Full article here. (originally posted March 2008)

“What Western feminists don’t understand is that we don’t want freedom,” Gailani said. “We want to be able to follow the Koran, minus all the anti-women dogma that surrounds it.”

Maybe they want freedom within the Koran, in part because nearly the entire Afghan culture and the Arab world have so few thinkers who have thought about pursuing freedom outside of the Koran.

So just as the Bush administration misread the desire for democracy Iraq, feminists are misreading the desires of women all over the globe; taking them out the contexts of culture and religion.

We must cultivate our own gardens, right?

See Also: My post here about Martha Nussbaum’s list of capabilities which attempts to apply some feminism (as well as a lot of other important ideas) to cultures (India specifically) around the globe in a much more intelligent way.   Does her project suffer some of the same short-sightedness?

Nussbaum argues profoundly for more equality:  From The Reason Archives: ‘Discussing Disgust’ Julian Sanchez Interviews Martha Nussbaum