by Niyati Shenoy

The room was too small for the audience for the book launch of Gender, Governance and Islam that was held on the 11th of November, 2019 at the Middle East Institute at Columbia University. “This doesn’t happen very often,” said Professor Lila Abu-Lughod, as she took the stage and introduced Professor Deniz Kandiyoti as well as the contributors to the volume and speakers at the book launch: Professor Nadje Al-Ali and Kathryn Spellman Poots. Abu Lughod was referring both to the present turnout and to the stir that Kandiyoti, had caused early on in the field of Middle Eastern gender studies, thirty-five years ago. Kandiyoti, emeritus professor of Development Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and an expert on Turkey and post-Soviet Central Asia, introduced the notion of a ‘patriarchal bargain’; offering a way to ground an abstract feminist notion of patriarchy in the strategic choices made by women within multiple sets of concrete, culturally specific constraints. In her landmark volume Women, Islam and the State (1991) – and later a second collection, Gendering the Middle East (1996) – she addressed the need to unsettle established conceptual categories in a postcolonial moment during which the study of the Middle Eastern nations and their women was still heavily encumbered by the legacy of Orientalist scholarship. At the heart of her critique was the notion that comparative political analyses must provide a crucial counterweight to culturalist and culturally-deterministic views of women in non-Western nations and societies.

The new book launched this past August of 2019 – Gender, Governance and Islam – completed the trilogy almost a generation later. It aimed to revise some of the arguments Kandiyoti had made years before in light of what she described as “seismic changes” to the terms of the debate. Co-edited with Professors Nadje Al-Ali and Kathryn Spellman Poots – both former students of Kandiyoti – it presents chapter-case studies of political developments from a wide spectrum of societies in the Middle East and South Asia. “Its title actually charts the transformations in our thinking about gender as well as the very condition of gender politics around the world,” Professor Abu-Lughod commented. “Instead of the state, we have governance, hinting at shifts in both theories and forms of governance and rule. States cannot now be understood apart from international institutions, and politics cannot be separated from the management of the social, including gender.”

“Everything has changed,” Kandiyoti agreed. “This includes shifts in the terms of feminist theory itself; the eclipse of the state in the face of new types of both supranational and subnational governance, and finally the deterritorialization of Islamic politics.” The substitution of the term ‘gender’ for ‘women’, she explained, was a necessary gesture towards acknowledging that though the majority of work in the volume focused on the activities of women largely due to the specific research interests of scholars involved, women’s rights now represent a subset of the issues at play in gender politics.

The theater of this collective action has, she was quick to note, also been transformed in ways that cannot be fully encompassed by an older binary of nationalism and its struggle against imperialism. The global rise of neoliberal politics in the 1980s fundamentally rearticulated the relation between the state and society, and geopolitical convulsions following the interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq in the aftermath of 9/11 dismantled the prevailing regional order in the Middle East specifically. Weak and failed states proliferated, possessing little control over huge swathes of their populations and territories; powerful and organized non-state actors, such as the Taliban in Afghanistan and ISIS in Syria and Iraq, were able to transform themselves into state-like entities. While such conditions were ideal for interference in Middle Eastern politics by Western military coalitions and a number of other external actors, the more long-lasting effect was an internal crisis of legitimacy within postcolonial Middle Eastern states, which both led to a revival of grassroots Islamist movements and provoked top-down efforts to placate or contain them.

History had overtaken the volume in its writing, both Kandiyoti and Al-Ali noted. Societies that had not been included among the case studies—Sudan, Lebanon, and Kurdistan, defending itself against invasion by Turkey—are currently in the throes of popular political uprising. In all of these cases, Al-Ali said, “gender-based claims are at the very center of the struggle against regimes. Women’s bodies—and men’s bodies and sexualities—have emerged as key sites of contestation and control; men who do not fit into heteronormative ideas have also been targeted in many contexts. We need to historicize this, because it is not a new phenomenon, but we do identify an intensification of this trend.”

