[...] open up possibilities for equivocatign our contradictions + (representing =) *equivocating over what exactly is represented*[<-- in apass this is what i always do, in a way my project]

(@apass, attending to iconography opens up a space for asking:)
****what are doing here together?
****what kind of pilotage does this diagram offer and to whom?


(a way of abandoning the idea that these objects are essentially different) --> attending an object as:
•story
•diagram
•


...................................

intermingling the sexuality and materiality of bodies with the transcendental concepts and questions of spirituality and religion

to re-insert the body back into religious imagery

queer religious imagery

culture-jam
weaving their desire and bodies back into an exclusionary narrative

(un)critical faith

sexuality, gender, and bodily regulation in ...


deep inextricability of religious and secular discourses in constructing the body, as well as the ways in which such discourses alone can never tell the complete story of gendered and sexual bodies and practices (Wetzel)

...................................

Saadia Toor

() within the neo-Orientalist discourse [~= liberal modernity as embodied by ‘the West’ and Barbarism as connoted by Islam] ‘the Muslim’ enemy is today configured as both misogynyst and homophobic (with an essentialized Islam comfortably posited as the roots of illiberalism[= presented as the mark and the evidence of Islam's radical alterity from Western civilization])==> “civilizing missions” [such as my orientation course (as an ideological cover) in Germany] + [Hoda's bottom-lined subjugated self puts her on such “mission” (‘to rescue women’ and) ends any discussion with her (about women, or Islam)] }==> essentialized and monolithic (and flattened) ‘Islam’ emptied of history, diversity, complexity, and dissent نفاق -- devoid of any internal complexity and in fact incapable of effecting change from within
[--> critical use of #islamicated instead of “islamic"]


organic intellectuals (of the empire)
(authentic) native informants
brave and courageous ‘victims’ of Islam
•Rushdie one of the strongest voices within the clash of civilizations framework, in popular support for the Global War on Terror
•Manji's narrow polemic and cultivating a persona (of young smart queer woman) ==> new Orientalism
•Hirsi Ali an authentic ‘victim’ (“I used to be a Muslim; I know what I am talking about” -saying things that liberal ‘politically correct’ discourse will not allow Whites/non-Muslims/Westerners to say)
}--> ideology of Empire --> [a neo-colonial project:] discursive construction of an essentialized Islam

a range of “misogynist cultural” practices:
•FGM (female genital mutilation)
•honor killings
•the ‘cult of virginity’
--> they all predate islam and are common to Animists and Christians of the sub-Saharan region as well as Ethiopian Jews

liberal rhetoric of saving Muslim women


when some illustratives are pitched as a sensitive response to racist Islamophobia, but taking part in the mainstream discourse on Islam and homosexuality

‘Islamic-ness’ of the subject-matter

(the strange idea) that all Muslim countries are Islamic


part fiction, part ideological label, part minimal designation of a religion called islam (or “west”)
-How really useful is “Islam” as a concept for understanding Morocco and Saudi Arabia and Syria and Indonesia (or Iran)? [Said asks]


return them to the ‘chardivari’


(Toor's notion of) ‘patriarchal opportunism’ : “whereby patriarchal structures from families to nation-states strategically select elements from an ideological ‘toolbox’ in their attempt to gain support for the sexual regulation of women.”

Toor showing how impossible it is to think of ‘Islam’ as being the source of Muslim women's problems:
•(an ordinary story) runaway marriage --to--> a battle for the consolidation of class and patriarchal power played on a national stage; a case (of Saima) abounding in the established and familiar postcolonial binaries of East/West, tradition/modernity, public/private, sacred/profane
*class struggle is itself always already a gendered process, both discursively and materially*
clash between different and competing patriarchies or patriarchal arrangements --> the status of women within kin-networks --> the role of marriage in consolidating class power ==hence==> the rhetoric of marriage as something too important to be left to the men and women concerned (in Pakistan: ‘marriages = cementing relations between men’) --> “controlling female sexuality across class lines” [--> a very specific anxiety over female (sexual) agency* + complexities of patriarchy within Pakistani society] }--> “Among other things, they demonstrate that ‘Islam'--whether as a basis for individual/national identity, as a religious and cultural system, or as a set of injunctions encoded in theological and juridical textual sources--is always/already an internally contested discourse rather than a monolithic and internally coherent thing.”
(--> understanding of) the ways in which ‘the law’ itself is constructed and operationalized; delightful colonial legacy called the “Family Laws” (part of the penal codes of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh);
•zina (zena, illicit sex, adultery, premarital sex) --> far from being an expression of religious piety at the familial or state level, the zina law is wielded as a potent weapon of control and extortion by families of ‘disobedient’ women + the rights that the moral authority of Islam grants the women against their families }=/= the manner in which the mainstream media in the West constructs the role of Islam in the lives of Muslim women (~ everything to do with Muslims is explained by ‘Islam’) =/= Khan's research on incarcerated women leads her to conclude that poverty is an important causal factor in the imprisonment of women under the charge of zina in Pakistan (structural adjustment policies imposed on Pakistan by the World Bank and IMF from the 1980s on) --> larger global political and economic processes
•a transgender couple charged with perjury under the Pakistan Penal Code, and not under ‘Islamic law.’ Supreme Court would rule in their favor, the judgment drew on the presence of the figure of Hermaphrodite in Ancient Greece to Islam + discussed with sympathy by mainstream media + well-organized and politically savvy hijra community in Pakista
}--> @Hoda, since she is interested in women's status under purportedly Islamic regimes
}==> Islam is not the overarching motor within purportedly Muslim societies that mainstream discourse would have us believe

(Rastegar > Toor:) “it is typical of much human rights discourse in the Third World to focus on [...] practices of regulating women's bodies, especially those identified with Islamic law, while ignoring socioeconomic concern.” @Hoda

Toor's two distinctions [=/= collapsing all forms of ‘Islamization’ resulting in a serious misunderstanding of the social processes at work]:
•‘Islamization from below’ : rise of (voluntary) public piety among Muslims, adoption of particular styles of facial hair by men and of various forms of hijab by women
•‘Islamization from above’ : the ways in which structures of power—from families to states—deploy ‘Islam’ in order to control women (and men)

(Toor:) Shah's cogent critique of the fetishization of the ‘community’ in ethnographic literature


a society defined by ‘a history of’
•dictatorial regimes (with support of the U.S.)
•(under siege from joint pressures of) a corrupt ruling class
•a heavy debt burden
•predatory and conspicuous consumption
•ongoing (neo)colonial intervention
==> cultural identity becomes a contentious issue & women's bodies become sites (for these cultural politics and the class struggles they embody)
~=> regulation of women sexuality : the key hegemonic move through which consent across social classes can be secured**

the increasing interconnectedness of different parts of the world at economic, political, and cultural levels (= globalization) ==>  intensification in the dynamics of social change ==> anxiety ==> (greater) regulation of women (in kin-networks as a response to political, social and cultural anxieties under globalization)
[This was just as true of[...]