The idea of writing a book about feminism and Islamic fundamentalism developed out of the discomfort I felt over several years as I watched and listened to academic debates on the subject. Gradually, one noticed a shift in accounts of women’s lives in Islamic societies, from a sympathetic appreciation of the plight of women under fundamentalist rule to extravagant affirmations of Muslim women’s "agency," gender-awareness, empowerment and security within a protected space. In an heroic effort to rescue "Islam" from its bad reputation in the treatment of women, discussions blurred distinctions between "Islam" as a faith, "Islam" as the ideology of a movement in opposition, and Islam as a ruling system, that is, Islamic fundamentalism.
As if charmed by a drumbeat from afar, some scholars have even yielded to the Islamists’ intellectual seductions, transforming the robust defence of Islamic faith and the urgent need to protect Muslim minorities in the West into an apology for fundamentalist practice where it needs no defence, and where, in fact, it exercises a terrible monopoly of political and cultural power. In this they confuse the principle of recognizing and affirming the rights of Muslim minorities in the West with an unprincipled tolerance for the oppressive political and cultural practices in countries where Muslims from a majority and the full power of government is in the hands of a theocratic elite. In the name of anti-imperialism these intellectuals turn a blind a eye to the consequences of such utopian experiments for people actually living under fundamentalist rule; and little by little, these discursive slippages and confusions and outright abandonments have cost much to the region’s women (and men), as they struggle for a more humane and democratic system, a quality of intellectual freedom taken for granted in the West.
Oh, this should be good. ("It had better be good! I had to contribute $16 to the violent overthrow of the United States government to get it for you!" He bought it from the bookstore of the American Revolutionary Communist Party in Boston, Revolutionary Books. Apparently they had a lot of books he wanted to buy, but Revolutionary Books is pricey. "Squeeze Abe ‘til he yells, that’s their motto.")