor (nang), revenge (badal), chivalry and bravery (gayrat), hospitality (melmastia), and gender boundaries (purdah and namus). See Ghulam Shams-Ur Rechman, “Pashtunwali & Islam: The Conflict of Authority in the Traditional Pashtun Society.” Pakistan Journal of Social Science 35. 1 (2015): 299.
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Shame is a very terrible thing for a Pashtun man. We have a saying, ‘Without honor, the world counts for nothing.’ We fight and feud among ourselves so much that our word for cousin – tarbur – is the same as our word for enemy.75
Gender boundaries (purdah) are established in order to keep Pashtun honor within society. For Pashtun women, they must hide their face and are not allowed to meet or speak to men who are not their close relative whenever they leave their purdah, because according to Hamid M. Khan, “A woman who is almost invisible to others cannot shame herself.”76 Following examples are the evidences how Pashtun society well internalizes the principle of nang:
My mother used to tell me to hide my face when I spoke to the media because at my age I should be in purdah and she was afraid for my safety. (IAM, 77)
At big gatherings, the hundreds of men and women are segregated on two different floors of the hall with two different bands; at smaller gatherings, they are on one floor but separated by a curtain.77
It can be seen here how the woman is prohibited to directly see man’s eyes in order to protect their family’s honor and avoid Jinnah78 because women’s eyes can indirectly seduce men. This prohibition reflects patriarchal ideology in condemning the woman as a form of sexual desire who can lead man to be a sinner. This ideology can be well maintained by patriarchy by integrating it with
Islam. In so doing, they give an example of Adam and Eve. According to the story
75 Malala Yousafzai and Christina Lamb. I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up For Education And Was Shot By The Taliban. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2013, p.13. All subsequent reference to this work, abbreviated IAM (indicated I Am Malala), will be used in this thesis with pagination only. 76 Hamid M. Khan, “Islamic Law, Customary Law, and Afghan Informal Justice.” United States Institute of Peace (2015): 3. Print. 77 Rodriguez, Deborah. Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil. New York: Random House, 2007, p. 8. All subsequent reference to this work, abbreviated KBS (indicated Kabul Beauty School), will be used in this thesis with pagination only. 78 Any sexual act outside of marriage. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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of Adam and Eve, Eve causes Adam to be a sinner by tempting him to eat the forbidden fruit; even though this perspective is debatable. As a result, both Eve and Adam are expelled from the Garden of Eden to come into the world in order to reflect their guilt and redeem their sin. Therefore, purdah is established in order to prevent both men and women in committing something wrong that can lose their family’s honor in society. For this matter, most parents directly punish their daughters and bury the case deeply than lose their honor in the community when their daughter fails to follow Pashtunwali. In the case of Malala for instance, when Malala does not wear burqa or cover her face in public, her male cousin is angry to her because Malala’s action will only attract man’s desire and bring shame to her family. Malala said,
Women are not allowed to laugh or even speak loudly because it attracts men’s sexual desire. Then they should wear burqa. (IAM, 53-57)
One of my male cousins was angry and asked my father, ‘Why isn’t she covered?’ He replied, ‘She’s my daughter. Look after your own affairs.’ But some of the family thought people would gossip about us and say we were not properly following Pashtunwali. (IAM, 30) Even worst the family will choose to kill their daughter who does not keep their honor rather than let them live freely with shame in society. In the case of
Seema for instance, she is poisoned by her parents because of seeing the boy’s eyes which is categorized as flirting.
There was a beautiful fifteen-year-old girl called Seema. Everyone knew she was in love with a boy, and sometimes he would pass by and she would look at him from under her long dark lashes, which all the girls envied. In our society for a girl to flirt with any man brings shame on the family, though it’s all right for the man. We were told she had committed suicide, but we later discovered her own family had poisoned her. (IAM, 31) PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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When the Taliban establish their regime in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, the life of women becomes more severe. By manipulating Sharia law and
Pashtunwali, the Taliban force women to wear burqa whenever they leave their house, even further, the Taliban give a threat to women; once the women do not wear burqa in public, the Taliban will beat even kill them.
They were still patrolling the Cheena Bazaar. One day my mother went shopping with my cousin as she was getting married and wanted to buy things for her wedding. A talib accosted them and blocked their way. ‘If I see you again wearing a scarf but no burqa I will beat you,’ he said. (IAM, 80)
My first morning in Herat, I take out the blue burqa Kamran’s wife, Abida, lent me in Iran and place its round hat on my head. The Taliban force women to wear the burqa in public or risk a beating.79
Some Afghan and Pakistani women welcome the Taliban’s rule on burqa wearing believing that it gives a sense of security, while some of them reject it since it limits their movement in the public. Malala and Debbie said,
Wearing burqa is like walking inside big fabric shuttlecock with only a grille to see through and on hot days it’s like an oven. (IAM, 31)
Roshanna is behind her, a tiny, awkward, blue ghost wearing the traditional burqa that covers her, head to toe, with only a small piece of netting for her to see out the front. But the netting has been pulled crooked, across her nose, and she bumps into the doorway. She laughs and flutters her arms inside the billowing fabric, and two of her sisters-in-law help her navigate her way through the door. (KBS, 5)
It can be said that the Taliban’s rule of burqa wearing is only the extension of patriarchal ideology in oppressing and controlling women’s movement in public. The narratives are given through burqa wearing are first; women are the source of temptation, so they need to be covered. Second, women’s body is solely
79 Fariba Nawa, Opium Nation: Child Brides, Drug Lords, and One Woman’s Journey Through Afghanistan. New York: Harper Perennial, 2011, p.20. All subsequent reference to this work, abbreviated ON (indicated Opium Nation), will be used in this thesis with pagination only. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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owned by their husband so it is important for the husband to keep them only in four walls of home and give them freedom only in their home. Abeda Sultana argues that by constructing private and public sphere for men and women respectively, patriarchal agenda is clearly operated in the system; In order to maintain the oppression, violence is usually established.80 In line with Abeda
Sultana, Melisi argues, “These women are forced into imprisonment within the confines of their homes or run the risk of being subjected to the Taliban’s harsh and barbaric forms of punishment for disobedience of its law.”81 Here El Guindi cited the Holy Quran about Muslim dress code:
And say to the believing men that they should lower their gaze and guard their genitals [and] say to the believing women that they should lower their gaze and guard their genitals, draw their khimar to cover their cleavage [breast], and not display their beauty, except that which has to appear, except to their husbands, their fathers, their husbands’ father, their sons, their husbands’ sons, their brothers or their brothers’ sons, or their sisters’ sons, or their women, or the slaves, or eunuchs or children under age; and they should not strike their feet to draw attention to their hidden beauty. O ye believers turn to God, that ye may attain bliss (Qur’an 24:30,31).82
The quote above proves that Muslim women are not prescribed to wear burqa. Islamic teaching only encourages Muslim women to cover their body, but they are not asked to cover all over their body in order to control men’s gaze and desire whenever they are speaking with Muslim women who are not their mahram. Malala also said that burqa is not Pashtun tradition. Pashtun women are
80 Abeda Sultana, “Patriarchy and Women’s Subaordination: A Theoretical Analysis.” The Arts Faculty Journal (2010-2011): 9. 81 Meri Melissi Hartley-Blecic, “The Invisible Women: The Taliban’s Oppression of Women in Afghanistan.” ILSA Journal of International & Comparative Law 7.572. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/51092248.pdf. 82 F. E. Guindi, 57. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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encouraged to cover their head using headscarf, not burqa. “My mother always covers her head bur burqa is not part of our tradition,” said Malala. (IAM, 80).
The question remains on women who wear burqa based on their willingness believing that wearing burqa is a form of individual journey in practicing their religious code, or showing their identity, or protecting them from men’s disturbance. The answer is still the same; wearing burqa depicted in I Am
Malala, Opium Nation and Kabul Beauty School is a form of internalized oppression, or according to Bourdieu, it is a form of symbolic violence, “the invisible power which can be exercised only with the complicity of those who do not want to know that they are subject to it or even that they themselves exercise it.”83 Those women are oppressed by not feeling it since they live in the world of doxa maintained by the dominant group in the field. The Taliban as the powerful group integrate their rule in wearing burqa with Islamic principle; therefore,
Muslim women blindly follow the rule as if it is their responsibility as Muslim women to cover all over their body. The impact is that when these women have to take off their burqa in public, they feel naked and ashamed since the narrative that they believe is that it is prohibited for Muslim women to show their face and body in public. Nawa said,
The woman searches the females, including me, and finds the gold around my light green scarf. She takes off my scarf. I feel naked and want to cry, but I hold back and gain strength by looking at my father. (ON, 36)
It can be seen how doxa is used as unconscious mechanism to manipulate the violence, therefore, people who undergo this oppression will still think that
83 Piere Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 164. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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they are exercising their free will, in fact, they are subconsciously oppressed. In the end, doxa subconsciously limits their choice, freedom, and critical thinking because they think that the misrecognition of knowledge that they internalized as natural and logical. In the end, it prevents any contested arguments in society.
B. Arranged Marriage
Marriage is supposed to be an agreement between two individuals who are in love but marriage under the name of love is rarely found in Pashtun tribe.
Pashtun marriages are mostly arranged and forced by their family since it is part of complex authorities, traditions, and loyalties. In some cases, men have the right to decide their bride but this privilege never goes to Pashtun women. Buriro and
Endut argue that the concepts of marriage in the rural area of Pakistan are following:
De, Wath, Watta Satta (exchange marriages), arrange marriage, Vanni(to settle the old scores), Haqbkhsraen (marriage with Holy Quran), caste system marriage (within caste, like syeds, Qureshi, pirs, etc) or endogamy, khapaen (to sell the bride on money or Zameen (field/farm).And such marriages are just performed to keep their rites and traditions alive, in which women most of the cases suffer physically and mentally.84 According to Islamuddin Sajid, the mechanisms of arranged marriage performed by Pashtun tribe are selecting the bride and groom by the family, negotiating the bride price or walwar, and so on. 85 If there is a broken engagement, in the end, the one who is condemned by society is the woman.
