Mohamed Elzarka

POL3062: Beyond Belief

Prof. Jenkins
October 12, 2014
Response Paper to Mahmood and Wallace
This weeks readings dealt with the topic of freedom, especially in the specific context of
what freedom means across cultures and across religions. The first piece for the week was
written by Sabha Mahmood of the University of California at Berkeley and discussed the role of
feminism in the Islamic Middle East. Among other things, Mahmood highlights the struggle
between the modern, liberal feminist movement of the West and some of the actions of recentlyempowered Middle Eastern women which appear to be against this movement and the newfound
personal freedoms of the women. In one example, she brings up the idea that many modern
Egyptian women choose to wear hijab despite the fact that by no means are they required to. Of
course, this goes against the Western feminist notion that the hijab is somehow a form of male
dominance over women. In light of this, Mahmood gives us several examples of those who try to
justify this choice in a functional way. Researchers theorize that the increased donning of the
hijab is used as a means to avoid sexual harassment while using public transportation or perhaps
even as a way to save on the costs of attire (Mahmood 209). She also points out how little
attention the actual reported reasons why so many women wear hijabpurity and modestyget
in the academic discussion. It is indeed interesting to note how such justifications by Muslim
women are so easily discarded because they do not fall in the analysts categories of real
motivations. It seems that researchers studying the topic often do not realize that the very reason
that these women give can suffice as an explanation of a real motivation: it is important for

them to follow the tenets of their religion, and remaining modest and moral is part of that
adherence.
This inability to understand ties directly to the other piece for the week from David
Foster Wallace. Giving a commencement speech at Kenyon College, Wallace discusses the
problems associated with blind certainty. He brings up the story of an unreligious man who lived
through a snowstorm after getting on his knees and asking God for help. When the man tells his
religious friend of the experience, the religious friend is certain that the man must now be a
believer. He is surprised to find out that the snowstorm survivor does not believe in God and
instead credited his survival to two natives who guided him back to safety after he had made his
prayer. For the religious man, of course, these two natives are the help from God that the
unreligious man asked for, but for the unreligious man, they are simply a couple of men who
helped him find his way back to camp. Here we see that the exact same experience can mean
two totally different things to two different people, given those people's two different belief
templates and two different ways of constructing meaning from experience (Wallace 2). This is
especially important to consider when we realize how sure each of the men is in their opinion of
whether the two natives were help from God. Each man is completely and totally vested in his
version of events, so much so that he cannot even see the least bit of credence in the other mans
interpretation. This is what Wallace calls blind certainty, which he characterizes as a closemindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn't even know he's
locked up (Wallace 3). While the lack of understanding between the feminist movements of the
West and some Muslim women is not quite so dramatic or polarized, it is clear that the
misunderstanding stems from the same place. Those feminists who do not see that Muslim
women who choose to wear hijab can be showcasing their empowerment by doing so are blindly

certain that the hijab is a form of submission based on their own ways of constructing meaning
from experience. They do not realize that the women who make these choices do so freely
because such a choice is so foreign to them and their ways of life.
With this in mind, I think it is particularly intriguing to examine the idea of docility that
Mahmood brings up. As a feminist in the modern day, she appreciates that feminism is strongly
tied to female empowerment, but that empowerment does not necessarily have to come in the
form of resistance. Rather, females should be empowered to make their own choices, regardless
of whether those choices are progressive in the hardline, non-submissive fashion of feminists
past or more docile and supportive of continuity, homeostasis, and stability (Mahmood 212)
like those of many empowered women today. I find that this approach to feminism is indeed the
best approach, as it acknowledges the complexity that lies within women across the globe. The
goal of feminism should be egalitarianismremoving boundaries from what women are
allowed to do and putting them on a level playing field with men. Once they are placed on this
level basis, however, women should be free to pursue whatever avenues they want and explore
whatever passions, careers, or religious practices with which they can strongly identify. If
women want to assert themselves, then by all means they should be given that ability. But if
women want to act passively or in a docile manner, that freedom should also not be taken away
from them. More than anything, we cannot be too quick to pass judgment on what is docile, what
is oppressive, or what is progressive. Especially in a world with such diversity in culture and
religion, what may be docile in one culture may be aggressive in another, and what may be
oppressive in one world view may be exceptionally empowering in a different one. If we are to
move forward as a human race, I think it is important to open ourselves up to the thoughts,
beliefs, and experiences of others. We must understand their motivations in the same way they

do, instead of from a perspective of our own which may be blindly certain of a truth that does not
transcend cultures or religions as we think it might.