Female Suicide Bombers: Dying for Equality?

 http://www.tau.ac.il/jcss/memoranda/memo84.pdf

4 The majority of female Muslim activists are
aware of the prevalent aversion in society to Western feminism and  
are even party to this aversion, and therefore maintain that the way to improve women’s  status withinsociety and the family is within the dominant normative order.

This  is done byintroducing into Muslim annals the “Her Story”15 – history viewed  through the role of women, thus magnifying that role; and through an alternative  interpretation ofthe canonical sources and biographies of Muslim women, a method  
notably pursued by Fatima Mernissi, an activist feminist professor of sociology from  Morocco.16Following a similar strategy, Islamist female activists exhibit in  
the conduct of their daily life both a principled rejection of Western values and the  internalization of theirrole as guardians of Muslim authenticity.17 What Muslim women say by  
embracing
the existing order is: we don’t want to – or cannot – adopt your way.  
We have our
own way that is superior as well as effective, based on rational  
causality that derives
from our basic principles and is accepted by society.
Their strategy has proven effective. Accepting the injunctions of  
Islam, whether
in theory or in practice – such as adopting the hijab, the new  
version of Islamic dress
– lifts the ban on female visibility in non-familial male society,  
frees women of their
exclusive assignation to the private sphere, and affords them a  
foothold, freedom of
movement and activity, and even authority in the public sphere,  
though short of the
ultimate top position in government. Indeed, the more groups and  
organizations
are closer to Islam, the more they encourage their women to  
participate in public
activities.18 Their dissent from the Western version of libertine  
feminism, which in
addition to subverting morals positions women against men, mitigates  
the threat
it poses both to the aspiration for cosmic purity that hinges on  
female conduct as
well as to the patriarchal order in the family (even if this is not  
explicitly stated),
and to the Muslim conception of the harmonious society composed of  
mutually
complementing camps, male and female.
However, Muslim public discourse does not stop at ousting the West from
its position as a benchmark for universal values. That would merely  
constitute
parochial disavowal and limiting the validity of Western values to  
the realm of the
Western world as a product of the specific course of Western history,  
falling short of
its essential refutation. It would mean that it is right for them,  
but not for us – but
not constitute a fundamental denial. Islamic spokesmen have  
previously attempted
to refute the Western viewpoint but mostly in connection with its  
secularism,
56    Rivka Yadlin
claiming that it makes the entire world order dependent on man, who  
is fickle and
ephemeral.19 Increasingly however, whether as a reaction to the  
Western “assault” or
the confidence gained by subaltern cultures in the time of  
multiculturalism, Muslim
(not necessarily Islamic) discourse now pushes further, and tries to  
debunk Western
liberalism and its claims concerning Muslim women, not merely through  
the use of
the limited parochial rationalization of Islam, but also on the home  
court of Western
discourse, using the latter’s own tools. This method poses a more  
defying challenge
to a broader public, including the Western world.
A model example of this trend is Saba Mahmood, an Egyptian-born Muslim
feminist, anthropologist, and scholar of religious movements, well-
regarded
and highly active in the top level of Western academe (Princeton,  
Chicago, and
Cambridge). Mahmood challenges Western liberalism on the whole,20  
asserting
that it is a mistake to assume that human agency (a sociological term  
connoting the
ability of autonomous human action to achieve self-fulfillment – a  
cornerstone of the
definition of freedom in Western liberal philosophy) necessarily  
means an internal
personal and natural aspiration of an individual for freedom and  
quasi-Promethean
self-construction. It is a mistake to assume that human agency is the  
drive to rise up
against authority and, as far as women are concerned, defy the  
structures of male
control.
This mistaken assumption triggers deprecatory reactions by feminists  
across
the political spectrum regarding the support and participation of  
women in the
Islamic movements. A common allegation is that these women are held  
captive in
a widespread patriarchal plan, and that if they were released from  
their shackles,
they would naturally express their instinctive abhorrence of the  
traditional Islamic
practices by which they are bound, particularly at a time in which  
the opportunities
for freedom are so great. The fact is, according to Mahmood, that at  
the heart of
Muslim women’s conduct lies the principle of sabr – the well-known  
concept of
patience.   Thus accepting polygamy, for example, is not considered  
by pious Muslim
women as submission to injustice, but rather a demonstration of the  
virtue of sabr.
Even more conspicuous is the issue of the hijab. Many studies,  
including those by
Muslim feminists, define the desire to wear it according to the  
researchers’ own
criteria, hence reaching the conclusion that the motive is social  
protest, economic
need, alienation, or utilitarian strategy. The reasons cited by most  
veiled women –
morality, religion, and values – are dismissed as the imageries of  
oppressed people.
Wrong, says Mahmood. These responses are based on the assumption that
in
order for an individual to be free, her actions must be the  
consequence of her own
Female Martyrdom: The Ultimate Embodiment of Islamic Existence?    57
will, not of customs, tradition, or plain enforcement. However, she  
argues, it is
logical to assume as well that it is possible that the autonomous  
will of an individual
and its self-realization are directed towards non-liberal goals that  
are consistent
with customs and tradition. It is likewise logical to assume that it  
is possible that an
active and autonomous human agency aspires not necessarily to  
progressive goals
of change and rebellion against social conventions, such as wearing  
jeans and dying
one’s hair blue, but to finding purpose, value, and pride in an  