Although arranged marriage is an oppressive tradition, this tradition is never
84 Ameer Ali Bburiro adn Noraida Endut, “Matchmaking and Traditionally Arranged Marriages and Domestic Violence in Rural Sindh, Pakistan. Centre for Research on Women and Gender (KANITA) University Sains Malaysia, Penang (2016): 428. 85 Islamuddin Sajid, “Among Pakistan’s Pashtun, Arranged Marriages the Norm.” https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/among-pakistans-pashtun-arranged-marriages-the- norm/864113. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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challenged by society. The practice of arranged marriage can be easily found in the three memoirs studied, Malala, Debbie, and Nawa said:
In our society marriages are usually arranged by families... (IAM, 9)
Nearly all first marriages in Afghanistan are arranged, and it usually falls to the man’s mother to select the right girl for him. He may take on a second or even third wife later on.. “We don’t marry for love here,” she told me after I had teased her a few times. “I have to marry the man my parents pick.” (KBS, 7-9)
Fariba Jan, my mom married at nine, and my father will probably do an exchange with me next year, and I’m only fifteen. That’s the destiny of girls here. I wish I were a boy,” she adds, sighing. “Dokhtar mala mardoma [a girl belongs to strangers].” (ON, 89)
Pashtun marriages, both arranged and forced, are conducted in order to settle the debt, protect Pashtun tradition or family honor and strengthen a family link. In Darya’s case, for instance, Darya, who is a daughter of narcotics dealer, is sold and forced to marry Haji Sufi, a Helmand man who is 34 years older than
Darya and has already had a wife with eight children, by her father in order to pay his debt. Novita Dewi argues that arranged marriage which involves underage children also happens in other Asian countries, such as India, Bangladesh, and
Indonesia, under similar reason which is economic interest.86 The problem with arranged marriage is that the family tends to ignore their age and the willingness of the bride. Even worst, Novita Dewi said, “Such marriage is often seen as a way out for the bad stigma that afflicts a girl due to a sexual experience outside of wedlock, victim of rape, and various other forms of sexual abuse.”87
86 Novita Dewi, “Child Marriage in Short Stories from Indonesia and Bangladesh: Victor, Survivor, and Victim.” International Journal of Humanity Studies 2.1 (2018): 54. Print. 87 Novita Dewi, 52. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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Force marriage becomes very severe in both Pakistan and Afghanistan since the Taliban establish their regime. They tend to choose their own bride with spreading threat and terror, even further they snatch up young unmarried girls without warning and force them into marriage with one of their men. Therefore, many parents prefer to hide their daughters in the house because they are afraid with the Taliban. Debbie reports:
Nahida told me that her bad luck had started when she was born into a family with four girls and only one boy. For families in a country where the girls can’t get jobs, having a lot of daughters is considered a hardship... Then the Taliban came into power. Her family tried to keep their girls hidden, but a neighbor who wanted to curry favor whispered about their beautiful, unmarried daughters. So one day, this forty five- year-old Talib policeman came and demanded that her parents give her to him. He wasn’t even offering a dowry, and this is considered out-and-out theft in Afghanistan. His only offer was that he wouldn’t kill Nahida’s father if he agreed to let her marry. Nahida was only sixteen and hated the Talib, but she wanted to protect her father. She agreed to the marriage. (KBS, 95)
If there is a broken engagement, the one who becomes the victim is the woman. The woman will become public condemnation and remain unmarried, while men can easily engage again with another woman. Malala narrates this way:
There was also Nooria, whose mother Kharoo did some of our washing and cleaning, and Alishpa, one of the daughters of Khalida, the woman who helped my mother with the cooking. Khalida had been sold into marriage to an old man who used to beat her, and eventually she ran away with her three daughters. Her own family would not take her back because it is believed that a woman who has left her husband has brought shame on her family. For a while her daughters also had to collect rubbish to survive. (IAM, 38)
It seems that arranged marriage is the extension of patriarchal agenda in taking away woman’s rights from them. Sometimes Pashtun women use their marriage as a mechanism to get their power back even if the chance is a little. By giving birth to a boy she can get a higher position in the household, such as they PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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become their husband’s favorite and have high control upon their son and daughter-in-law. In the end, these women achieve what it is called as a perfect life of human being, living with power and honor. However, their perfect life is difficult to be achieved once their husband commits polygamy.
Polygamy is “a man’s right to be married to several women at the same time, is legal both under Sharia law and Afghan civil law (a man can be legally married to four wives).”88 In Islam, polygamy is acceptable but a Muslim man is only permitted to have no more than four wives under some circumstances.
According to Landinfo, polygamy should fulfill the following requirements:
When there is no fear of injustice between the wives. When the person has financial sufficiency to sustain the wives. That is, when he can provide food, clothes, suitable house, and medical treatment. When there is legal expediency, that is when the first wife is childless or when she suffers from diseases which are hard to be treated.89
Seeing the requirements, polygamy is allowed in order to solve the problem in marriage life or to help women, even Prophet Muhammad conducts polygamy in order to help the widow from society’s oppression. Charles
Lindholm argues:
It is true that the Prophet Muhammad, who was an enthusiastic polygynist, practiced plural marriage for political reasons. He eventually contracted 12 official marriages, using his marital alliances to cement his relationships with rival groups and with his own followers (the first five caliphs were his in-laws). In so doing, Muhammad exceeded his own revelation, as expressed in the Quran, that a man may marry four wives.90
88 Landinfo, “Report Afganistan: Marriage.” (2011): 14. https://www.landinfo.no/asset/1852/1/1852_1.pdf. 89 Landinfo, 14. 90 Charles Lindholm, “Polygyny Islamic Law and Pukhtun Practice.” Ethnology 47.3 (2008): 182. https://ethnology.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/Ethnology/article/download/6030/6210. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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The problem with polygamy nowadays is that it is not used as a mechanism to help vulnerable woman but it becomes a form of men’s greediness in fulfilling their desire or pride. Once a woman enters a marriage life either arranged/forced marriage or polygamy, a woman cannot opt-out from physical or psychological violence. Nawa affirms:
“One of the first things men in Ghoryan do when they make some extra money is marrying another wife,” she says. “If they have two, they’ll marry three, and if they have three, then it’s four. Some of the bigger smugglers don’t respect the four wives allowed in Islam. They’ll marry six, seven wives.” (ON, 81)
Nahida in Kabul Beauty School for instance, when she is a teenager, she has to marriage with one of Talib’s men but she does not know that he actually has already had a wife. Once she knows it, she tries to break the marriage with the
Talib, as a result, he beats Nahida in order to teach her to become a fitting wife.
These women cannot opt-out from their miserable marriage life no matter how hard their struggle is. If women still try to break their marriage, they have to reconsider the impact of their action in which both women and their family will become public condemnation, even before their parents will report them to the police. Both Malala and Debbie comment this way:
After a brief conversation, Suraya translated. “She was married to an old man who beat her, and she ran away. Her parents reported her to the police for breaking her wedding vows.” (KBS, 66)
Her own family would not take her back because it is believed that a woman who has left her husband has brought shame on her family. For a while her daughters also had to collect rubbish to survive. (IAM, 38) The way Western women see arranged marriage is problematic; it is very oppressive. The peculiar situation is that when the one who commits arranged marriage and polygamy is the Western woman, like Debbie, the question will be PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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why she is happy although at first she tends to doubt her marriage. In terms of freedom in her marriage, for example, she can negotiate everything, even her role and responsibility as a wife to her husband in which Afghan wife cannot do.
Debbie noted:
I’m not doing your laundry, and I’m not cooking or cleaning. I want to make enough money so that I can pay to have that kind of stuff done. And I’m not going to go to the bazaar with you or run errands for you. I’ll hire someone to do that. You better not want babies. That factory is closed. (KBS, 70) It can be concluded that Debbie as the Western woman shows prejudice in judging the arranged marriage that is experienced by Muslim women. She assumes that Muslim women will always live in their miserable marriage life, full of tears and helplessness, not like herself who has a full control upon her own life and desire. She forgets the fact that some Muslim women who are happy with their arranged marriage, like what happens to Malala’s mother. She is also experiencing arranged marriage, but she feels happy marrying Malala’s father.
Malala says, “I see my parents happy and laughing a lot. People would see us and say we are a sweet family.” (IAM, 10). It is the negative judgment from the
Western woman that Mohanty wants to criticize. Mohanty argues that by contrasting the representation of women in the third world women with Western feminist’s self-representation in the same situation, it shows how Western feminist alone has already become the true ‘subject’ of this counter-history.91
It can be said that Western women clearly condemn arranged marriage which is experienced by Muslim women as an oppressive tradition because it can lead to other severe problems such as polygamy and domestic violence. Similar to
91 C.T. Mohanty, 213. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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other Western people who have already internalized orientalist mindset, Debbie tends to differentiate herself and Muslim women. Even if she also experiences arranged marriage, she said that she is pleased with her marriage; her action can strengthen the binary between the West and the East. In the end, the existence of
Western woman does not become the hero but the new subject of oppression toward Muslim women.
C. The Passive Portrayal of Muslim Women
Women are conditioned to accept their inferiority since childhood, without any objection or question at all. What it means by normal for women is being passive, while men are being active. According to Hester Eisenstein, as women, they must be affectionate, obedient, kind and friendly, while men must be tenacious, aggressive, curious, and ambitious.92 As a result, when they grow up, they unintentionally internalize their passivity and inferiority reflected in their action and way of thinking. The perfect internalization of women’s passivity can be seen through Suraya’s attitude in encouraging Debbie to have an Afghan husband in order to support Debbie’s life. “He’s right, Debbie! You do need a husband. It’s very hard for a woman to live alone here, even a Western woman.
You need a husband to support you,” said Suraya, (KBS, 65). Even further, culture and tradition play big roles in maintaining women passivity and inferiority in the status quo. Malala argues that as a woman being born in Pashtun tribe means that they have to sacrifice everything for the betterment of men, for instance, girls stay
92 Hester Eisenstein, Contemporary Feminist Thought. Boston: G.K. Hall & Co, 1983, p. 5. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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at home while boys go to school, (IAM, 13). Another example that is provided by
Malala is the manner of their eating, Malala said,
In the morning when my father was given cream or milk, his sisters were given tea with no milk. If there were eggs, they would only be for the boys. When a chicken was slaughtered for dinner, the girls would get the wings and the neck while the luscious breast meat was enjoyed by my father, his brother and my grandfather. ‘From early on I could feel I was different from my sisters,’ my father says. (IAM, 13)
In terms of job, it is hard for Pashtun woman to be anything other than a teacher or doctor, the job that needs more affection and love. Even worse, when the Taliban holds power, women have to be guided by men and wear burqa whenever they leave their home. It implicitly tells women that they are weak and inferior creatures who need men’s guidance and whose place is in a private sphere. Deborah Rodriquez concludes that when these women face any problems alone, a suicide attempt is usually chosen. Debbie says, “To her way of thinking, this was the worst thing that could happen. Suddenly she was his favored wife, and she knew he’d never let her go. She was so miserable that she wanted to kill herself.” (KBS, 99). In the case of Roshana, when she is not virgin anymore but she has to prove her virginity in the consummation ceremony by showing a bloody handkerchief, she does nothing, except crying. Seeing Roshana problem,
Debbie, an American woman, cannot keep silent, she thinks that this is her responsibility to help Roshana in solving her problem. Debbie has to do this way:
I grit my teeth and dig the clippers under one of my nails, then cut down to the quick until blood spurts out. I wipe my finger back and forth on the handkerchief, then hand it to her. “Here’s your virginity,” I tell her. “Hide it under your cushion and then pull it out the next time he enters you. Let your mother come in and find it.” She puts her hands over her face again, and I leave the room. Back in the guest room, I fall asleep once more and am awakened just as the sky is beginning to lighten. (KBS, 20) PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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Muslim Women’s condition becomes severe when the Taliban hold power in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. Muslim women are forced to subjugate to the
Taliban’s rules which are very strict; once they disobey the rules, they get harsh punishment from the Taliban. Most women accept it passively without question at all; it is the reason of Muslim women start to internalize passive mentality. Ensieh
Shabanirad and Elham Seifi cited Hosseini about the Taliban’s rules as following:
You will stay inside your homes at all times... If you go outside, you must be accompanied by a mahram, a male relative. If you are caught alone on the street, you will be beaten and sent home... You will cover with burqa when outside. If you do not, you will be severely beaten. Cosmetics are forbidden. Jewelry is forbidden. You will not wear charming clothes. You will not speak unless spoken to. You will not make eye contact with men. You will not laugh in public. If you do, you will be beaten. You will not paint your nails. If you do, you will lose a finger. Girls are forbidden from attending school. All schools for girls will be closed immediately. Women are forbidden from working. If you are found guilty of adultery, you will be stoned to death.93
Indeed, the stereotype of Muslim women as passive is criticized by
Mohanty arguing that “women are taken as unified ‘powerless’ group prior to the historical and political analysis in question.” 94 The Western stereotype on the passivity of Muslim women is still questionable because in some cases, Muslim women can empower not only herself but also other women. Benazir Bhutto for instance, she has already empowered others, but her character is underdeveloped in the story. On Benazir Bhutto, the narration goes this way:
On 27 December Benazir Bhutto addressed an election rally in Liaquat Bagh, the park where our first prime minister, Liaquat Ali, was assassinated. ‘We will defeat the forces of extremism and militancy with the power of the people,’ she declared to loud cheers. She was in a special bulletproof Toyota Land Cruiser, and as it left the park she stood up on the
93 Ensieh Shabanirad and Elham Seifi, “Postcolonial Feminist Reading of Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns.” International Journal of Women’s Research 3.2 (2014-15): 246. 94 C.T. Mohanty, 202. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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seat and popped her head through the sunroof to wave to supporters. Suddenly there was the crack of gunfire and an explosion as a suicide bomber blew himself up by the side of her vehicle. (IAM, 62)
It can be concluded that the passive portrayal of Muslim women, although it is still questionable, is caused by various factors, such as familial, religious, cultural, and political institutions.
D. Closure of Educational Access
Pashtun is a tribe that highly values their son rather than their daughter.
