Customer Reviews

Western Representations of the Muslim Woman: From Termagant to Odalisque

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Kahf offers an interesting account of European representations of the Muslim woman prior to the advent of colonialism. Her basic thesis rests on the notion that the Muslim woman in medieval Europe is radically different from the muted oppressed narrative that emerges during European advancement. Hence, the Muslim woman is loqacious, sexually intimidating and vociferous, rather than in need of liberation, needing to be pacified and brought in to the European fold as the 'same.' This is understood to be inextricably linked to the prevailing geo-political relations of the time in which Islam exerted its power and actually posed a threat to a poor and peripheral Europe. This is a much needed line of investigation since many accounts have over-burdened the Muslim woman with orientalist accounts, whilst Kahf precedes this vision. The limitations of Kahfs thesis is that she is not able to make any connections between pre-orientalist representations that revolve around Crusadean rhetoric, and later colonialist constructions, the link between them is severed to support her thesis. It also does not consider that the sexually agressive trope she makes emphatic is perhaps another form of distorted Othering, one that is perhaps based on the notion of a European moral norm against the 'lewdness' of the 'Saracen/Muslim,'rather than one based on a Foucauldian knowledge/power thesis. Nevertheless, a good read for those interested in the nuances and specificities of a Medieval European representation of the Muslim woman.