Ryann Beemsterboer on Lila Abu-Lughod's "Do Muslim Women (Still) Need Saving?"

In her book, “Do Muslim Women (Still) Need Saving?” Lila Abu-Lughod discusses the fact that American feminists are stuck between helping Islamic women in the wrong way and minding their own business and not helping at all. She further explains that neither of these are really a proper option because the help they are currently providing is not help at all and the United States is too far involved already to mind their own business now.

            Her point of view on this is clearly very educated and well thought out – ensuring that she accounts for what is best for each of the parties involved. She goes through the idea of cultural relativism when she explains how some individuals who disagree with trying to “un-veil” Afghan women think American feminists should concern themselves with only their own issues and stop trying to help. The author’s thoughtfulness allows the readers to realize that this is quite impossible considering the fact that over the last twenty years, American culture and policies have deeply impacted Afghan culture and polices. It seems likely that the author truly understands the situation and that her solutions posed would be helpful.

The point that she brought up made me think of the way these women must feel. They know that American women want to strip them of their headscarf and essentially their culture because it will make them “free”. This can be seen as a form of colonial feminism in the sense that Americans are trying to help these women, yet they are contributing to world domination by supporting this war against them. Her inclusion of how Americans act as if they do not live in this world, just merely overlook it truly captures her perspective and allows American readers to take a step back and look at their lives and see what they are actually doing.

Another example of an attempt to help that ends up just hurting going on in our world today is churches impoverished nations. They go about spending their donations in a way that makes the people of these nations dependent and still unable to function properly. These churches give the nations things they do not have and expect it to fix their broken economies or their messed up communities or their corrupt rulers. It hurts because it does not allow them to grow or to learn the skills that other countries with these amenities have learned