Saadia Toor, Ph.D.
Saadia.Toor@csi.cuny.edu
City University of New York - College of Staten Island
Country: United States (New York)
Social Media:
X: pagalpanchi
About Me:
https://citynewyorkstatenisland.academia.edu/SaadiaToorhttps://www.gc.cuny.edu/Page-Elements/Academics-Research-Centers-Initiatives/Masters-Programs/Women-s-and-Gender-Studies/Faculty-Bios/Saadia-Toorhttps://www.gc.cuny.edu/Page-Elements/Academics-Research-Centers-Initiatives/Masters-Programs/Women-s-and-Gender-Studies/Faculty-Bios/Saadia-Toorhttps://www.csi.cuny.edu/campus-directory/saadia-toor
Research Interests
Religion & Politics
Development
Gender and Politics
LGBTQIA Politics
Political Economy
Race, Ethnicity and Politics
Culture & Politics
Politics And Literature
Civil-military Relations
Islam Islamism Islamophobia
Xenophobia
Terrorism
Responses To Terrorism
Religion & Terrorism
Islamophobia
Women And Religion
Freedom Of Religion
Freedom Of Speech
Women's Movements
Global LGBTQ Rights
Military Intervention
Cold War History
Cultural Studies
Cultural Cold War
Gender And Development
Countries of Interest
Pakistan
India
United States
Publications:
Journal Articles:
The debate over the tragic attack on Charlie Hebdo quickly settled into a familiar script that posits Islam as being antithetical to art, and Muslims therefore as enemies of liberal values such as free speech. The title of conference for which this short paper was written—“Fear of Art”—risks affirming this script. Positing a “fear of art” as the reason behind this attack consigns it to the realm of the irrational, devoid of politics and history. Instead, I argue that we look at art as something that emerges from within society, and thereby as necessarily embodying/reflecting the extant relations of power in society. The paper also underlines the importance of differentiating between art which (explicitly or implicitly) affirms the existing power relations within a society, and art which contests them. Only then can we hope to move our understanding of this incident beyond a simplistic and dangerous civilizational narrative.
Ever since 9/11, there has been a constant effort to build a broad consensus around the need for a sustained U.S. military presence in Afghanistan. In the early days of the war, the idea of retaliation and revenge for the attacks on the World Trade Center had an obvious appeal for a wide range of the political spectrum. The argument about protecting “our way of life” from a global network of Islamic extremists proved persuasive as well. All through this period, there was one claim which proved instrumental in securing the consent of the liberals (and, to some extent, of the Left)—the need to rescue Afghan women from the Taliban. As the United States begins to draw down its troops in Afghanistan, we have begun to see variations of the same argument emerge once again from a variety of constituencies both within the United States and internationally. In this brief paper I undertake to identify and analyze the deeply problematic position of one such constituency which locates itself on the left-liberal spectrum in the United States and consists of an alliance between self-defined left-wing feminists in the United States and prominent feminists from the Global South (specifically Muslim countries such as Algeria and Pakistan).Footnote 1 In doing so, I seek to outline the position of this new feminist front so as to offer those opposed to the war—and US imperialism more generally—some historical and political context that might prove useful in understanding and ultimately challenging its arguments.
Discourses of race, gender and sexuality have always served an important ideological function within imperialist projects. The current phase of American imperialism, characterized by the Global War on Terror is no exception, as evidenced by the cynical deployment of 'women's rights' by the Bush regime to legitimate the bombing of Afghanistan. Given the contemporary geo-political context, the current imperialist project requires the deployment of increasingly explicit forms of Islamophobia, and 'queer rights' have become the latest front in this purported battle between Civilization—liberal modernity as embodied by 'the West'—and Barbarism—as connoted by Islam. Within this neo-Orientalist discourse 'the Muslim' enemy is today configured as both misogynyst and homophobic, with an essentialized Islam comfortably posited as the roots of his illiberalism. This illiberalism is then presented as both the mark and the evidence of Islam's radical alterity from Western civilization, an alterity that cannot be tolerated and must, in fact, be destroyed. Like colonial and imperial projects in the past that relied on 'civilizing missions' (cl)aiming to 'save brown women from brown men' (for a counter argument see Spivak 1999), the new imperial project thus uses the imperative to 'rescue' Muslim queers (as well as women, of course) as an ideological cover for racist wars abroad and xenophobia at home. The main thrust of this essay is to show how misleading the contemporary mainstream Western discourse on 'Islam' and gender/sexuality is, and the degree to which it is premised on an essentialized and monolithic 'Islam' emptied of history, diversity, complexity, and dissent. I begin by highlighting some of the constitutive elements of this discourse and the central role played by certain key neo-conservative Muslim intellectuals in ventriloquising a racist Islamophobia. I then juxtapose this discourse and its claims with a close reading of two cases involving women and sexual minorities from Pakistan in order to show how a framework which begins with the prior assumption that something called 'Islam' determines the status of women and sexual minorities in 'the Muslim world' is simply not intellectually useful and is in fact politically dangerous.
