For twenty-four days, and with no end in sight, the Israeli government has been committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza with the explicit and unconditional support of the American government.
On October 7, in response to a Hamas terrorist attack that killed some 1,400 people in Israel, its forces unleashed hell on Gaza. The Israeli army began indiscriminately bombing homes, mosques, churches, hospitals and schools in the crowded Palestinian enclave, killing thousands of Palestinian civilians. Israel has also subjected the Gaza Strip to a total siege, preventing the entry of water, food, fuel, electricity or medical supplies, and leaving more than two million people at risk of death from hunger, dehydration and disease.
For such war crimes to be committed in full view, and without significant challenge from the international community, the Palestinian victims of Israeli bombs had to be dehumanized and their allies around the world discredited as anti-Semitic and violent.
Such otherness occurs through a relatively simple mechanism. First, Palestinians as a group are presented as barbaric, violent, and overall less than human, so that people around the world do not object to them being indiscriminately killed and starved . Then, those who do not adhere to this racist discourse and insist on protesting the oppression of the Palestinian people are defamed, censored, doxxed and criminalized.
At the forefront of many popular, intellectual and political movements opposing Israel’s ongoing war crimes, in the United States and elsewhere in the staunchly pro-Israeli West, are Muslim women. Courageous Palestinian, Arab, South Asian and Black women lead mass protests, political action campaigns, lecture at universities, fundraise for humanitarian aid and write letters to university presidents, demanding that they protect their Palestinian and Muslim students from doxing and harassment. , and intimidation from Zionist organizations on and off campus.
The civic and political engagement of these Muslim women is almost always met with attacks on their own security, character assassinations, and threats to their jobs – all aimed at silencing their voices.
If these threats against their lives and livelihoods do not work, Muslim women who defend Palestinians – especially those in higher education positions – are seen as “too emotional”, “ignorant”, “bigoted”. » or “professionally incompetent”. by their pro-Israeli peers.
Marginalized by religion, race and gender, Muslim women have long been forced to face a triple bind to avoid discrimination, harassment and stigma. They must be both “good Muslims,” “good women,” and “good racial minorities” at all times to avoid being targets of the coercive assimilationist paradigm that constantly controls their behavior.
Being a “good Muslim woman of color” involves a daily emotional and psychological ordeal of trying to adapt to a myriad of conflicting identity pressures imposed by Eurocentric and Judeo-Christian cultural normativity.
A “good Muslim woman of color” cannot express emotions such as anger, frustration, or passion, for fear of being seen as irrational, hysterical, or weak.
A “good Muslim woman of color” must be unconditionally loyal to the United States. She frequently has to pepper her speech with comments and statements emphasizing how grateful she is to be in the United States. How lucky she is to live in a country led by white men and women who defend the liberal values of democracy, equality and freedom; it does not matter whether or not it benefits from these proclaimed values.
A “good Muslim woman of color” should never criticize the policies and practices of Western countries that violate international law, indiscriminately kill Muslims, collectively punish Palestinian civilians, or systematically discriminate against Muslim and Arab diasporas in supposedly liberal societies. It must prove that it does not support terrorism in any form, which requires repeated condemnation of any acts of violence committed by Muslims anywhere in the world.
A “good Muslim woman of color” can never be a feminist and defend the rights of Muslim women in the West. White women only accept her as a feminist if she directs her writing and advocacy toward Muslim, Arab, and South Asian societies. But when Muslim women in the West speak out against the discrimination they face where they are, or denounce white women for supporting wars that kill and maim Muslim women abroad, they quickly move from being “feminist comrades” to that of “traitors”.
Thus, a “good Muslim woman” is both infantilized and condescending, vilified and censored, and depoliticized in a society incapable of seeing her as an intelligent, independent and strong leader. Once her colleagues, neighbors, employers and political representatives discover that she is in fact her own feminist – and not their feminist – they defame, exclude, discredit and ignore her as they search for another Muslim woman that they can designate in their media. and political campaigns as a “good Muslim woman of color.”
This triple bind is carried today by Black, Arab and South Asian Muslim women who are at the forefront of defending Palestinian human rights in the media, politics, grassroots organizations, courts and the academia in the United States and beyond.
As they fend off attacks on them, these courageous women must simultaneously protect their own Muslim children from harassment, bullying and intimidation by Zionists in their towns and schools, who have monopolized the conversation about Palestine to declare that only Israelis are human, while Palestinians, in the words of the Israeli Defense Minister, are just “human animals.”
This triple bind leads Muslim women in the West to ask, “Why aren’t white feminists coming to our defense?”
Why are so many white feminists now Zionists first and busy smearing our reputation by calling us anti-Semites simply because of our defense of Palestinian human rights?
Why can’t white feminists view our fight to end the dehumanization of Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim women as a feminist issue?
Why do white women only want to save Muslim women from the Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah and Arab governments, but not from the US government, the Israeli government, Zionist groups or white men?
Will white feminists ever look in the mirror to recognize their own antifeminism as they berate strong, intelligent, confident, and fearless Muslim feminists in their workplaces, in their neighborhoods, and on their colleges for speaking out in favor of their sisters in Gaza?
The answer to this question is probably a resounding “no” for too many white women who are too invested in protecting the status quo and their privileged place in society.
Yet Muslim women in the West don’t need the support of white feminists anyway.
We learned from our African American sisters. We don’t need anyone’s approval or permission to fight for what we know is right. We just need white feminists to get out of our way so we can do the work of real feminism in solidarity with our Palestinian sisters.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.