The resurgence of masculinist authoritarianism not only in the Middle East but in the purported heartland of liberal rights-based democracy—signified by the rise of near-fanatical conservative regimes in Poland, Hungary, and the United States—revealed the family resemblances between political trends that are usually analyzed apart. “If we get stuck on Islam,” Kandiyoti insisted, “we miss the plot. We can’t connect the dots.” She noted that her interest in gender had led her to become a student of populism: “I have used the term patriarchy for a very long time, but what I believe is happening right now is a different kind of politics, because we have reached a period where patriarchy is no longer able to hold a hegemonic discourse. It is being contested by societal changes which demand both the deployment of stronger state ideological apparatuses—to use an ancient term—and also plain coercion. What we see in terms of an increase in [gender-based] violence is not an expression of patriarchy but a failure of it, which necessitates a huge amount of effort, including brute force and ideological brainwashing.”

Al-Ali added that regardless of the incrementalism of changes in academic theory and approaches, women’s movements on the ground were very aware of the desperation signified by the renewed backlash; women in Sudan and Lebanon learned their lessons from the failures and successes of movements in Egypt and Tunisia.

Niyati Shenoy sat down with Professor Deniz Kandiyoti to interview her about the manuscript, and how she conceived of this new project.

Niyati Shenoy (NS): As Gender, Governance and Islam moves away from the notion of patriarchy to a politics of masculinist restoration—a dynamic in which authoritarian powers expend enormous energy trying to recapture male privileges – I wonder if you could say more about how this politics actually maps onto changing state structures and institutions in the Middle East, especially in justifications for war and conflict in this region. Iris Marion Young, for instance, conceived of the post-9/11 state of exception in America as having adhered to a logic of masculinist protection, where US citizens, taking a feminized role in relation to the state, essentially relinquished power and autonomy in exchange for more thorough measures of 'security' from the American government, allowing for greater and greater militarization at all levels of society. She argued that this aligns with an idealized social structure in which “the woman concedes critical distance from decision-making autonomy” in return for acts of protective chivalry from her husband or father. What state, or status, do masculinist restorers in the Middle East seem to be envisioning? How far do they think they can walk back gains made in the field of equal rights, or are they envisioning something more or other than a return to the past?

Denis Kandiyoti (DK): Although state practices are always gendered (as your reference to Iris Marion Young’s invocation of masculinist protection to bolster post-9/11 militarization and surveillance suggests) there is little need for a state of exception to inscribe male privilege and dominance in the Middle East. Here we find a particularly explicit connection, across regime types, between the language of power and that of patriarchal authority. The state enlists men across classes in its project of rule by explicitly upholding male prerogatives over the control of women, whether we are speaking of guardianship laws that designate women as legal minors, where killing women in the name of honour carries lighter sentences or where marrying one’s victim extenuates the crime of rape. The exclusion of women from the realm of equal citizenship is plainly visible and often enshrined in legislation. The trade-off in abdicating authority to patriarchal state rule for men including those of popular classes is to retain control over the domestic and communal domains, a control deemed central to the exercise of masculinity. I am no longer convinced, however, that regimes whose legitimacy has been extensively eroded can count on existing social contracts and I believe there are new cracks in the gender order.

So my answer to your question starts by interrogating why such enormous energy, as you put it, needs to be expended to maintain and restore male privilege. My moment of awakening came when I was monitoring the gender effects of the Arab uprisings (between 2010-2015) for a webzine called open Democracy. My evolving thoughts on the meanings and effects of   citizen and youth mobilization led to a series of short articles probing into the dynamics of a new politics of gender (see for instance this article). It was  evident that a whole range of authoritarian regimes that had signally failed to meet the expectations of their citizenry were no longer able to contain their respective societies except through recourse to increased coercion, surveillance and heavy handed ideological manipulation. What was true on the eve of the Arab uprisings continues to be true as popular protests spread further to Sudan, Lebanon and Iraq.

The gist of my argument is that the types of resistance and subversion we witness in popular mobilizations (which, by the way, feature women in large numbers and sometimes in leadership roles) act to undermine the patriarchal pretensions of power and become the occasion for new forms of cross-gender alliance and solidarity in the struggle against authoritarian rule. This leads to unprecedented levels of societal polarization between those with a stake in upholding authoritarian rule against women and men whose calls for accountable governance include aspirations to gender equality in a package of demands for democratic representation. Modes of social control that explicitly target gender norms and relations as, for instance, female demonstrators in Egypt being subjected to forced virginity tests in police custody or becoming targets of organized mass sexual molestation or, more recently, demands by an Iraqi cleric in Iraq to enforce gender segregation among protestors are seen as transparent attempts at political intimidation and demobilization. In other words, masculinist restoration comes into play when the taken-for-granted, naturalized character of patriarchy is called into question, especially when it is unmasked as a ploy to create a passive and compliant citizenry.

