| Fear of the Other Conference papers |  |
| Fear of the Other Conference papers | |
Workshop on Saturday, September 24 2005
“Fear of the Other and the Israeli Palestinian Conflict” Conference, London.
Workshop Participants:
Clara Connolly, Gita Sahgal, Rashmi Varma, Nira Yuval-Davis; guest speaker: Ahlam Akram
(with support from Sara Hossain)
Total no. of participants: 32
Clara Connolly chaired the Workshop. She opened the proceedings with a brief history of WAF, and its formation in 1989 in the wake of the “Rushdie affair”. Pointing to the “eerie parallels between this time and that”, Clara argued that the aim of WAF had been to “break open the multicultural consensus” of our times. Inspired by the Southhall Black Sisters, WAF had perfected the art of “washing dirty linen in public”—it broke through the silences enveloping women in communities perceiving themselves to be under siege. Emerging as a multinational and multi-ethnic alliance of women, WAF’s main energies had been directed towards defining a secular project in the UK—from its calls for the dis-establishment of the Church, to its opposition to faith-based schools. WAF asked that all faith-based schools be phased out, and that all schools should provide space within them for pupils of different religions.
Gita Sahgal began her talk by pointing to the silences operating within the Conference itself, in which gender issues were rarely foregrounded. Even when issues of great importance to gender equity were mentioned, a proper analysis was elided. For instance, though panellists on the previous day had mentioned the “demographic argument” made by both sides on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, its salience within proto-nationalist Palestinian discourse was not critiqued. Gita quoted Hanan Ashrawi’s argument that the liberation of Palestinians should not come through the wombs of Palestinian women. A second absence that Gita noted was that of any proper discussion of fundamentalisms as a political project, although in a few remarks on settlers a discussion on fundamentalism was inserted now and then. There is a clear need to point to the ways in which a secular nationalist project of Palestinian liberation has been reduced to a Muslim struggle. She pointed out that there are many examples of how other fundamentalist discourses—Hindu and Christian—have been harnessed within the Israel-Palestine conflict. For example, we are witnessing new alliances between the Hindu Right and Jewish fundamentalists that obscure the historic inspiration that the Hindu Right had drawn from Nazi ideology in the 1930s.
Gita then went to critique what she called 'behalfism'--where the politics that we criticize among our 'own' are ignored, diminished or defended when committed by the 'other'. For instance, there was no discussion of the widespread presence of anti-semitism within the anti-war coalition, nor the coalition’s defence of fundamentalism. Gita argued that the anti-war coalition and Tony Blair, far from being implacably opposed, actually mirror each other. The political influence of the Jamaat-I-Islami (many of its leaders can be tried for war crimes) can be seen everywhere in policy-making and war-opposing circles in Britain. Finally, Gita posed the question of the defence of the secular nationalist project. She referred to the experience of India, Palestine and most urgently that of Iraq, where we might begin to hear the long withdrawing roar of the defeated occupying forces. What will be the effect of a defeat for American imperialism that is produced by fundamentalism and Ba'athism? Will the anti-war movement claim victory and go home? How does it affect the Palestinian struggle? She argued that imperialism and fundamentalism both mirror and construct each other (and, not to forget, fundamentalism is also part of American project). The history of imperialism and the nationalisms it produced also produced partitions and the modern idea of blood and soil nationalisms. The urgent task as feminists is for us to oppose fundamentalism and imperialisms simultaneously.
Ahlam Akram spoke about the decline in women’s status in Palestine in the context of Israeli occupation of Palestine. As such, women have increasingly become the cultural bearers of Islam. In the presence of Israeli soldiers, the project of sheltering Muslim women has gained ground, and women’s rights have been the main casualty. The hijab has appeared as an instrument of containment and segregation, especially since the more militarized second Intifada. In the absence of Palestinian judicial system to function as normal, there has been an increasing invocation of customary or sharia laws. The identity of women is being pitted against their religious identity. But women’s equality has to be made an integral part of the nationalist project if Palestinian liberation is to gain its true and full resolution.