When their daughters are growing up, they have to live in purdah. It means that they are not allowed to have direct contact with the public affair; it is including their right to access education. Most families think that education does not matter for their daughter since their daughter will end up getting married, cooking, cleaning, and taking care of their children, so there is no point for them to study about math in the school for instance. Malala says,
Therefore, she drops out from the school and prefers to play at home. My mother started school when she was six and stopped the same term... There seemed no point in going to school just end up cooking, cleaning and bring up children, so one day she sold her books for nine annas, spend the money on boiled sweets and never went back. (IAM, 19)
Even if the girls still want to access education in order to get better future, they will only have two choices, either being a doctor or teacher. Malala affirms,
“It’s hard for girls in our society to be anything other than teachers or doctors if they can work at all” (IAM, 3). According to Fariba Nawa, because Afghan women do not have access to education, most of them are illiterate, such as
Gandomi and her daughters. Nawa said:
Gandomi and her daughter are illiterate. (Only 12 percent of females fifteen and older can read and write in Afghanistan.) They have no clock PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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or calendar in the house and do not keep track of time. Neighbors tell them when it’s Friday, the Islamic holy day, and Gandomi grabs her chador to go to the cemetery. (ON, 88)
Debbie believes that besides Afghan women cannot write and read, they are difficult to understand anything. Debbie said, “What I was telling them seemed so simple to me—it had always seemed simple to me—but they were still clueless.” (KBS, 61). This condition is worsened when the Taliban take over the state; they ban education for women and destroy a thousand schools. Malala reports:
By the end of 2008, around 400 schools had been destroyed by the Taliban. (IAM, 61)
In March there was an attack on a girls‟ school in Karachi that we had visited. A bomb and grenade were tossed into the school playground just as a prize-giving ceremony about to start. The headmaster, Abdul Rasheed, was killed and eight children hurt between the ages of five and ten. (IAM, 147) Many girls gamble their life in order to get access to education. Malala is one of the unfortunate girls who become the victim of the Taliban’s brutality because of pursuing education. The Taliban shoot Malala believing that she is symbolizing the West by pursuing education and campaigning girls’ education.
Malala affirms:
The man was wearing a peaked cap and had a handkerchief over his nose and mouth as if he had flu. He looked like a college student. Then he swung himself onto the tailboard at the back and leaned in right over us. ‘Who is Malala?’ he demanded. No one said anything, but several of the girls looked at me. I was the only girl with my face not covered. That’s when he lifted up a black pistol. I later learned it was a Colt 45. Some of the girls screamed. Moniba tells me I squeezed her hand. My friends say he fired three shots, I slumped forward onto Moniba, blood coming from my left ear, (IAM, 3) PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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The impact from the Taliban ban girls from the school is that many girls drop out of the school, either they have already been blinded with Taliban’s interpretation, or they are afraid with the Taliban’s punishment. According to the report from the BBC, there is no girl who attends formal schools in 2001. 95
Daniele Shelby said that after the Taliban’s regime falls down, the International organization and foreign countries start to give the incentive and open the access for Pakistani and Afghan women to pursue education, fortunately, it is about 3,6 million girls can attend the school. 96
The main reason why the Taliban ban girls to attend the school is that the
Taliban is afraid to the empowered girls and women; they are afraid that one day these girls and women can resist against them. The reporter of Sundaymail cited
Saba, the founder of AwareGirl, said, “The Taliban fear women being educated.
This is the biggest threat to the Taliban because they know that if women have power and information. They can bring positive change...”97 M.D. Nalapat also comments the Taliban’s fear as following:
The Taliban are scared of knowledge, as they are of women, and seek to drive away the first and enslave the second. They will be defeated, not by armies from the outside, but by the men and women of the lands they temporarily control, who seek a better life, a life where they are free to think for themselves and build a better life for all, whatever faith they may profess.98
95 BBC, “Afghanistan: Before and After the Taliban.” BBC News. 2 April 2014 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26747712. Accessed on Wednesday, 10 April 2019. 96 Daniele Selby, “Why Millions of Afghan Girls are out of School 16 Years After Taliban Rule.” Global Citizen. 17 October 2017. https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/afghanistan-girls- education-hrw-report/. Accessed on Wednesday, 10 April 2019. 97 “The Taliban Fear Women Being Educated. Despite the Death Threats, We’ll Carry On.” Sundaymail. 15 February 2015. https://www.amnesty.org.uk/files/pakistan24_0.pdf. 98 M.D. Nalapat, “Why Does the Taliban Fear Women?” Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty. 17 April 2009. https://www.rferl.org/a/Why_Does_The_Taliban_Fear_Women/1610619.html. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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Besides the Taliban ban girls to pursue education, they also ban public school. The Taliban ban public school because public schools become the practice of blasphemy and the extension of Western ideology, especially America. In order to get society’s acceptance in banning public school, the Taliban integrate their agenda with Islam and Pashtunwali. The Taliban argue that one of the rules in
Islam and Pashtunwali is that men and women have to be in purdah, or they are not supposedly placed under one room. In public schools, the teachers mix both boys and girls under one roof and invite them to have activity outside the school.
Therefore, the Taliban believe that public school, like Khusnal school in Pakistan, only becomes the center of obscenity and vulgarity in which Islam and
Pashtunwali disagree with. In solving the problem, the Taliban propose madrassa or Islamic school as another mechanism for students to study.
The Taliban then ask the students to study in madrassa since its curriculum based on Islam; in line with the Taliban’s mission in purifying Islam.
According to Arif, Rahman, and Hanapi, “a madrasah is an educational institution offering instruction in the Islamic subjects including, but not limited to, the
Quran, the sayings (hadith) of the Prophet Muhammad, jurisprudence (fiqh), and law.” 99 In both Pakistan and Afghanistan, besides madrassa is used to teach
Islamic values, it also becomes a place to form some Islamic movements, such as
Mujahedeen and the Taliban. Arif, Rahman, and Hanapi’s comments read this way:
99 Mohd Izzat Amsyar Mohd Arif, Nur Hartini Abdul Rahman, and Hisham Hanapi, “Madrasah Education System and Terrorism: Reality and Misconception.” International Journal of Educational Best Practices 1.1 (2017): 93. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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In the 1980s, madrasah in Afghanistan and Pakistan were allegedly boosted by an increase financial support from the United States, European governments, and Saudi Arabia, all of whom reportedly viewed these schools as recruiting grounds for the anti-Soviet Mujahedin fighters. In the early 1990s, the Taliban movement was formed by Afghani Islamic clerics and students (talib means ‘student’ in Arabic), many of whom were former Mujahedin who had studied and trained in madrasah and who advocated a strict form of Islam similar to the Wahabism practiced in Saudi Arabia.100
Even if the idea behind replacing public schools with madrassa is good, such as promoting Islamic values, the girls are still not welcomed to study there because based on the Taliban’s interpretation there is no lady in Quran. The following is Malala’s citation of the Taliban warning:
‘I am representing good Muslims and we all think your girls’ school is haram and a blasphemy. You should close it. Girls should not be going to school,’ he continued. ‘A girl is so sacred she should be in purdah, and so private that there is no lady’s name in the Quran as God doesn’t want her to be named.’ (IAM, 50) According to Malala, the Taliban’s interpretation on banning girls from the school cannot be justified at all. If the reasons are public school is haram and there is no girl in Quran, actually, the Taliban interpretation on it has already contradicted Quran and Muhammad’s example. Malala said that first, Allah always encourages both women and men to seek knowledge as much as possible
(IAM, 73). Second, the second wife of Muhammad, Siti Aisyah, is a great scholar, well known with her intelligence (IAM, 54). Even if public school is a form of blasphemy and the extension of American ideology then the Taliban proposes madrassa as another mechanism for student to study, their mechanism is still problematic, why only boys who can study in madrassa. It can be concluded that banning girls from the school is only the Taliban’s manipulation in order to
100 Mohd Izzat Amsyar Mohd Arif, Nur Hartini Abdul Rahman, and Hisham Hanapi, 95. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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maintain their power and domination in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. The
Taliban believe that the empowered girl and woman can be a threat to their regime. Therefore, they shoot Malala in order to silence her and other girls who are still empowering themselves through education.
In conclusion, the three memoirs are clear enough in portraying both
Pakistan and Afghanistan as places that are anti-women. Such representation is strengthened by Debbie, Nawa, and Malala’s representation on Muslim women as the oppressed group under burqa wearing, arranged marriage, passive behavior, and lack of education depicted in Deborah Rodriguez’s Kabul Beauty School,
Fariba Nawa’s Opium Nation and Malala Yousafzai’s I Am Malala. In the memoirs, Debbie, Nawa, and Malala can be categorized as Western representative since they embody the Western characteristics, such as developed, industrialized, capitalist, secular, and modern, and having the responsibility to save the Other.
Since the term ‘Western’ loaded with meaning, this study will follow Stuart Hall’s definition of the term ‘Western.’ He said:
They were the result of a specific set of historical processes- economic, political, social, and cultural, nowadays, any society which shares these characteristics, wherever it exists on a geographical map, can be said to belong to “the West.” The meaning of this term is therefore virtually identical to that of the word “modern.”101
It can be said that Malala, a Pakistani girl, can be categorized as the
Western representative since she has already been co-opted by Western characteristics, such as modern, civilized, and perfectly practices ‘white savior complex’ in her everyday life; such condition makes the presence of Malala is
101 Stuart Hall and Bram Gieben, Formation of Modernity. Oxford: Polity in association with Open University, 1992, p. 186. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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very controversial. Pakistani society rejects Malala since she is perceived as the betrayal of her country. Patrasu utters:
Yousafzai’s blog, modeled on the diary of Ann Frank (d.1945) written under the Nazi occupation of Holland, provoked the ire of the Taliban who opposed Western forms of education which they regarded as an assault on their traditional values and an extension of the Western hegemony in that region. This blog allegedly led to the attack against her outside her school by the Taliban.102
In contrary, Malala is praised, supported, and promoted by the
International society. It can be seen how Farman Nawaz has positively reported the impact of Malala’s bravery in fighting against the Taliban in Daily Outlook
Afghanistan. Nawaz states:
Malala has paved the way for an environment which can lead to the establishment of a society progressive views and development. Malala has played such a role in a Talibanized society that can improve the lost image of Pakistani society. Her role is a ray of hope in the darkness of extremism and fundamentalism.103
Fatima Bhutto in The Guardian also supports Malala because of Malala’s mission as equally significant in the global project of humanity. After Malala’s story is published in Western media, humanitarian and military intervention in
Pakistan by the US take place. It then answers the question on why Malala is chosen as a Western representative since Malala’s mission is compatible with the
Western standard; civilizing and eradicating terrorism.
The West always projects their unwanted character to the Other in order to maintain their position as the center and legitimate their saving mission in the third world countries. Hall said:
102 E. Patrasu, 227. 103 E. Patrasu, 227. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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The West’s sense of itself – its identity – was formed not only by the internal processes that gradually molded Western European countries into a distinct type of society, but also through Europe’s sense of difference from other worlds – how it came to represent itself in relation to these “other.”104 This situation is similar to what happens in the memoirs, in order to legitimate the Western’s mission, they try to misrepresent Muslim women as the oppressed group in their discourse. However, Western stereotype on Muslim women is sometimes groundless and debatable. Without contextualizing it with the real condition in Muslim countries, some Western writers dramatize or even falsely present the story in order to spread their hatred to the Muslim; it is worsened when 9/11 attack happened in World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In other words, the negative stereotype of Muslim women by the West is based on not only Western’s ignorant of Islamic cultures and values but also Western history and politics related to Muslim countries.
In the case of arranged marriage, for example, Western women believe that arranged marriage is very oppressive because the women do not have the right to choose their groom; the woman will become public condemnation and remain unmarried if there is a broken engagement. The question will be with its religious, philosophical, and cultural complexity of arranged marriage, why
Western women can easily simplify and generalize that arranged marriage is a form of religious and cultural oppression to Muslim women. In fact, there are some women who are happy with their marriage, Malala said, “In our society marriages are usually arranged by families, but theirs was a love match,” (IAM,
104 Stuart Hall and Bram Gieben, Formation of Modernity. Oxford: Polity in association with Open University, 1992, p. 188. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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17), “I see my parents happy and laughing a lot. People would see us and say we are a sweet family.” (IAM, 10). It can be noted that the reasons provided by the
West in condemning the practice in the Muslim world are sometimes not justifiable that later on it only strengthens the binary between the West (liberated, modern) and the East (oppressed, uncivilized). Mohanty ever said before, those negative stereotypes on third world woman can strengthen the misunderstanding that third world woman is ignorant, poor, uneducated, tradition-bound, religious, domesticated, family-oriented, victimized, etc. 105 If this single narrative is maintained, Mohanty believes that it will erase the historical and geographical context of third world women.
