A Critique of Feminism By MOHD ZEYAUL HAQUE (June 1, 2005)
FEMINISM VERSUS WOMEN'S LIBERATION MOVEMENTS
Abdelwahab M. Almessiri
Price: Not Stated Pages: 43
United Association for Studies and Research (UASR)
P.O. Box 1210, Annandale, VA 22003-1210
This research paper seeks to analyse and understand feminism as against women’s liberation movements. Dr Almessiri delves deep into the epistemology and teleology of feminism (if at all it has any taleos ).
He finds startling parallels between the epistemological underpinnings of Zionism and feminism. Taking a more categorical stand on this point, Caroline F. Keeble, president of International Association for Muslim Women and Children, says in the foreword that Dr Almessiri’s “analysis opens our eyes to the real threat that feminism, a movement that was spawned by Zionism, and that duplicates its structure and method in many respects, represents to the future of humankind”.
Dr Almessiri asserts that women’s lib and feminism are not the same thing. Women’s liberation movements worldwide take women as part of the human binary, that is, male and female, but feminism seeks to yank the female out of that binary and establish a separate category.
To restate the learned doctor’s assertion in a less academic language, what feminism seeks to do is: first it emphasises the male-female distinction to a degree where men and women become so different that they are two separate species with no common ground between them. This is what we know as “sharpening”.
Following that, the reverse process of “levelling” begins where the man-woman distinctions are sought to be levelled off, and a woman becomes as good (or bad) as a man, and vice-versa. Even the physical differences on which an entire theoretical edifice had earlier been built by feminists begin to look inconsequential. This is the stage of “unisex” dress, hairstyle, and even language. That’s when chairman becomes chairperson and Miss and Mrs give way to Ms, which has no reference to marital status (hence no gender quarrel).
Dr Almessiri goes into the materialist epistemology of the feminist discourse that has dehumanised women, reducing them to mere matter that is malleable, commodifiable, marketable.
Dr Almessiri recommends a stance that treats women as human rather than material, a part of the family and society rather than self-referential sovereign individuals. In short, he gives a call for the women's discourse to return to sanity.
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