But it would be a mistake to think that the politics of masculinist restoration is only a top-down phenomenon enforced by state apparatuses to serve their own instrumental ends, as your question seems to imply. This politics has its bottom-up counterparts among constituencies such as men’s movements protesting their “victimization” as a result of women’s allegedly excessive rights. These cleavages do not readily map onto gender divisions, since there are both men and women on opposite sides of these arguments, nor can they any longer be understood in terms of dichotomies such as traditional vs. modern or religious vs. secular. I don’t think this is a question of a return to the past since that is never an option.  Although a mythical past may be invoked at the level of discourse, what you find on the ground in terms of governance is that regimes have to accommodate to some demands but try to do it under their own terms by co-opting, subverting or annulling their radical potential.  So for instance, in Gender, Governance and Islam the chapter on Iran shows how the gender segregation regime of the Islamic republic moved from outright prohibitions on mobility to the provision of women-only public spaces, the chapter on Egypt describes how the question of women’s rights can pit the government and varied Islamic actors (such as Al-Azhar and the salafi party) against each other in unlikely combinations, the chapter on Turkey suggests that attempts to walk back on equal rights may create reactions even among the grass-roots of the ruling party itself and the chapter on Palestine shows that Hamas, competing against Fatah, is unable to totally side line the language of women’s empowerment but defines it on its own terms. I have difficulty envisioning a dystopic future so totalitarian that we find ourselves in some version of the Handmaid’s Tale. But I have little doubt that the battles around gender will be getting fiercer since they are now so plainly and identifiably located in the realm of politics.

NS: As a related question, while militarist, masculinist authoritarianisms are resurgent worldwide in an increasingly diverse array of nations, are there any particular engines or motors you identify as especially effective drivers of the kinds of social polarizations, alliances, and divisions manifesting themselves across the Middle East, in terms of the ways that both social movements and governments are learning from and competing with their counterparts across borders? On the side of states I am thinking here of the role of tools such as blasphemy, or of the competitiveness between Iran and Saudi Arabia that some say has essentially invented and then hypercharged sectarian rivalry across the region.

DK: In my view one of the most common and effective tools of masculinist authoritarianism is a language of populism that demonizes part of the citizenry by marking them out as dangerous or undesirable “others”. In post-colonial societies the most pervasive ploy has been to create a chasm between the “true” sons and daughters of the nation and the tainted fellow-travellers of imperialism or “internal others” presented as alien invaders. In the West a cosmopolitan elite that is assumed to be estranged from the needs and concerns of the “people” is regularly invoked. Often issues of redistribution and class are “culturalized” by demagogues who appeal to popular classes on the basis of their shared (and presumably injured) identities. This may be combined with various shades of xenophobia and racism. Of course when ethnic, religious or sectarian identities are weaponized in the context of civil wars or military conflicts we all know the consequences to be lethal. There is no doubt, for instance, that Wahhabism morphed into a militarized quasi-nationalism in the course of the brutal war Saudi Arabia waged against Yemen and in the context of its rivalry with Iran. Iran, likewise, has long treated Shi’ism as a key marker of the nation and its symbols made central to the national imaginary. But as you suggest when these discourses result in institutional changes and legislation, as in the case of blasphemy laws or the criminalization of homosexuality, more devastating consequences follow.

NS: One transnational arena in which longstanding Orientalist views on gender and agency in the Middle East are currently being differently, and often selectively, deployed seems to be on the question of citizenship and return for Muslim women and children who are suspected of being generational carriers of extremism, and who are thereby confined in camps and prisons under horrific conditions as more or less stateless persons. Western political reliance on the figure of the Muslim woman victim, who lacks agency and cannot possibly engage in war and acts of terror, is directly threatened by the possibility, for instance, of female suicide bombers. If the victim figures Westerners have fought to protect and fold into the Western matrix of security are in fact capable of violence, of great evil and extremism, then they have inadvertently humanized those they should fear, and have put themselves in great danger. Because of this, female suicide bombers in Europe, such as the woman involved in the Paris bombings, have often been posthumously stripped of their agency and portrayed by the media as troubled and misguided—similar to white male mass shooters. Does this set of developments play into what Gender, Governance and Islam seems to describe as the collapse of a traditional gender order?

