Post date: Oct 13, 2016 4:26:29 PM
This NYT article, entitled “A Nation Challenged: Islam; Where Muslim Traditions Meets Modernity” by Susan Sachs, perfectly encapsulates how, as Deeb describes, Western notions of modernity are framed as incompatible with Islam. I chose this particular article because it uses women and their perceptions of piety--traditional and authenticated--as exemplary of Islamic oppression, and was written a year after Deeb concluded her field work. Not only is it absolutely disempowering to Muslim women, by removing the agency they have in their personal and spiritual lives, but, according to Deeb’s research, is wildly inaccurate. This article uses stigmatized aspects of traditional piety to discount the agency women actually have in religious interpretation, dress, and the rejection of Westernized understandings of equality and liberation. The pious Shi’i women (and men for that matter) that Deeb studied and conversed with would disagree that their liberation came from radical interpretations of Islam or access to Westernized technology (the Internet and Western media).