In conclusion, this chapter presents how Western women stereotype
Muslim women as the oppressed group under burqa wearing, arranged marriage, passive behavior, and lacking educational access. However, Western stereotype on Muslim women should be questioned since it has the possibility to silence the voice and struggle of Muslim women. Therefore, Western attitude in homogenizing Muslim women in order to help them should be questioned, whether they stereotype Muslim women in order to rescue them or they are another form of imperialist mission.
105 C. T. Mohanty, 199. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
CHAPTER IV
RESCUING OTHERS, PROMOTING SELF: WESTERN INTERVENTION
NEGOTIATED
Chapter IV answers the second research question on the reasons and mechanisms of Western women’s intervention in liberating Muslim women from
Muslim men, like the Taliban.
The Taliban which literary means “those who seek knowledge or students”106 is a political movement that ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to date.
The Taliban are established in order to reform the Afghan government by returning it to the “pure” Islamic state based on a strict interpretation of Sharia or
Islamic law. Forskningsinstitutt argues that the Taliban want to reform the state because there is brutal suppression of the population, corruption, anarchy, and lawlessness after Afghanistan goes through ten years struggle against Soviet occupation and is followed by five years of devastating civil war.107 The Taliban can increase power and followers through support from Pakistan and other neighboring countries. In addition, the Taliban tend to manipulate society’s anger and frustration toward Afghan and Pakistani government in order to justify their presence. In the case of a land dispute in Pakistan for example, society is angry with the Pakistani government that cannot solve the dispute until one and more decades because the government is actually taking side to the khan or landowner.
106 Forsvarets Forskningsinstitutt, “The Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan – Organization, Leadership and Worldview.” Norwegian Defence Reseaarch Establishment (FFI) (2010): 8. 107 F. Forskningsinstitutt, 15.
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The Taliban then come with Sharia and directly solve it. Start from that moment the Taliban gain massive acceptance in Pakistan, perceived as the hero who has been defending the rights of the poor. As a result, most Pakistani women give them gold and money believing that this would make God happy. Malala said,
One of his favorite subjects was the injustice of the feudal system of the khans. Poor people were happy to see the khans getting their comeuppance. They saw Fazlullah as a kind of Robin Hood and believed that when Fazlullah took over he would give the khans’ land to the poor. (IAM, 53).
Besides they manipulate society with religion, they also produce and sell the drug to support their mission economically. Fariba Nawa says,
Since the Taliban fell in 2001, Afghanistan’s once-regulated opium trade has been up for grabs by anyone with weapons and land. The United Nations estimates that 500,000 people are involved in the trafficking chain, and the overall turnover of illicit international trade in Afghan opiates is worth £14 billion a year. The globe’s largest opium producer, Afghanistan feeds two-thirds of the world’s demand for narcotics.108
Once the Taliban are in power, they strongly impose their rules which are interpreted from Sharia in order to bring society back to the pure Islam; however,
Muslim women mostly suffer from the Taliban’s rules. According to the Taliban interpretation of Sharia, women are banned from accessing education; women are forced to wear burqa and forbidden to wear make-up and white color since white belongs to men. Women should be accompanied by a male relative whenever they leave their home. If they break the rules, they will get harsh punishments from the
Taliban, such as beating, stoning even killing. The Taliban always spread fear and terror to make people subjugate and commit to the Taliban’s rules. Therefore, it answers the question of why only Malala who is publicly against the Taliban after
108 Fariba Nawa, “Brides of the Drug Lords.” Sunday Times (2004). http://www.faribanawa.com/2004/05/09/brides-of-the-drug-lords/. 8 January 2019. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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Benazir Bhutto’s death because most girls and women are afraid of the Taliban’s punishments. Even if they are eager to resist, their parents will forbid them. Since
Muslim women are too helpless, they need another party to help them in challenging the Taliban.
The act of Western-woman-rescuing-Muslim-woman-from-Muslim-man is controversial since the mission of the West does not purely help or civilize the
East, but there is a political and economic agenda behind it. As a result, their action in rescuing Muslim women will turn into the act of colonization. Similar to
Mohanty, she argues that the danger of Western feminist in generalizing the third world women as a homogeneous ‘powerless’ group is that it can strengthen the assumption that women are always labeled as ‘powerless,’ ‘exploited’ and
‘sexually harassed.’ 109 She suggests that the Western feminists have to contextualize their argument; therefore, they will not become part of people who silence the voice and struggle of the third world women. Mohanty said,
Feminist work on women in the third world which blurs this distinction (a distinction which interestingly enough is often present in certain Western feminists’ self-representation) eventually ends up constructing monolithic images of ‘Third World Women’ by ignoring the complex and mobile relationships between their historical materiality on the level of specific oppressions and political choices...110
Mohanty continuously reminds the third world women to be aware of the hegemony of Western scholar in presenting them in their discourse, especially in their emphasis on the monolithic term of ‘third world woman’ that can create another form of colonization. In the case of Debbie, for instance, by doing condemnation on burqa and arrange marriage, Debbie has already been trapped
109 C.T. Mohanty, 199. 110 C.T. Mohanty, 211. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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into generalizing Afghan women as the victim of male control or sexually oppressed. However, Western’s women monolithic view on Muslim women can be negotiated as long as they are truly speaking on the behalf of the subaltern’s voice, or according to Spivak, it is called as “strategic essentialism”. To interpret the struggle of Western women in rescuing Muslim women, the analysis will be divided into three parts, i.e. historicity, intentionality, and action. Historicity, intentionality, and action are chosen arguing that particular socio-historical event can influence the narrators’ intention to act in a certain way, in this context is rescuing Muslim women from their misery.
A. Historicity
Historicity highlights the relationship between the past and the present believing that the work cannot be separated from the history that happens in the author’s life. Since the term ‘historicity’ loaded with meanings, this thesis therefore refers to Novita Dewi’s definition on it. According to Novita Dewi, historicity or vision is “events that have taken place since their genesis up to the present development.”111 It means that historicity is about the genesis or history of the narrators; who are they? What are their involvements in a particular event?
The historicity of three selected memoirs is similar in which those memoirs are narrated by Western women (Malala, Nawa, and Debbie) who are interested in empowering Muslim women under the Taliban regime. Malala,
Nawa, and Debbie strongly agree that the Taliban are violent and anti-women. It
111 Novita Dewi, “People’s Theather for Peace: Learning From Sri Lanka,” Journal of Humanities and Social Science 6 (2010): 60. http://digital.lib.ou.ac.lk/docs/bitstream/701300122/1145/1/PEOPLE'S%20THEATRE%20FOR% 20PEACE.pdf . PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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can be seen through the Taliban’s rules which are established in order to imprison
Muslim women in their four walls of home. According to the Taliban interpretation on Sharia, Muslim women are banned from accessing education; women are forced to wear burqa and forbidden to wear make-up and white color since white belongs to men. Women should be accompanied by a male relative whenever they leave their home. If they break the rules, they will get harsh punishments from the Taliban, such as beating, stoning even killing.
Responding to the establishment of the Taliban, Fariba Nawa narrates the downfall of Afghanistan caused by the Taliban’s policy that gives a more negative impact to the women and innocent children rather than to the member of the
Taliban. Fariba Nawa is an Afghan-American-freelance-women, speaker, and writer who focuses on the issues of the immigrant, human and women’s rights, and the global drug trades in Muslim countries, especially Afghanistan. Her massive reports about Afghanistan are related to her identity as Afghan-American.
She was born in Afghanistan and became a refugee in America in 1982 because of the Soviet invasion. Nawa said,
I left Herat, Afghanistan in 1982 and my earliest memories before the war include going to picnics, fishing on the Helmand River in Lashkargah, playing in my family’s orchard in Herat and being a happy child in a peaceful country.112
As a refugee, there is always a feeling of losing and longing. Although she is now an American but her American cannot replace her pride and identity as an
Afghan woman. Even further, it cannot erase her memories of “her grandfather’s
112 Syed Zafar Mehdi, “I Think We Need More Balance in the Media to Show Positive and Negative.” (2014). http://www.afghanzariza.com/2014/12/03/i-think-we-need-more-balance-in- the-media-to-show-the-positive-and-negative . PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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farm, with its mulberry, cherry, pomegranate, walnut, apple, peach, and orange trees,”113 that always encourage her to go back to her childhood land. Nawa has to bury her dream away and permanently live in America in order to provide security to her daughters since she knows how damaging the war is. Nawa says, “In 1982, the Mujahedeen bombed the girls’ school my sister and I attended for teaching children communist propaganda. The school closed and the students were told to go home.”114 Although she cannot permanently stay in Afghanistan, she can visit
Afghanistan in order to reconnect herself to her origin. She says, “In 2000, I made my first trip back to Afghanistan in eighteen years, during Taliban rule, to search for something I had lost- a sense of coherence, a feeling of rootedness in a place and a people, and a sense of belonging.” (ON, 6). Nawa’s longing toward her native land is a common feeling that is felt by the immigrants. Clifford cited by P.
Prayer Elmo Raj argues, “One of the important features of diasporic experience is a strong attachment to and desire for literal return to a well-preserved homeland.”115
Through Nawa’s observation, Afghanistan has changed and faced complex issues that is reported not only in her articles, such as “Return of the native to a nation reborn” (2011), “Afghan child bride traded to pay opium debt” (2012),
“The disappeared of Afghanistan” (2013), “There was nothing ‘honorable about
113 Kate Tuttle, “Cool, Calm and Contentious, Opium Nation, Hedy’s Folly.” Bostonglobe (2011). https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/books/2011/11/27/capsule-reviews-comic-essays-look- afghanistan-and-new-biography-hedy-lamarr-and-patent-that-was-ahead-its- time/O22QH8mSmEMqgqiEb0lVyN/story.html. 11 January 2019. 114 Fariba Nawa, “When Women Had Rights in Afghanistan.” Right Universal (2017). https://www.rightsuniversal.org/history-of-womens-rights-in-afghanistan/. 11 January 2019. 115 P. Prayer Elmo Raj, “The Concept of Home in Diaspora.” An International Literary Journal 4. 2 (2014): 87. http://pintersociety.com/vol-4-no- 2autumn-2014/). 11 January 2019. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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killing” (2015) but also her memoir entitled Opium Nation published in 2011. By combining Nawa personal experiences and memories about Afghanistan, Opium
Nation depicts Nawa’s deep anger and disappointment as an Afghan woman toward the negative changes of Afghanistan caused by the Taliban’s policy, especially in the case of the drug trade and opium bride. She finds out that
Afghanistan becomes the biggest supplier of drugs for people around the world and uses its income to fund the Taliban. She admits that the production of opium can benefit the poor, such as the opium farmers, but she prefers to support banning drugs because drugs give more negative impacts to them and the world, seeing from the addiction, prostitution, slavery, forced marriage and so on. Nawa has this to say:
I know that Afghanistan produces 90 percent of the world’s illegal opium supply; I know that opium becomes heroin and is distributed on the streets of London and New York; I know that agriculture in Afghanistan has evolved into poppy farming. (ON, 62)
That armed conflict is supported by another war: the opium trade. The Taliban and al Qaeda are funding their war with arguably half a million dollars annually from Afghanistan’s illicit narcotics operation. (ON, 28) Addicts, who include women, hide in their homes. When they do come outside, they sit on the streets and beg. Some women become prostitute to feed their habit. (ON, 63)
Nawa continues to argue that the one who suffers from the drug trafficking is not the Taliban but the innocence girls. “The girls being sold off to pay opium debts. These cowardly smugglers will sell their daughters at young ages to save themselves,” said Nawa (ON, 74). The opium farmers start to have debts to the drug lord when the Taliban ban poppy cultivation in Afghanistan under the name of religion and morality. Those incidents make Afghan opium farmers loss their PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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job and indebted to drug lords. If the indebted farmers cannot pay their debt, they have to sell or prostitute their daughter to the drug lords as a form of payment of their debt. Nawa brings the example of Darya, a 12 years old girl who becomes the opium bride of Hajji Sufi. She travels around Afghanistan, visits the drug farmers and dealers to get information of Hajji Sufi and hoping that she can save
Darya from her forced marriage. She tells,
What I remember most about her is her scared look, a gaze that deepened her otherwise blank green eyes. She was the daughter of a narcotics dealer who had sold her into marriage to a drug lord to settle his opium debt. Her husband was 34 years her senior, and even her threats to burn herself to death did not change her fate. A year after I met her, she was forced to go to a southern province as the wife of this man, a man who did not speak her language and who had another wife and eight children.116
After Nawa successfully reports her experience dealing with drug trafficking in Afghanistan and suffering of Afghan women in Opium Nation, she still continues to investigate and inform society through her activity as lecturer of journalism at San Francisco State University and speaker in some respected events, such as TEDX, World Affairs Council, Commonwealth Club, TV program and universities.