Rashmi Varma talked about the so-called crisis of multiculturalism that has dominated public discourse in Britain since the July 7 bombings. She pointed to the limitations of the debate and the way it was being conducted. Far from being a secular discourse, multicultural discourse is in fact collapsing the space of secularism—the discussion is being entirely conducted among the believers. Culture is being collapsed into religion. Secondly, there is a troubling homogenization of the Muslim community in the debates, irrespective of political ideology, race, geography, class background and gender. She pointed to the problematic ways in which the question of Palestine is being harnessed as an exclusively Muslim issue, when the Palestinian national struggle has been the source of many Third World anti-imperialist and nationalist projects. The flattening of the Muslim community has also meant that women have been disappeared from the discussion. While much public discussion has focused on racism against Muslim women, the violence they face within their own communities is met with silence. What is further ironic is that the very same Muslim leaders who are crying about their marginalization are the ones who are shaping Blair’s policy on multiculturalism and the Muslim community. Thirdly, Rashmi pointed out that there is a dangerous convergence in the British (and American) state’s neo-conservative and neo-liberal agendas. She pointed out that class segregation has been an important outcome of capitalism. The replacing of class as an identity category with culture ignores the immiseration caused by the declining welfare state, and by policies of increasing privatization and marketization. The ethic of hard work and family values feeds into the neo-liberal agenda. Current debates on multiculturalism thus obscure the crisis of the British state itself. Finally, Rashmi reminded us that the discussions on multiculturalism were taking place in the deeply distorted context of the “war on terror”, a war that must be opposed by all feminists.
Nira Yuval-Davis talked of the contemporary conjuncture as a "defining moment" that was nevertheless full of paradoxes. She pointed to the repeated and intensifying invocation of human and democratic rights as the basic values that unite and specify the British in Blunkett and Brown [among others]'s speeches and writings, at the same time in which Human Rights values are under increasing threat and the British state is threatening to revoke them. The ethical space of sociality and social cohesion is now being colonized by a multi-faith discourse and moral issues were firmly predicated on religion. In this sense the new multi-faith pluralism has all the disadvantages of the old multiculturalism that we used to criticise, homogenizing groups and their culture and tradition and reifying their boundaries, without its advantages, of recognizing plurality of values and agencies and legitimizing them in education and all other public spheres. In a way, the surge in new faith schools combines this multi-faith discourse with the ethics of neo-liberal consumerism, with the paradoxical outcome that while there are more and more calls for national cohesion there is a growing separatism and children are going to grow up under the authority of their religious leaders - whose undemocratic authority is sponsored and strengthened by the state - without coming into daily contact with other communities and cultures.
Nira finished her presentation by clarifying the notion of secularism that confused many of the participants in the workshop. She pointed out that the notion is used in at least three different ways in different political and cultural contexts. First is the notion of secularism that is used as a synonym to atheism. This is largely a European notion. Secondly is secularism as the separation of religion from the state and public political discourse - this has largely been the South Asian discourse of secularism. Thirdly is the notion of secularism as it operates in the USA - strict separation of religion and the state but domination of religious discourse in public political sphere. WAF struggles against the shrinking of secular spaces in public and state discourse but does not condone the first interpretation of secularism as atheism and 'enlightenment'.
The presentations were followed by a vigorous debate and discussion on a range of issues, but there emerged three focal issues: 1) secularism as not just a Eurocentric discourse—there are other contexts (as in South Asia)—where secularism is an important aspect of civil society;
2) the hijab issue as a contingent issue: means different things in Palestine and in Britain. Hijab cannot be read simply as a retreat into traditionalism. Hijab is often read as a response to racism;
3) women living in fundamentalist societies devise all kinds of means to survive. There is a need for new critiques and new political projects.
For more information on WAF, contact Rashmi Varma