This thesis addresses particular limitations of postcolonial scholarship about Muslim women. To locate my analysis of postcolonial works, I survey Orientalist productions of the Muslim woman by European travelers and certain Muslim reformists. I read these repressive constructions of the Muslim woman through the lens of postcolonial critique. While postcolonial discourses about Muslim women are frequently framed as a "corrective" to Orientalist accounts, they are often limited by a commitment to teleological conceptions of development. This is especially true of the discourse of "Islamic Feminism" in the works of Margot Badran and miriam cooke. Examining Badran's and cooke's conceptions of feminism and religiosity, I highlight the ways in which it re-inscribes particular Orientalist assumptions, and remains bound by its adherence to secular-liberal values, and teleological conceptions of modernity. These biases carry serious implications for future scholarship about Muslim women within the Western Academy.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.116128 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | Lakhani, Safia. |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Arts (Institute of Islamic Studies.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 003131907, proquestno: AAIMR67073, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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