* Women as victims of: religious dogma, patriarchy, social underdevelopment, lack of education, poverty * An orientalist view on gender: mystery, harem, violence

* Feminist Orientalism and Orientalist feminism (Bahramitash 2005) * Feminist Orientalism: use of women’s rights as an excuse to legitimate colonial presence or war (Afghanistan) * Orientalist feminism: a project and a type of feminism that advocates and supports particular foreign policies toward the Middle East.

* (1) it assumes a binary opposition between the West and the Orient: progress vs tradition * (2) it regards Oriental women only as victims and not as agents of social transformation. Muslim women need saviors, i.e., their Western sisters to liberate themselves * (3) it assumes that all societies in the Orient are the same and all Muslim women there live under the same conditions.

* Edward Said’s critique of Orientalism * What is Orientalism? * Frantz Fanon: the French attempted to ‘civilize’ Algerians by encouraging de-veiling: ‘here and there it thus happened that a woman was “saved” and symbolically “unveiled.” * Critique to liberal feminism (Chandra Mohanty 2003)

* Over-presence of Harem * Overlooks millions of secular Muslim women, as well as non-Muslim women who live in Muslim countries. * No recognition of diversity * Irrelevance of social class (Homa Hoodfar, Azadeh Kian, Maryam Poya)

* State feminism: women’s body and lives are a ‘contest site’ of politics. * Muddawana reform in Morocco (Labidi 2007) * Paradox of transnational support (Ladibi 2007)

* Different types of feminism: secular feminism and Islamic feminism * Women as victims of what? religious dogma, patriarchy, social underdevelopment, lack of education, poverty

* Religious dogma: different visions on women’s rights within Islamism in general * Patriarchy but phenomena such as urbanisation, economic precarity, education are undermining its relevance * Education and women’s access to the job market

* Re-readings of the Quran and dismanteling of the non–gender egalitarian and misogynist constructions of Islam (Afsaneh Najmabadeh and Ziba Mir- Hosseini) * Fatima Mernissi’s analysis of hadiths * Islamic methodology of ijtihad to realize the full potential of Islam * In Egypt, Suad Salih, a dean and professor of comparative jurisprudence at Al-Azhar University argued that there is nothing in the religious texts preventing a woman from becoming a mullah *