The Paradoxical perspective of the West « Letter To A Disciple

In which the women is disillusioned by her life and the way women generally are treated in Islam. The narrator is undergoing a ‘crisis of faith’, as Van Wichelen so eloquently puts it. The film illustrates four different types of Muslim women; defenseless young women who ‘submit’ to the will of God, and thus have little to no method of dealing with the problems that they inadvertently find themselves in. The four women are depicted from a very Orientalist perspective, as the location of the scenery is, according to Hirsi Ali, ‘Islamistan’ – a dark, barren area. Obviously the terms is loosely applied to invoke an ‘Islamic setting’ as the images depict women wearing transparent veils coupled with Arabic calligraphy embedded on their semi-naked bodies. Furthermore, the sensual voice of the narrator, the use of American English, coupled with blatantly naked women can not only be associated with soft-porn images (Van Wichelen), but serve the useful and arguably intended task of reminding us of myths associated with the Orient.

Hirisi has not only invoked a controversial image, an image that has undoubtedly been utilized by Western Orientalists since the times of Napoleon, but also one that plays very well in the Western attempt of depersonalizing women’s bodies as mere objects of desire and lust (Van Wichelen). By also writing Qur’anic verses on the body of these women, it suggests, according to Leila Ahmed, that the ‘root cause’ of Muslim women’s abuse can be located to just a handful of verses, logically implying that, if these verses were to be omitted from the Quran, Islam would then become a tolerable ideology that comfortably coexists with Judeo-Christian principles found in modern Western culture. Such a simple thought completely disregards the hundreds of years of scholarship dedicated to Islam, and the numerous applications of science found behind the interpretation of the Quran.  Hisri is essentially trying to convince us that a literal translation of only these five verses can truly exemplify the status of women within Islam! Hirsi goes on to state that the film is for specific viewers:

The calligraphy, for instance, is very beautiful, but complex at the same time. Sometimes, behind that beauty lays cruelty, not so much for the viewer, but for the Muslim woman. I want to show this in Iran and Saudi Arabia, I want to show it to women who live under the sharia and also to other women, smart women . . . That’s why I did it in English.

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