 DK: Our volume has a chapter specifically devoted to addressing these issues. It traces the evolution of policies targeted at Muslim diasporas and their effects. My own take on  your question is that has less to do with a collapse of the gender order and much more to do with an inability to recognize political identities for what they are: often the result of a range of choices people make in the furtherance of diverse objectives that may result in  allegiance to certain causes. I believe the confusion over whether Muslim women are victims or political agents derives not only from lingering Orientalism but mainly from the increasing ambiguities of citizenship in the West. There is an enormous and growing appetite for exclusion but existing legal frameworks are not sufficiently geared to that purpose, fuelling debates about criminality vs. victimhood. Consider the case of Begum Shamima who was excluded from UK citizenship when she wanted to return to her country on the grounds that she was an unrepentant and hardened ISIS operative. A judgement of victimhood would presumably have triggered a duty of care which is why many women in her situation do plead victimhood, sometimes at the cost of denying their own agency. So there is a constant negotiation going on as to who is worthy of protection and inclusion- a discussion that extends to male children and adolescents as well. I think, however, that positions are hardening and that we are moving towards more explicitly exclusionary and racialized conceptions of citizenship ( as can be glimpsed in the recent legally dubious deportation policies of the UK). I fear we may increasingly witness realignments of legal frameworks with these realities before too long.

NS: As the editors of this volume have mentioned in other fora, intersectional, non-liberal, and queer feminist lenses of analysis are seen to be increasingly important and relevant to questions of political transformation in the Middle East. On one side, theorists of American engagements with the Middle East, such as Jasbir Puar, locate imperial justifications for war in homonationalist discourses, which posit that Islam is inherently intolerant and call for the total conquest of a region onto which Western repressed desires have long been projected and acted out. The figuring of Muslim men and women as both pathologically sexually repressed and perversely over-sexualized often seems to provide the libidinal landscape for the War on Terror and for the performance of moral superiority in ‘sexually free’ Western societies. Within the Middle East itself, however, on the ground in the movements of its citizens for greater democracy and equality, what roles would you say questions of sexuality and sexual freedom/expression have played, if any? Is an idea of sexual freedom necessarily twinned or held together with gender equality—in the way they are so often privileged together in Western contexts—as a goal or a social good to fight for? 

DK: Despite alliances between feminist and LGBTQ platforms in  selected countries (mainly in Turkey and Lebanon) questions around sexualities and sexual liberties are still relatively muted and fairly divisive in struggles for democracy in the region. Compared to more established feminist solidarity networks, transnational LGBTQ activism has a relatively minor foothold. In many societies even questioning the double-standard in heterosexual freedom may be considered a bold move.  Yet the chapter on Pakistan in our volume suggests that the question of sexual liberties has arrived on the feminist agenda and however perilous a course its advocates may be charting it is now firmly in the public domain.

However, on the broader implications of your question I would go as far as saying that the much vaunted moment of homonationalism (representing an assumed epochal shift from insistence on heteronormativity to increasing inclusion of homonormativity, albeit at the expense of racialized “Others”) may be more tenuous than it appears. There is a deep irony in the fact that behind the façade of mutually antagonistic representations of a sexually liberated and tolerant West vs. barbaric, repressive  (often Muslim) “Others” (and conversely Muslim commentators’ frequent depictions of the West as a den of debauchery and sin) lies the reality of deeply divided and conflicted societies. Consider the cause célèbre of “pink washing” in Israel, for instance. The reality on the ground is that this is a society dominated as never before by religious fundamentalist and racist constituencies that condemn and repress homosexuality. The allegedly liberal West is the scene of a proliferation of alarmist discourses about the “endangered heterosexual family” and heteronormativity as the “national” norm (as seen in the pronouncements of Salvini in Italy or Orban in Hungary). You may be aware that gender studies courses have been banned in some European universities and that a nebulous concept labelled “gender ideology” (carefully cultivated since the 1990s) is being presented as a nefarious world view that endangers society by destabilizing biologically (or divinely) ordained sex roles. In short, it is now time to shift our attention to the internal workings of the politics of gender in their concrete settings, whether in the Middle East or elsewhere. Maybe some of the baggage we have to let go of in this process are categories such as “Islam” and the “West”.