She who stumbles

from BBC World News:

Dozens of young women from a religious school in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, have broken into an alleged brothel and kidnapped the owner.

The women, from the nearby Jamia Hafsa madrassa, burst in late on Tuesday, demanding the premises be shut down.

The women say they have a right to end immoral activity under Islamic law.

There are so many things going on in this piece that I’m not sure where to start.

What strikes me is:

1. That women are at the centre of it, not men.
2. The implications it might have for white Western feminists, in reinforcing or repudiating Orientalist sensibilities towards women of colour (especially Muslim women).
3. What the Western “sex positive” and “anti-porn” feminist camps will make of it, as it falls outside the traditional (i.e. Western) scope of either movement.
4. That it’s been beaten up by Western media who talk about “Talibanisation” as if it meant “more terrorists” and therefore “Pakistan is next on the list, after Iran”.

I’m a bit too scatterbrained to formulate coherent thoughts about Western feminism, patriarchy and imperialism right now, but I do think there’s a lot to be said about it. Point #4 is the most obviously objectionable, I think, while the complex interconnections between gender, religion, and empire leave it all a bit more ambiguous.

I think it’s really important to remember that what we think of as political might have completely different dimensions in other societies. Our own priorities may not be integral for justice or change elsewhere.