effort to preserve
tradition and stability and embody them in the appropriate way of life.
The liberal view regards this as the internalization by women of  
their (oppressive)
socialization. It is possible, however, to regard it as an active  
will to adopt the
standards set for women by divine commandment, and make them their own
through both external behavior and the construction of a coherent  
spiritual stance
that is entrenched and integral to the point where women feel true  
discomfort when
values relevant to women are not applied. This discomfort applies not  
only to the
conduct of the individual herself, but also to the behavior of the  
surrounding society,
behavior that reduces the meaning of Islam to an abstract system of  
beliefs that does
not directly affect the daily life of the individual – how to dress,  
how to speak, which
hobbies are proper, how to invest money, and what form public  
discourse should
take. It can be a process of a conscious effort to reorient  
aspirations by creating
harmony between internal motives, external actions, tendencies, and  
emotional
states through repeated practice of moral deeds.
Furthermore, drawing on Michel Foucault, Mahmood argues that power  
should
not be understood merely according to the simplistic binary model of  
domination/
submission. The ability to act is created and made possible by given  
relationships of
submission that are not necessarily passive. It is composed of  
struggle, effort, and
achievements. Power in this sense is the way in which someone carries  
out acts on his/
her thought, body, behavior, and modes of existence in order to  
achieve a certain state
of happiness, purity, wisdom, soundness, or eternal life. According  
to this definition,
resisting a relationship of domination is only one form of  
appropriating an active
human agency; forms of accepting domination and hierarchy may also  
achieve such
a state. The Muslim piety movement, researched by Mahmood in Egypt,  
assumes
the existence of a divine plan for human life, as expressed in the  
Qur’an, its exegeses,
the model of the prophet and his companions, and the moral laws  
derived from
them, and every individual must strive, with no legal or other  
compulsion, to realize
this plan. In a context in which there is no separating line between  
the aspirations
of the individual and the conduct enjoined by society, submission to  
certain forms
58    Rivka Yadlin
of external authority is a necessary condition for realizing an  
individual’s potential,
i.e., constituting an active human agency.
Mahmood furthermore suggests that the formative role of the social  
context of
the individual should be considered in a major way. The individual  
and her conduct
are themselves a product of sanctioned traditions that far exceed in  
their logic and
power the consciousness of the individual formed by them. It is not  
possible to
identify a universal range of a human activity – such as “resistance”  
– outside the
framework of the ethical and political conditions where such  
activities gain their
particular meaning.
Mahmood’s argument does not directly address the phenomenon of female
suicide bombers, but neither does it restrict its conclusions to the  
researched group
of the Egyptian Piety movement and may be applied to the issue at  
hand and offer an
additional angle for analysis. First, in Palestinian society, as in  
Arab/Muslim society
in general, religious devotion is an organizing norm for the ideals  
the society uplifts.
The ideal of women’s status and proper conduct, especially when  
intertwined with a
strong national sentiment and intense mobilization to glorified  
warfare for a concrete
and immediate goal, situates female martyrs in the center of the  
social consensus,
rather than the margins. Second, the aspiration for the embodiment of  
the Islamic
ideal of existence that emerges in Mahmood’s research may be applied  
as well to the
Palestinian martyrs, who perform the ultimate embodiment – the  
sacrifice of their
body. The plausibility of their act as an autonomous choice for self-
realization through
acceptance of the prevalent norms in their society, and perhaps most  
importantly the
formation of their autonomous consciousness by their society, further  
situates them
in a consensual position, rather than in one motivated by aberrancy.
The Western liberal view may find it difficult to accept Mahmood’s
claim
concerning its own relativity and the partial role of its secular  
morality and
rationalism in containing the modes of worthy human creativity, even  
when it relies
on Western philosophers such as Pierre Bourdieu, Foucault, and a  
number of the
most prominent Western feminists.21 This liberal view, however,  
should take notice
of this trend as a demonstration of the firm tendency in Muslim  
discourse to reject
Western views on women’s liberation, as well as other liberal Western  
views – such
as democratization – and the ensuing Western demands and pressures  
for social and
political change. It should also take notice of the fact that this  
rejection is intensifying
and becoming more self-confident, no longer challenging out of the  
periphery of
Muslim orthodoxy, using Islamic parochial rationale, but rather in  
the heart of the
Western public sphere, using what the West considers to be universal  
terms.
Female Martyrdom: The Ultimate Embodiment of Islamic Existence?    59
Western researchers may find it easier to accept the claim made by  
subaltern
cultures as well as by certain Western researchers, specifically  
anthropologists,22 that
in order to observe in an informed way the conduct of the “other,”  
even if “lacking”
according to their Western judgment, one must relate to the formative  
surroundings
of the individual as a major factor in understanding her conduct.  
Furthermore they
may not find it difficult to agree that if the individual in question  
were formed by her
surrounding culture, it would include what she may consider as her  
autonomous
choice. The ability of Western researchers to observe traditions that  
are different
from their own from within those “other” traditions, while putting  
aside their
own entrenched traditions and logic, may be an important contribution  
to a better
understanding of action and political processes in those cultures.