MOHJA KAHF, Western Representations of the MuslimWoman: From Termagant to Odalisque (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999). Pp. 207.$16.95 paper.

Extract

The Muslim woman—secluded, oppressed, and either longing for liberation or ignorant in her false consciousness—has been an enduring topos in the Western imagination since the spread of Islam. Right? Wrong. Mohja Kahf explains that in fact “the question of the liberty, or lack thereof, of the Muslim woman” does not appear until around the 17th century, and the image of the subjugated Muslim woman, with its trappings of harems and veils, does not reach full fruition until the 18th and 19th centuries. If we go back to the 8th century, even after the Muslims had conquered Spain and part of France, there was a lack of European curiosity about Muslims and a tendency to see them as just another enemy who was not particularly different from the pagans of Europe. Orientalism and its gendered images came much later and were based on and helped to justify Western domination over the East, especially during the rise and heyday of colonialism. What, then, was the European image of the Orient—in particular, of Muslim women—during the many centuries before Orientalism, when the Muslim world was as powerful as, or even more powerful than, Europe? Kahf answers this question by introducing us to a series of fictional Muslim women from European literature of the Middle Ages through the late Romantic period.