Dr. Khatun's Counter and White Hypocrisy
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Dr. Samia Khatun counters the preconceived notion of marriage and mahar in the Muslim Australian context by using The Book of Marriage. This feminist text challenges dominion relations that women had negotiated when marrying (Khatun p. 150). It includes multiple tales from a variety of women/narrators. It is important to emphasize the preconceived notion of Muslim marriages in the Australian eye. Australian historians (perhaps mistakenly or purposely) mistook the concept of mahar for the orientalist notion of ‘brideprice’. Mahar, from my understanding, is a marital contract revolving around dowry, in which a potential husband gifts his potential wife something like a part of property. This is not “buying” a wife, or paying a father for his daughter, as believed by Australians. This concept is overshadowed by Orientalism, which in turn makes Muslim men, specifically Afghan men in this context, seem like they “sell their women”. This idea of “selling/buying wives” reminded me of an earlier discussion from class regarding “saving Muslim women”. Dr. Khatun even mentions the idea when describing Lila Abi-Lughod’s idea of the cry to “save Muslim women” as a means to mobilize the West in Afghanistan and to acquire popular support for the invasion (p. 144). In my opinion, the false claims that Afghan men are bringing women to be sold off to the highest bidder is incredibly dangerous. It is obvious that it purposely taints innocent people, but it also pulls attention away from actual sex and human trafficking. It is like the reading of the honour killing from weeks ago, where the emphasis is placed on the wrong subject. It distorts the image of Muslim men, turning all of them into monsters, and it also removes the agency of Muslim women. It is irresponsible to mix up such contrasting concepts, like mahar and ‘brideprice’, because when something awful actually occurs, it is possible it will be forgotten/ignored, just as the boy who cried wolf.
Moreover, there is quite a bit of hypocrisy in the Western conception of Muslim marriages. The concept of mahar is just like paying a dowry, which was also common in Western marriages. It is seen in a lot of Western historical fictions and is even romanticized at times (for example, “buying a woman from her abusive household to save her”), and yet when it is found in a non-white culture, it is distorted into something else. This quote by Dr. Khatun also reminded me of another aspect of Western hypocrisy: “Examining Adelaide’s trajectory from daughter to fiancé to wife shows that some Soth Asian men used their daughter’s marriages to secure their own livelihoods and establish relationships with power brokers in a precarious industry” (p. 157). While yes, in my opinion I think a 14-year girl should not be married. The Australians that were against Adelaide’s engagement seemed to share the sentiment as well, but weren’t Western empires, like the French and Spanish empires, also built on marriages. In the early 1600s, Anne of Austria would marry Louis XII, and her brother, Philip IV of Spain, would marry Louis’ sister, Elisabeth of France. Their marriage would bring France and Spain together politically. These marriages reflect Adelaide’s engagements as well, merely on a larger and political level. Why would it be okay for France and Spain to do so? They should also be condemned. (Fun Fact?/Side Note: Flemish artist, Peter Paul Reubens, would allegedly represent this political alliance with his painting, The Abduction of the Daughters Leucippus, using the Greco-Roman myth of brotherly sexual conquest to represent sexual, political and territorial conquest of the new brothers-in-law, Louis and Philip).