The Taliban’s rules that are anti-women are well narrated in Kabul Beauty
School by Deborah Rodriguez. Deborah Rodriquez (Debbie) is an American beautician, writer, and humanitarian member who focuses on empowering Afghan woman to opt-out from their oppression. The Kabul Beauty School, the New York
Times bestselling book in 2007 published by Random House in 2007, tells about
Debbie’s experience living in Afghanistan when Afghanistan was under the
116 Fariba Nawa, “Afghan Child Bride Traded to Pay Opium Debt.” Womenenews (2012). https://womensenews.org/2012/01/afghan-child-bride-traded-pay-opium-debt/). 9 January 2019. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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Afghan Taliban regime in 2002 until 2006. She narrates the Afghan women’s limitation in practicing their freedom because of their tradition and the Afghan
Taliban, such as committing force-marriage, experiencing domestic abuse, and having difficulty to access the job. Nahida is presented as a real example of how women live in the post-Taliban regime. They have to wear burqa, do not have access to pursue their career, and experience domestic violence. It seems both culture and laws never take side to the Afghan women. Nahida is forced to marry, and abused by her husband who is a member of the Taliban. Debbie’s comment on the practice of forced marriage is this way:
Nahida told me that her bad luck had started when she was born into a family with four girls and only one boy. For families in a country where the girls can’t get jobs, having a lot of daughters is considered a hardship... Then the Taliban came into power. Her family tried to keep their girls hidden, but a neighbor who wanted to curry favor whispered about their beautiful, unmarried daughters. So one day, this forty five- year-old Talib policeman came and demanded that her parents give her to him. He wasn’t even offering a dowry, and this is considered out-and-out theft in Afghanistan. His only offer was that he wouldn’t kill Nahida’s father if he agreed to let her marry. Nahida was only sixteen and hated the Talib, but she wanted to protect her father. She agreed to the marriage. (KBS, 95)
According to Debbie, this is how the life of Afghan women; with all limitation and violence caused by the Taliban, law and culture, they have to survive. Another brutality of the Taliban is clearly narrated by Malala in I Am
Malala. Malala is a Pakistani activist on girl’s education who survives from the
Taliban’s assassination in 2012. She sharply criticizes the Taliban cruelty and oppression experienced by Pakistani women since she was in the middle school, by writing about women’s suffering under the Taliban’s rules in her online blog such as “I Am Afraid” (2009), “Do Not Wear Colorful Dresses” (2009), “I May PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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Not Go to School Again” (2009), “Interrupted Sleep” (2009), and so on. Malala argues that besides the Taliban is anti-women, the Taliban is also anti-Western, therefore, they will destroy everything related to the West. Several pieces of evidence are provided by Malala, around 2007, the Taliban close down massage center, and make bonfires of CD and DVD. Taliban murders Shabana just because she is a dancer and not a Muslim (IAM, 70). The Taliban also destroy Buddhist statues because they believe that the statues and painting are sinful (IAM, 58).
Taliban destroy 400 public schools in 2008-2013 since the public schools are the extension of the Western agenda, and the knowledge that they gain is contradictory to Islam according to the Taliban (IAM, 147). Malala chooses to resist since she lives in the modern family in which her father especially always glorifies the idea of equality and supports Malala to do whatever she wants.
Because of her strong resistance against the Taliban, Malala has been awarded the
National Youth Peace Prize in 2011; Sakharov Prize in 2013, Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, and so on.
In conclusion, The historicity of Opium Nation, I Am Malala, and Kabul
Beauty School is similar in which those memoirs are narrated by Western women
(Malala, Nawa, and Debbie) who are disappointment and anger toward the
Taliban that have already manipulated and destroyed everything, especially the innocent children and women, in order to advantage their group. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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B. Intentionality
The term “intentionality” means the underlying reason(s) why people base their action(s).117 Mindful of Roland Barthes’s “The death of the author,” 118 this thesis examines the reasons and hidden agendas of the narrators (Nawa, Malala, and Debbie) rather than the authors in rescuing Muslim women. It answers the questions, such as what are their hidden agenda or mission? Is it for their responsibility, image, money, or piety?
For Fariba Nawa, she chooses to investigate the illegal drugs trade in
Afghanistan after she witnesses the dark side of Afghanistan. She believes that
Afghanistan is not only destroyed by the war on terrorism but also it is destroyed by the illegal drug trade that is conducted by Afghan people, from farmer to government. The illegal drug production in Afghanistan begins when Afghanistan is under Soviet invasion, trees are cut and many fields are not available to be farming. To overcome the problem, the drug lords provide the fund for the farmers to plant opium. In the Taliban regime, the Taliban legalize, control, and protect the opium trade to support their mission before they ban it in 2000 under the name of morality and religion. Since the banning of drugs in Afghanistan, the opium farmers have a significant loss and they start to be indebted to the drug
117 N. Dewi, 61. 118 Roland Barthes’s “The death of the author” is a criticism to traditional critical approach in claiming that in order to understand the correct meaning of the text, the readers should look for the author’s background and intention. Barthes said, “A text’s unity lies not in its origin but in its destination.” There are some considerations in rejecting the author-centric when analyzing the text. First, the text does not belong to the author but the readers. Second, it is impossible to derive one/fix meaning from one perspective (the author’s intention and background). Barthes said, “a text is not a line of words releasing a single ‘theological’ meaning (the message’ of the Author- God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash.” The multiple meaning and interpretation from a text are not showing the contradictions of the text, but the variety and richness of readers’ interpretation from a text. See Roland Barthes Image, Music and Text. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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lord; in this case, the indebted farmers mostly sell or prostitute their daughter to pay off their debt, in another term it is called as ‘opium bride.’ Opium bride is similar to human trafficking since the indebted farmers or dealers prefer to marry off their daughter to the drug lords in order to settle the debt. Nawa says,
In the summer of 2003, I met a girl in an Afghan town straddling the dessert who would become an obsession for me. I knew her for only a few weeks, but those few weeks shaped the next four years of my life in Afghanistan. What I remember most about her scared look, a gaze that deepened her otherwise blank green eyes. She was the daughter of a narcotics dealer who had sold her into marriage to a drug lord to settle his opium debt. Her husband was thirty-four years her senior and even her threats to burn herself to death did not change her fate. (ON, 6)
The downfall of Afghanistan makes Nawa as Afghan-American women and humanitarian feel angry and sorry for it. Therefore, Nawa goes back and forth from America to Afghanistan for several years under the mission in revealing the illegal drug trade and saving the opium bride, such as Darya. In her Opium Nation she narrates the suffering and helplessness of the opium bride in order to attract international attention to involve in combating the illegal drug trade in
Afghanistan. Lauren Lola said,
For Nawa, it took five years of research and two years of writing for the book to come about. While conducting her research in Afghanistan, it wasn't until she saw a group of high school girls performing an anti-drug skit that led her to realize just how big the opium trade was. She wanted to bring it to attention amidst the constant attention the United States gives on the war in Afghanistan.119
When Nawa encounters with Darya for several times, she realizes that the case of the opium bride is very complicated. It is understandable why the indebted farmers or dealers sell their daughter in order to save the male relative because it
119 Lauren Lola, “Local Journalist Writes About Afghanistan’s Opium Nation.” Patch. 13 July 2013. https://patch.com/california/newark/local-journalist-writes-what-she-knows. 4 February 2019. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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is very difficult for widow or woman to live in Afghanistan without a male guardian. For Darya’s case, she decides to give up on rescuing her. She believes that Darya has her way in opting out from her problem since she is a very brave and strong woman. Nawa said,
Darya is no longer a mystery or a victim I must liberate. She’s one of thousands of girls bartered as opium brides, a casualty of an international drug problem. I remember all of the people I’ve met across Afghanistan who were impacted by the opium trade, from the farmer to the addicts. Each person helped me understand the effects of the trade in a different way. But Darya had something special about her, a will to resist not just an outsider but also an internal family struggle- the injustice of force marriage. It is that characteristic that allows me to come to terms with the end of my search. She will rescue herself, perhaps by learning to cope, by standing her ground with her husband, or even by running away. Darya offers hope for change. (ON, 226)
It can be concluded that Nawa’s mission coming to Afghanistan because she feels angry toward the downfall of her native land because of the illegal drug trade. Therefore, she directly involves in investigating the case and documents it in her articles and memoir. Although she narrates the inability and suffering of
Afghan women, she tries to give space to highlight the struggles of Afghan women to survive and opt-out from their misery.
Similar to Nawa, Malala also believes that the presence of the Taliban in
Pakistan has already worsened the status quo by destroying more than 400 public schools, music, television, and imposing their controversial rules on women that are interpreted from Sharia. Malala becomes very angry when the Taliban forbid the girls to pursue education by destroying the access and spreading hatred and terror in society. At this moment, only Malala who dares to challenge the brutality of the Taliban by writing under pseudo name ‘Gul Makai’ and appearing in BBC PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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Urdu that finally becomes the target of the Taliban’s assassination. There are some goals behind Malala’s active resistance against the Taliban’s brutality.
Firstly, she wants to defend girls’ right in pursuing education. Malala highly values education because through education the girls can understand their identity, rights, a skill that can help them to highly value themselves in the patriarchal community. Malala said, “I want to learn and be trained well with the weapon of knowledge. Then I will be able to fight more effectively for my cause.” (IAM,
147), she added, “Let us pick our books and our pens. They are our most powerful weapon. One child, one teacher and one pen can change the world.” (IAM, 146).
Secondly, she wants to restore the beauty and peacefulness of Swat valley,
Pakistan. Malala describes Swat valley in the past as this way:
We lived in the most beautiful place in all the world. My valley, the Swat Valley, is a heavenly kingdom of mountains, gushing waterfalls and crystal-clear lakes. WELCOME TO PARADISE, it says on a sign as you enter the valley. In olden times Swat was called Uddayana, which means ‘garden’. We have fields of wild flowers, orchards of delicious fruit, emerald mines and rivers full of trout. (IAM, 7)
Although she has ever become the victim of the Taliban, she is never afraid of them, until now she still campaigns on the need of girls’ education not only for Pakistani girls but also the girls from all over the world. Malala said, “I told myself, Malala, you have already faced death. This is your second life. Don’t be afraid – If you are afraid you can’t move forward.” (IAM, 145) “Let us pick up our books and our pens,” I said. “They are our most powerful weapons.” (IAM,
146).
