Anta Diop on Lila- Abu Lughood's Do Muslim women still need saving?

In Lila Abu- Lughood's Do Muslim Women Still need Saving, one point she made about the oppression of Muslim and Arab women was the cultural framing done by the United States, prevented exploration of the root of the problem of human suffering in Muslim and Arab countries. The point that Lughood is trying to make in this statement is that knowing about culture and religion of certain regions is used more often by colonialist feminist to try to explain why Muslim women are oppressed, than exploring the history and politically analyzing how the United States has contributed to the oppression.

Lila Abu-Lughood's argument that we need to explore the historical elements of why Muslim women are oppressed, led me to think about how the United States has actually increased the amount of oppressed women in Muslim majority nations. It also led me to question why the United States always decides to save other countries from being oppressed. After thinking about this I began to think about what we talked about in class. If the United States did not try to help, it would be cultural relativism meaning the country is both different and separate so they should be able do their own thing. In this case, not helping would leave some feminist to still believe that the Muslim women in the Afghanistan are still oppressed.
 Lughood also states that when asked about the oppression of Muslim women the response is always resulting to the culture. I believe that this occurs because the United States does not want to be blamed for the problems in Muslim nations even though they were the cause of some. They want to believe that everything else has impacted this problem except for them and not owning up to this creates an even bigger issue.


The United States has been involved with Afghanistan for over 20 years but a lot of people don't know this. Most people think that the U.S. has only gotten involved with Afghanistan since after the 9/11 attacks but this isn't true. When U.S citizens want to know what is occurring with the war on terror, we turn to the media. The media shows how the war on terror was supposed to help the women of Afghanistan and give them the freedom like American women, but the war has only done the opposite. The media uses persuasive women in power such as Laura Bush, to try to persuade feminist in the west to then become colonist feminist. What these feminist don't know is that these Afghan women were just fine. They were better off before the war on terror and trying to save them has only made their lives much more miserable. Colonialist feminist in the United States see how oppressed Afghan women are through what is showed on the news and want to save them. The picture below is an example of how a colonial feminists is trying to save a Muslim women by taking off her Hijab, when the Muslim women clearly doesn't want to be saved.


How has the United States view on Muslim women's oppression impact the world view of Muslim and Arab women?