Deborah Rodriquez also comes to Afghanistan under the mission of saving
Afghan women from their cultural and religious oppression. After the 9/11 attack PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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in World Trade Center, one of Bush administration’s agendas is sending his troops to Afghanistan in order to combat the terrorism. US troops bomb
Afghanistan as a form of retribution and preventive action toward terrorism. In line with Bush’s agenda, Laura Bush argues that another goal of US intervention in Afghanistan is to save Afghan women from the Taliban’s misogyny. Therefore,
Laura Bush sends American humanitarian workers to Afghanistan in order to provide positive insight to Afghan women; and one of them is a beautician. Bose said,
Because of our recent military gains in much of Afghanistan, women are no longer imprisoned in their homes. They can listen to music and teach their daughters without fear of punishment. Yet the terrorists who helped rule that country now plot and plan in many countries. And they must be stopped. The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women.120
However, Laura Bush’s mission cannot always be perceived as an innocent action or a form of Western woman’s solidarity that solely aims to combat terrorism and restore Afghan woman’s right and freedom. In contrary, her action in saving ‘woman in cover’ is the real manifestation of Bourdieu’s symbolic violence. By having the orientalist discourse about saving ‘woman in cover’ from the terrorist, it shows how Laura Bush affirms Western superiority over the East. By sending troops and beauticians, it has already legitimated the destruction of Afghan culture, infrastructure, and people. It can be said that there is a possibility of L Bush’s saving project is used to cover the imperialist mission in the Muslim world.
120 Purnima Bose, “From Humanitarian Intervention to the Beautifying Mission: Afghan Women and Beauty without Borders.” Genders 51 (2010).https://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A225589052/AONE?u=googlescholar&sid=AONE&x id=be0247cf. 31 January 2019. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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Applied to Debbie, in 2001 she goes to Afghanistan as part of humanitarian under the Care for All Foundation (CFAF). She does not focus on treating the wound, like common humanitarian in the war zone, but establishes
‘Kabul Beauty School’ that is funded by Vogue and Clairol. It is established in order to provide a safe place for Afghan women to resist and help them to be financially independent. Debbie said,
But aside from my weepy eyes, I was excited. It seemed that I had discovered the one thing I could do to help the Afghans—and only I, out of all the talented and dedicated Westerners I’d met here, could do it. I knew that I could help the Afghan women run better salons and make more money. (KBS, 34)
Debbie tends to use her Western mechanism in solving the problem of
Afghan women, thus, Afghan women will be modernized and not be trapped under the Afghan barbaric culture. Fluri argues that the Beauty School in
Afghanistan receives good acceptance in society, it can be seen through many media that are interested to make a good report about it; the academy also becomes the object of documentary film and bestselling memoir.121 Even further, some Afghan women do not regret in joining the school since Afghanistan in the past (before the rise of the Taliban) also lets women wear modern clothes. Sima cited Fluri said,
When I left [23 years ago], Afghanistan [Kabul] was a modern city, modern for the place that it was .... wearing miniskirts, getting our hair done. They have now gone back more than 100 years.122
121 Jennifer L. Fluri, “The Beautiful ‘Other’: A Critical Examination of ‘Western’Representations of Afghan Feminine Corporeal Modernity.” Gender, Place, and Culture 16.3 (2009): 247. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09663690902836292?needAccess=true. 122 J. L. Fluri, 247. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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It can be concluded that the intention of Western women (Debbie, Nawa, and Malala) in narrating the suffering of Muslim women under the Taliban regime in their memoirs is that they want to attract International readers to go hand in hand in combating the terrorism. Through their arrival in Afghanistan and
Pakistan, they want to empower both Afghan and Pakistani woman to be physically, mentally and economically independent. Since Western women’s saving projects resembles imperialist mission, it is better for Afghan women not to take it for granted.
C. Action
To follow Dewi, “action is roughly translated as interiorized values impelling the participants to act and do something consistent with their conviction.”123 Upon witnessing the oppression experienced by Muslim women in
Afghanistan and Pakistan, Western women in the three Asian memoirs take actions in order to liberate Muslim women. The mechanisms that are used by the women are fashion, education, and writing.
1. Fashion
According to Pashtunwali, Pashtun should live in purdah in order to keep their nang or honor since their biggest fear is losing their face in public. The problem is that certain people or groups misuse this code for their benefit. The
Taliban, for instance, they misinterpret Sharia and Pashtunwali to legitimate their rules, such as their rules in wearing burqa. Therefore, society internalizes it
123 N. Dewi, 64. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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blindly believing that wearing burqa is part of Islam and Pashtun tradition; this is how the Taliban silently oppress and restrict women’s movement in society. It can be seen how Malala’s uncle is very angry to her when she does not wear burqa because it can bring shame to her family. Malala said,
One of my male cousins was angry and asked my father, ‘Why isn’t she covered? He replied, ‘She’s my daughter. Look after your own affairs.”... But some of the family thought people would gossip about us and say we were not properly following Pashtunwali. (IAM, 30)
Even if Muslim women wear burqa based on their consideration, like
Malala’s friend, “when you’re very young, you love the burqa because it’s great for dressing up,” (IAM, 81) they are still co-opted either by their culture or religion. Bourdieu said that this is how symbolic violence takes place; Muslim women will naturally internalize the oppression (wearing burqa) without their consent because they live in the world of doxa which is maintained by the dominant group (Taliban) in the field. Doxa will subconsciously manipulate and limit their choice, freedom or critical thinking so it will prevent any contested arguments from society. Therefore, these Muslim women who wear burqa will think that they are exercising their free will; in fact, they are subconsciously oppressed by the Taliban.
For Muslim women who disagree with burqa wearing, they show their disagreement by wearing make-up and miniskirt inside their burqa which are banned by the Taliban. They do not dare enough to publicly show their full make up face because they are still afraid of Taliban’s punishment. Debbie said,
“People wore miniskirts out on Chicken Street!” she said. “Can you imagine anyone wearing a miniskirt in Kabul now?” She told me that, back in the 1970s, there were dozens of beauty salons in the city and that PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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they did a thriving business. “Afghan women have always been meticulous about their hair and makeup,” she declared. “Even underneath those dreadful burqas.” When this woman left, Roshanna explained that beauty salons were among the many things banned by the Taliban—along with music, dancing, pictures of people or other living things, white shoes, flying kites, and growing grapes. (KBS, 31)
The women would leave Baseera’s house with their hair and makeup hidden under their burqas and their manicures hidden by gloves. (KBS, 53) In contrast, the main characters in the three selected memoirs try to openly declare that they reject since it is not part of their religion and culture. Malala said,
“Yes, OK. We will wear burqas in future,’ she told him. My mother always covers her head but the burqa is not part of our Pashtun tradition.” (IAM, 80). In
Fariba Nawa’s case, she wears burqa in order to keep the dust off her (ON, 147) or to protect her when she works undercover (ON, 2015). For Debbie, she chooses to open beauty school which is supported by Vogue and Estée Lauder in Afghanistan where makeup and beauty matters are banned by the Taliban.
WITH THE IDEA for the beauty school, it seemed that all my dreams came together. I’d never been satisfied to be only a beautician, even though that’s a fine life. I’d always wanted to be part of something bigger and more meaningful—something that gave me the feeling I was helping to save the world. (KBS, 53)
Actually, the salon can be a strategic mechanism to resist the Taliban’s rule on wearing burqa since salon in Afghanistan is exclusively for women. In salon Muslim women have a chance to take their burqa off, put bold makeup, and paint their nails which are forbidden by the Taliban. It is also a place to collect women’s strength, for example, they can openly express themselves, exchange experiences, laugh, gossip and empower each other. Debbie said:
I thought I saw blue salon capes hanging from pegs on a wall and then realized that they were burqas, which had been removed when the women came in the door. But aside from those differences, I felt the same warm, PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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welcoming atmosphere that I’d spent most of my life in. There were women’s voices, women’s laughter—and that feeling of women relaxing with one another, laying hands on one another, telling one another the details of their lives and news of the lives around them. I wondered if this was the real reason the Taliban had been so opposed to beauty salons. Not because they made women look like whores or were fronts for brothels, as the Taliban claimed, but because they gave women their own space where they were free from the control of men. (KBS, 32)
Besides women can access their freedom, they can also be economically independent by working on the salon. Debbie said that salon business will be even better for women in Afghanistan, where men are not allowed to step inside the salon, meaning to say they will never see the cash changing hands (KBS, 35). In the end, they can opt-out from their dependency from men. However, the existence of salon and beauty school in Afghanistan creates controversy in society. Society who disagrees with the establishment of salon and beauty school believes that a salon is a form of Western capitalist in expanding their beauty market in the Muslim world. Therefore, how salon and beauty school truly become Western women agenda in liberating Muslim women since it roots on the
US capitalism. J.L. Fluri has this to say:
Lipstick and make-up are not necessarily metaphors for liberation and freedom; rather they are tools for a gendered capitalist framework with the body as a prime site of product consumption and marketing through the performance of feminity. How t, then, can we accede to the categorization of the Beauty Academy of Kabul, for example, as a ‘feminist’ project when it is entrenched in both capitalist structure and patriarchal gender regimes in the US and Afghanistan respectively?124
It can be concluded that salon in one side becomes a manifestation of
Western hegemony over the East, in other side it has much helped Afghan woman
124 Fluri, Jennifer L. “The Beautiful 'Other': A Critical Examination of Western Representations of Afghan Feminine Corporeal Modernity.” Gender, Place, and Culture (2009): 252. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09663690902836292?needAccess=true. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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to resist the Taliban since salon in Afghanistan is exclusively for women.
Therefore, Afghan woman can work together in collecting their strength, empowering each other, and disobeying the Taliban’s rules, such as gossiping, putting makeup, laughing and dancing.
2. Educational Awareness
The majority of women and girls in rural part of Pakistan and Afghanistan are illiterate. According to Saeeda Shah and Umbreen Shah, the literacy gap between men and women in some regions in Pakistan is as large as 45 percent, at least 47 percent for girls who never enroll in a school.125 Fariba Nawa argues that most Afghan women are illiterate, in fact, only 12 percent of females who can read and write (ON, 88). Nawa provides the case of Gandomi and her daughter as the example, Gandomi and her daughter are illiterate, so they do not have clock or calendar; it is their neighbor who always reminds them about the important date, such as Friday as the Islamic holy day (ON, 88). Seeing this condition, Nawa tries to empower the rural Afghan women and suggest them to access education, for instance, Nawa ever suggests Tarana to enroll in the local high school. However,
Nawa’s suggestion is directly rejected since Tarana’s husband who still adopts patriarchal mentality is very angry if her wife can go to the school and become cleverer than him (ON, 73).
Malala strengthens Nawa’s argument by saying that education according to most Pashtun families are not matters for their daughter since in the future their
125 Saeeda Shah and Umbreen Shah, “Girl Education in Rural Pakistan.” International Journal of Sociology of Education 1.2 (2012): 181. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.1006.5770&rep=rep1&type=pdf. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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daughter will end up getting married, cooking, cleaning, and taking care of their children (IAM,13). Malala presents her mother as the real example of the injustice treatment on Pashtun woman education, she said,
She drops out from the school and prefers to play at home. My mother started school when she was six and stopped the same term... There seemed no point in going to school just end up cooking, cleaning and bring up children, so one day she sold her books for nine annas, spend the money on boiled sweets and never went back. (IAM, 19)
Even if the women are eager to access education in order to get better future, Malala said that they only have two choices, either being a doctor or teacher, “It’s hard for girls in our society to be anything other than teachers or doctors if they can work at all”. (IAM, 3). Women’s illiteracy is worsened when the Taliban ban education for girls and women. The Taliban argue that education is a form of blasphemy because it contains Western ideology which is dangerous for Muslim. In contrary, Malala argues, “Islam has given us this right and says that every girl and boy should go to school. The Quran says we should seek knowledge, study hard and learn the mysteries of our world.” (IAM, 73). It shows the Taliban’s rule in banning girls and women’s education is only the Taliban’s manipulation in limiting women’s freedom. The Taliban are afraid that once women are empowered, there will be resistance in society. Malala strengthens her argument by saying that there are three powers in the world, one is sword, the other is pen, and the third power stronger than both is woman (IAM, 14). Malala believes that in order to opt-out from the Taliban’s oppression, two things that she needs which are education and women. Therefore, she does everything in order to make her and other girls and women can pursue education in the school. For PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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example, Malala hides her school bags and books in her shawls. She also becomes an active activist for girls’ education, like she always gives a speech or interview in mass media. She believes that the more interviews she gives; the more support she receives. Malala said,
If I am speaking for my rights, for the rights of girls, I am not doing anything wrong. It’s my duty to do so... There is a saying in the Quran, ‘The falsehood has to go and the truth will prevail.’ If one man, Fazlullah, can destroy everything, why can’t one girl change it? I wondered. I prayed to God every night to give me strength. (IAM, 67)
‘Let us pick up our books and our pens,’ I said. ‘They are our most powerful weapons. One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world.’ I didn’t know how my speech was received until the audience gave me a standing ovation. (IAM, 146) It is clear enough that women are actually capable once they are empowered. Wollstonecraft ever said that women are inferior and less intelligence because they are not given the same chances as men; they are frequently taught to be passive, obedience, and gentle since they were a child. Thus, their sole ambition is being fair and beauty, not to be intelligence.126 If women can be given similar access like men, she believes that women can cooperate in this enterprise.
The question will be why only Malala who speaks for the others, not her friend. The possible answer is that Malala has access and full support from her family in which other girls do not. Malala was born in a family who highly value equality and education. Her father graduated from the English department and now become the headmaster in Khusnal School. Besides, she used to get Western exposure from her father or by her reading on the novels of Jane Austen and Anna
Karenina, and many more. Malala says,
126 V. B Leich, The Northon Antology of Theory and Criticism. Longinus: First Century C.E. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc (2001): 586. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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I read my books like Anna Karenina and the novels of Jane Austen and trusted in my father’s words: ‘Malala is free as a bird.’ When I heard stories of the atrocities in Afghanistan I felt proud to be in Swat. ‘Here a girl can go to school,’ I used to say. But the Taliban were just around the corner and were Pashtuns like us. For me the valley was a sunny place and I couldn’t see the clouds gathering behind the mountains. My father used to say, ‘I will protect your freedom, Malala. Carry on with your dreams.’ (IAM, 31)
It can be concluded that how education can be a form of self-empowerment for women to opt-out from the Taliban’s oppression. When women are empowered with knowledge, they start to be very skeptical of the Taliban’s rules; they will learn that they have to highly value themselves. Once they realize it, they will never let themselves to be subjugated to the Taliban.
3. Writing
Writing is the opportunity for women to resist against male supremacy since it is a tool to explore the injustice treatment, to break women’s silence, and to express women’s mind and identity in public through their words. In the case of
Leila Abouzeid, for example, when Arab women are not permitted to speak in public, she chooses to write her autobiography entitled Return to Childhood in order to represent her voice indirectly. Through her book, she does not only revealing her life but also trying to break Western misconception on Muslim women.127 Debbie, Malala, and Nawa as the main characters in the three selected memoirs use writing as their mechanism to resist against men domination in both
Afghanistan and Pakistan, like the Taliban. They present the suffering and powerlessness of Muslim women in order to attract society’s attention. Malala for instance, she criticizes the cruelty and oppression experienced by Pakistani
127 Vinson, 5. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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women by confidently writing about women’s suffering under the Taliban’s rules in her online blog. Since it is dangerous for Malala to show her identity in public, she decides to use a pseudonym, Gul Makai 128 . Her first online writing is published on January 3, 2009, under the title “I Am Afraid” telling about how
Malala is afraid to go to the school since the Taliban always patrol in her neighborhood in order to warn and punish those who still go to school. She writes,
I had a terrible dream last night filled with military helicopters and Taliban.. I wrote about being afraid to go to school because of the Taliban edict and looking over my shoulder all the time. I also described something that happened on my way home from school: ‘I heard a man behind me saying, “I will kill you.” I quickened my pace and after a while I looked back to see if he was following me. To my huge relief I saw he was speaking on his phone, he must have been talking to someone else. (IAM, 73)
Besides writing about her difficulty in going to the school, Malala also writes about her disagreement toward burqa which is inspired from the incident when she goes out for shopping with her mother and cousin in the Cheena Bazaar.
She said,
‘There we heard gossip that one day a woman was wearing a shuttlecock burqa and fell over. When a man tried to help her she refused and said. “Don’t help me, brother, as this will bring immense pleasure to Fazlullah.” When we entered the shop we were going to, the shopkeeper laughed and told us he got scared thinking we might be suicide bombers as many suicide bombers wore the burqa.’ (IAM, 74)
Malala strongly believes that the pens and words can be more powerful than machine guns, tanks or helicopter. Malala said, “We were learning how to struggle. And we were learning how powerful we are when we speak.” (IAM, 74).
128 According to Malala, Gul Makai is the heroine in a Pashtun folk story. The story of Gulmakai is a kind of Romeo and Juliet story in which Gul Makai and Musa Khan meet at school and fall in love. But they are from different tribes so their love causes a war. Unlike Shakespeare’s play, their story doesn’t end in tragedy. Gul Makai uses the Quran to teach her elders that war is bad and they eventually stop fighting and allow the lovers to unite. See Malala’s I Am Malala, p. 80. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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She likes to write after she watches her favorite TV program entitled Shaka Laka
Boom Boom, an Indian children’s series about a boy called Sanju who has a magic pencil. The magic pencil can make everything Sanju draws becoming real, so he uses his pencil to help people, like saving her parents from the gangster. Malala said that she wants to have Sanju’s magic pencil more than anything else in the world because she wants to use it to help others (IAM, 44). Malala writing receives good attention from not only her friend who always talking about her bravery in speaking out her minds but also Western mainstream media, even BBC makes a recording version of her writing using another girl’s voice.
Fariba Nawa also uses writing as her mechanism to criticize the Taliban.
Nawa, who is an Afghan American journalist, writes articles about the condition in Afghanistan for American readers. Nawa becomes one of Afghan-American woman who still has the orientalist mentality in seeing Afghanistan due to the negative depiction from Western mainstream media. In her experience for instance, when she comes to Afghanistan for the first time after she moves to
America, she comes there with a myth of Afghanistan, and Darya as an opium bride embodies that myth, therefore, Nawa has a mission in saving Darya from her misery. Nawa says,
She, too, believed these myths and believed that it was her mission to save Darya. At the end, having traveled to opium bazaars and rehabilitation clinics, visited the beautiful homes of warlords and attended the Blackwater-run police training sessions to destroy the trade, she discovers that the good solutions are much harder to come by than one might hope When I met Darya, I held these same beliefs about the country. I was immediately attracted to the young girl because she was a mystery and a victim who needed to be saved from barbaric traditions. I thought it was my job as an outsider from the West to rescue her.... (ON, 225) PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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In order to collect the information about Darya, Nawa travels around opium bazaars and rehabilitation clinics, visits the beautiful homes of warlords, and attends the Blackwater-run police training sessions to destroy the trade.
Sometimes she has to face bad treatment from Afghan people because of their disappointment toward a Western journalist who tends to bring negative news about Afghanistan. It can be seen through Daud’s attitude when he meets Nawa,
“You realize that you reporters are writing lies all the time,” he scoffs. I look at him confused. I’m aware of the article, but I’ve come to discuss a different matter. “You need to write the truth,” he insists. (ON, 169)
After she travels around Afghanistan, she reveals a complex nation and its people that can open her mind. She finally realizes that it is much harder to come with a fruitful solution for Darya. She said,
The misery of Afghanistan for the past two hundred years can be summarized as a result of internal neglect and foreign interference. But these descriptions should not become fixed ideas invoked to understand or analyze the country. .... True, Afghans have their cultural characteristics, but their culture and identities are fluid and cannot be categorized with simplistic stereotypes. American and British policies and military strategies have been based on these perceived notions, as if Afghans were not capable of change or progress, as if they were frozen in time and with tribal mentalities. (ON, 96)
Nawa believes that Darya is no longer a myth and victim that she must liberate. Even if Darya is one of the thousands of girls bartered as opium brides, she has something special about her, a will and struggles to resist. She then concludes her reflection by saying, “she will rescue herself, perhaps by learning to cope, by standing her ground with her husband, or even by running away. Darya offers hope for change.” (ON, 226). It can be said that writing is used by the main characters as a tool to reflect their feeling and expose the brutality of the Taliban PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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in order to invite the international community to work together in combating the terrorism.
Although Debbie, Nawa, and Malala struggle for Muslim women’s liberation, their action in rescuing Muslim women create a debate in society; do they speak on behalf of Muslim women? Are there any hidden agendas behind their mission? In the case of Debbie, for instance, her action in establishing Kabul
Beauty School creates controversy in society. The supporting party believes that the Beauty School is symbolizing modernity and women’s liberation that is brought by the US to Afghanistan. In the other side, society disagrees with the existence of Kabul Beauty School in Afghanistan because they think that US beauticians manipulate the essence of the beauty school as women’s liberation.
Society believes that the school is actually the Western capitalists’ agenda in expanding their market in Afghanistan. J.L. Fluri said, “‘lipstics’ and ‘make up’..rather they are tools for a gendered capitalist frameworks within the body as a prime site of product consumption and marketing through the performance of femininity.”129 Therefore, society starts to be skeptical toward Debbie’s action in establishing Kabul Beauty School, how then the school can be a real feminist agenda if it is more on Western capitalist agenda in expanding their market.
In the case of Malala, Ecaterina Patrascu argues that Malala is praised, supported, and promoted by the international audience; for example, BBC Urdu has positively reported her bravery in voicing girls education.130 Western media supports Malala because Malala dares to challenge the extremist’s ideology and
129 Jennifer L. Fluri, 252. 130 E. Patrasu, 277. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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fight for girls’ education; in line with the Western agenda which is eradicating terrorism. In contrary, Pakistani society condemns Malala as the betrayal of her country; they perceive Malala as “American spy” and “the symbol of the infidels and obscenity.” Therefore, it justifies the Pakistani Taliban in targeting and shooting Malala on behalf of saving the country from the blasphemy done by
Malala. Patrascu says:
Malala is the good native, she does not criticize the West, she does not talk about the drone strikes, she is the perfect candidate for the white man to relieve his burden and save the native […] her cause had been ‘hijacked’ by the ‘Western savior complex’.131
Even if Malala, Nawa, and Debbie tend to receive negative comments from society, their struggles in searching for recognition and empowering Muslim women should be taken into account. In Malala’s case, how many burdens that
Malala as both Pakistani girl and Western representative should bear in order to voice women’s right in the status quo. First, she has to use pseudonym “Gul
Makai” in writing her experiences under the Taliban’s regime that are posted on
BBC in 2009. This strategy is chosen not only to protect Malala but also to smooth the access in publishing Malala’s story since the Taliban always prohibit women to express their emotion and opinion in the public sphere.
Hai Kakar told me it could be dangerous to use my real name and gave me the pseudonym Gul Makai, which means ‘cornflower’ and is the name of the heroine in a Pashtun folk story. It’s a kind of Romeo and Juliet story in which Gul Makai and Musa Khan meet at school and fall in love. But they are from different tribes so their love causes a war. However, unlike Shakespeare’s play their story doesn’t end in tragedy. Gul Makai uses the Quran to teach her elders that war is bad and they eventually stop fighting and allow the lovers to unite. (IAM, 80)
131 E. Patsaru, 279 PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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Second, Malala publicly volunteers herself to fight against the Taliban by doing some speech and campaigns on women’s education. As a result, Malala is targeted and shot by the Taliban as a form of punishment for Malala’s bravery in fighting against the Taliban. However, the Taliban’s punishment and threat do not stop her to fight for women right and become the representative for others.
I love my God. I thank my Allah. I talk to him all day. He is the greatest. By giving me this height to reach people, he has also given me great responsibilities. Peace in every home, every street, every village, every country – this is my dream. Education for every boy and every girl in the world. To sit down on the chair and read my books with all my friends at school is my right. to see each and every human being with a smile of happiness is my wish. I am Malala. My world has changed but I have not. (IAM, 147)
It can be said that Malala was born in order to fight for women’s liberation; it seems that her parents’ hope when deriving her name from Afghan heroine, Malala Maiwan, comes true. Not to mention, Malala is well supported by her family, especially her father. Even further, she has access to idolize Benazir
Bhutto, the first Pakistani female prime minister, and Barack Obama as her role model. Those are showing how Malala used to get the exposure to fight for equality since she was young. Therefore, when the Taliban restrict the access for women to be empowered, she speaks up not only for her but also for others.
It is true that Western women intervention in liberating Muslim women will destroy the existing Muslim’s culture and tradition or bring another hidden agenda. However, it is justifiable since they do it on behalf of ‘humanity.’ It can be seen how many innocent people who become the victim of the Taliban and their oppressive tradition. Malala argues that many girls have to gamble their life PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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in order to have access to go to school, she said, “We started going to school again, dressed in ordinary clothes and hiding our books under our shawls. It was risky but it was the only ambition I had back then.” (IAM, 78). Nawa said that because of the greediness of the Taliban in legalizing the drug trade, many innocent children and woman must be sacrificed; the Afghan children become the addicts, girls turn to be the prostitute, or they are sold by their parents in order to settle their parent’s debt. However, these innocent children and women do not have the ability to resist by themselves Nawa has this to say:
Men, women, and children survive by working in the opium industry as couriers, dealers, pushers, smugglers, or drug lords. The drug’s cultivation and sale have been outlawed in the country, but Ghoryam became hooked long before Karzai took power. Addicts, who include women, hide in their homes. When they do come outside, they sit on the streets and beg. Some women become prostitutes to feed their habit. No red districts exist in Ghoryan; men know which houses to go to for sex. (ON, 63)
Malala, Nawa and Debbie’s saving project is similar to what Spivak called as “strategic essentialism” or a strategy in essentializing the subaltern as the Other or the inferior group in order to show their existence in society. 132 Western intervention is justifiable because Muslim women as the subaltern do not have the chances to speak for themselves, thus they have to rely on other parties who have more bargaining position in society. However, once Muslim women accept
Western intervention, they have to be ready with Western mechanisms in solving their problem. This gesture can be seen when Malala, Nawa, and Debbie stereotype their fellow Muslim women as the oppressed group. The negative implications from the act of speaking for cannot be avoided; firstly, there is a
132 G. C. Spivak, The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues, p. 7. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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possibility of Muslim women as the subaltern still cannot speak; if they can speak, it means that they do not belong to subaltern anymore. Secondly, it can become the absolute affirmation of Muslim women’s inferiority since there is a tendency from the representatives to act as the masters of the discourse that finally silence the subaltern. For these matters, Spivak then argues that rather than the subaltern denies the risk from the act of speaking for, it is better for them to accept the temporal essentialism from the representatives/intellectuals to utter their voice.
What the subaltern needs is ‘recognition,’ and the act of speaking for is the last resort that they have. Actually, in order to be recognized, it does not mean that they have to be seen but at least their presence is being there.133 That is the reason why the representatives/intellectuals, such as Malala, Nawa, and Debbie, insist to bring the subaltern voice in their discourse. If society is afraid of the representative’s bias, the bias will be there. However, one thing that should be considered; there are many representatives/intellectuals who try to avoid becoming someone who takes on a master discourse and focus more on their goal; doing on behalf of ‘humanity.’
To conclude this chapter, Western intervention needs to be reconsidered due to the inability of Muslim women to fight against the Taliban by themselves.
This analysis is also absolutely aware that Western intervention is the real manifestation of the orientalist project; in Bourdieu’s term, it is called as symbolic violence. Therefore, “saving project” from the West cannot be perceived as an innocent action which is a form of Western’s solidarity in combating terrorism
133 I thank Sri Mulyani, Ph.D. for her insight (Personal comments, July 23th, 2019). PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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and saving ‘woman in cover’. However, one thing that should be understood is that Western intervention is justified since it is the last resort that Muslim women have; even further, they do it on behalf of humanity. It can be seen through the historicity and intentionality of Western women in three memoirs studied. Even if they come from different background, they are united under one condition; their anger and disappointment with the brutality of the Taliban in both Pakistan and
Afghanistan. By exposing the brutality of the Taliban, they try to invite the international community to work together in combating the terrorism. The mechanisms that they use are by establishing a salon, empowering woman through education, and using writing. This study believes that once Muslim women are empowered, they will struggle to fight against the Taliban and take their freedom back. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
CHAPTER V
CONCLUSION
This thesis argues that the monolithic portrayal of Muslim women as the oppressed has already attracted Western women to intervene Muslim women’s liberation from both Islamic fundamentalist and their oppressive culture as depicted in Kabul Beauty School, Opium Nation and I Am Malala. This thesis asserts that Western women tend to exaggerate the suffering of and negatively present Muslim women in order to legitimate their mission in the Muslim world.
By applying Mohanty’s “Under Western Eyes,” Bourdieu’s Symbolic Violence, and Spivak’s Strategic Essentialism, this thesis has already answered two main questions. First, it answers how Western women represent Muslim women in
Kabul Beauty School, Opium Nation and I Am Malala. Second, it reveals the
Western women reasons and mechanisms to liberate Muslim women as shown in three memoirs studied.
In the first analysis, this thesis has shown that the Western women (Nawa,
Darya, and Malala) have negatively stereotyped Muslim women as the oppressed group under burqa wearing, arranged marriage, passive behavior, and lacking education. Western women condemn the Taliban that have already oppressed
Muslim women by fabricating Pashtun tradition and Islamic values. They also condemn the attitude of the Muslim women that is too passive and not critical enough in facing the oppression that only makes them lose their only chance to
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liberate themselves. This part firstly presents burqa wearing as the manifestation of the oppression which is experienced by Muslim women. Some of Muslim women are forcefully willing to wear burqa because they are afraid of the Taliban punishment. Some of them wear it based on their consent believing that Taliban’s interpretation is correct, forgetting the fact that the Taliban have already fabricated everything, including the law on wearing burqa. Seeing these situations, Western women try to justify their judgment that burqa wearing is a form of oppression, so they encourage others to break this rule in order to restore
Muslim women’s freedom.
Built on Bourdieu’s perspective, whether the women wear burqa based on their consideration or not, the practice of burqa wearing is a form of symbolic violence or internalized oppression. These women are not aware that they are oppressed since the Taliban integrate their rule in wearing burqa with Islamic principle. Therefore, the women start to blindly believe that wearing burqa is their responsibility that should be fulfilled. It shows how doxa is perfectly used to manipulate the oppression or violence becomes something natural or logical, thus, the women who undergo the oppression think that they exercise their free will, indeed they are subconsciously oppressed.
It is proven in this study that Western women cannot opt-out from their own monolithic view on Muslim women as the oppressed group in their discourse; sometimes, their argument is not justifiable and contradicting each other. It can be seen through Debbie’s statement in Kabul Beauty School saying that Muslim women are oppressed under arranged marriage that can lead to other PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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problems which are polygamy and domestic violence. Debbie provides Nahida as the example how arranged marriage is a form of oppression. She stated that
Nahida is forced to marry one of Talib’s men when she is a teenager, but Nahida does not know that her husband has already had a wife. Once she finds it out, she tries to break the marriage with her husband. As a result, Nahida is abused by her husband in order to teach and remind her to be a good wife. Unfortunately,
Debbie forgets the fact that there are some Muslim women who are happy with their arranged marriage, Malala’s mother, for instance, she clearly states that she is happy with her marriage.
In term of the passive portrayal of Muslim women, the Western women argued that Muslim women are too passive and helpless even when they are facing trivial matters. Debbie ever said that suicide is mostly chosen as a shortcut to solve their problem. The Western stereotype on the passiveness of Muslim women is still questionable because in some cases the third world women can empower not only herself but also others, such as Benazir Bhutto. Therefore, this irrelevant parameter on Muslim women as the oppressed group depicted in
Western discourse tends to be criticized. By presenting Muslim women as the oppressed, the Western women (Nawa, Darya, and Malala) are trapped into essentializing Muslim women as the victim of patriarchy and Islamic oppressive culture. That is what Mohanty regrets the most, by homogenizing Muslim women as the oppressed group; the Western women become the colonizing subject while the Muslim women objectified. Therefore, the Muslim women have to be aware of the Western hegemony in their being depicted as the monolithic group. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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In the second analysis, this study has shown how the action of Western women (Nawa, Darya, and Malala) in representing Muslim women is negotiated, considering through their vision, mission, and action. The vision or historicity of three selected memoirs is similar; those memoirs are written by the Western women who are interested in the disputed Muslim countries and tell about Muslim women’s suffering because of their oppressive culture and people. Even if the
Western women have different backgrounds, such as Nawa is an Afghan-
American, Malala is a Pakistani, and Debbie is an American, they are united under one reason. It is their anger and disappointment toward the brutality of the
Taliban that use not only God and Gun but also Drug in destroying even killing the innocent people. In term of their mission, they write their memoirs which are based on their long investigation because they intend to reveal the brutality of the
Taliban and successfully save the vulnerable Muslim women from their misery.
Therefore, it can attract international readers and movements to work together in combating terrorism and saving Muslim women.
In liberating Muslim women, the actions that Western women use are fashion, education, and writing. In term of fashion, since the Taliban’s rules on burqa wearing has already oppressed Muslim women in any circumstances,
Debbie, the main character in Kabul Beauty School, proposes to open a beauty salon in Afghanistan. A beauty salon can be a strategic mechanism to resist the
Taliban because the salon in Afghanistan is exclusively for women. In salon,
Muslim women have a chance to take their burqa off, put on bold make up, and paint their nails which are forbidden by Taliban. In salon, Muslim women can PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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collect their strength, such as they can openly express themselves, exchange experiences, laugh, gossip and empower each other. Even more, they can be economically independent. In term of education, Malala has already argued before that the Taliban’s rule in banning girls from school is only Taliban’s manipulation in limiting women to be empowered. Once the women are empowered through education, they can highly value themselves; finally, they resist the Taliban. Even further, Malala ever said that there are three powers in the world, one is a sword, the other is pen, and the third power which is stronger than both is a woman. For the writing, it is the best opportunity for women to resist against male supremacy since it is a tool to explore the injustice treatment, to break women’s silence, and to express women’s mind and identity in public through their words. The main characters in the three selected memoirs use writing as their mechanism to resist against the Taliban’s brutality in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. They present the suffering and powerlessness of Muslim women in order to attract society’s attention. Malala for instance, she criticizes the cruelty and oppression of women under the Taliban regime by writing women’s suffering under the Taliban’s rules in her online blog. Because it is dangerous for her to show her identity in public, she decides to use a pseudonym, Gul Makai. It can be concluded that fashion, education, and writing are the effective mechanisms that are chosen by Nawa,
Darya, and Malala in liberating Muslim women from the Taliban.
Finally, this thesis claims that the Western women’ intervention is very desirable to help Muslim women in pursuing their rights and freedom. Even if it is true that the Western women’ actions are based on the Western values and have PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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imperialist mission that definitely destroy the existing Muslim’s culture, Muslim women have to accept it since it is the last resort that they have. It can be seen how many Muslim women who are oppressed even killed by the Taliban but many of them do nothing since they are afraid of the Taliban’s punishment.
Therefore, regardless of the Western stereotype on Muslim women or the hidden agendas behind their arrival in the Muslim world, one thing that should be understood is that they do it on behalf of humanity. This study also affirms that once Muslim women are empowered and can value themselves, they can finally make a move for the betterment of themselves and others.
Suggestion
Violence against women, East-West (un)happy relations, Western intervention, and Islamophobia are among the unending issues to analyze from different angles. Literature specifically has its own way in mediating these issues, by mostly taking sides of the humanity aspects. Kabul Beauty School, Opium
Nation and I Am Malala should be taken into account as the memoirs that have good intention in responding to the brutality of the Taliban, despite the inclusion of orientalist views in the memoirs. By selling Muslim women’s suffering under the Taliban, Western women want to attract awareness of international readers to go hand in hand in combating the Taliban.
Having discussed the suffering of Muslim women under the Taliban and
Western intervention in liberating Muslim women depicted in the three works, this study yet to pursue further issues which by now limits on negotiating the PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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Western intervention in liberating Muslim women. For further research, it is advisable to analyze similar memoirs or different, but focusing more on the implication of Western intervention toward Muslim women. For instance, further studies can see whether Muslim women can finally be empowered and resist the
Taliban, or they still stay in their silent, or even worst, Western intervention becomes the absolute affirmation of the helplessness of Muslim women in status quo. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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