Recent scholarship on the state has moved towards a focus on state formation as a contingent and contradictory process, and the role of culture therein. Since all states today are understood to be `nation-states', `national culture' becomes a key arena for struggles over hegemony and consequently for understanding nation-state formation. This article uses the `national language controversy' in Pakistan between 1947 and 1952 as a lens through which to explore the relationship between discourses of national culture and the consolidation and contestation of power within the modern (postcolonial) nation-state.
This paper looks at two instances of ‘moral panic’ in the recent history of Pakistan. As women are the repositories of national culture, their moral and sexual regulation is arguably coextensive with state formation. However, in countries like Pakistan, this process cannot be understood as based on some pre-given ‘Muslimness’; rather, Islamization itself is contested terrain and not the only source of meaning, with local tribal traditions and complex class alignments equally at play. This is demonstrated in the first case that I discuss: General Zia ul-Haq's military regime's enactment of a series of laws in the1980s – the Zina Ordinance and the Laws of Evidence – aimed at controlling women's sexual, social and political status. A direct consequence of these policies and their implementation was the launch of a counter-attack against the regime by urban middle-class women who formed an umbrella organization of feminist groups and individuals, deploying innovative forms of cultural protest in a situation where direct public action was severely restricted. The second example, popularly known as the ‘Saima love-marriage case’, which occurred during the democratic years of the 1990s, also reveals how contending social classes and cultural forces mediated their struggles for hegemony through the bodies of women (and men). At issue throughout the discussion is the need to reorient common-sense approaches to the victim figure of Islamic fundamentalism, especially at a time when Islam has globally become the sign of illiberalism and the justification of new imperial agendas.
This paper explores the relationship between (national) culture and state formation, arguing that the former is effectively a field of contestation where struggles over hegemony between various classes and social blocs are played out. Cultural nationalism has been the pre‐eminent form of nationalism in the twentieth century, particularly within the anti‐colonial and postcolonial contexts. Since this form of nationalism lends itself to moral regulation by ruling classes in a way that civic or political nationalisms do not (given its ability to produce and manipulate emotional affect) it becomes imperative to understand its relationship to power and to the project/process of state formation. This paper uses the case of postcolonial Pakistan as a lens through which to explore and analyse the complexities of this relationship during the early years of the Pakistani nation‐state. Using primary material – Constituent Assembly Debates and the texts of important intellectual debates on culture during this period – I show the different ways in which Pakistani culture was defined at this time, the politics and interests behind these various articulations, and their ultimate impact on state formation.
The issue of child labor in Pakistan's export industries has become the topic of much controversy and in some ways has triggered the debate over trade and labor standards. Consumer protests and boycotts in the North have led to initiatives being taken by various national and international organizations. However, this article takes issue with the current projection of child labor as a function of children's poverty and lack of education and families' lack of awareness. The author argues that it is impossible to understand and even address the child labor problem without placing it against the back drop of the dynamics of the current neoliberal international political economic system. She concludes by arguing that the only way in which the issue of social and labor rights can be once more given precedence in an increasingly socially disembedded world economy is through political engagement with the forces of globalization: the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization.
‘Canned Culture!’, screams a cover headline from one of India’s leadingweeklies. ‘After burgers, Cielos and cellulars, it’s time for culturalconsumerism’ (Outlook, April 9, 1997). If one needed any more testimony toIndia’s coming-of-age as a late capitalist society, the emergence of a nascent culture industry as reflected by this headline and others like it — the cover story is entitled ‘The Merchandising of Culture’ — is an important indicator that India has ‘arrived’ on the international economic-political scene; and none the worse for wear after its almost half a century of Nehruvian ‘socialism’, either. Under the watchful eye of the IMF/World Bank, India began to liberalize and ‘reintegrate’ into the world economy in 1991–92, but it is only recently that the ideology of global-local capitalism has managed to construct the level of hegemony that allows a globally-oriented capitalist consumer culture to truly manifest itself in Indian society. This cultural consumerism has resulted in a curious phenomenon:whereas formerly India was integrated into the global culture industry as a‘producer/exporter’ of cultural commodities — or the raw material for what became cultural commodities in the West — in the form of exotica, it is also increasingly their consumer — or at least a certain class of emerging capitalist elites is: ‘yuppies’ with disposable incomes unlike any experienced by previous generations of largely austere socialist India. This is heralded by a change in how India and its inhabitants are now ‘imagined’ or represented on the world stage, but one which includes vestiges of past representations refashioned into what I will call the New — one is tempted to say ersatz — Orientalism and what the New York Times has recently referred to as ‘the new Indo-chic’.
Books Written:
This book tells the story of Pakistan through the lens of the Cold War, and more recently the War on Terror, to shed light on the domestic and international processes behind the global rise of militant Islam. Unlike existing scholarship on nationalism, Islam and the state in Pakistan, which tends to privilege events in a narrowly defined 'political' realm, Saadia Toor highlights the significance of cultural politics in Pakistan from its origins to the contemporary period. This extra dimension allows Toor to explain how the struggle between Marxists and liberal nationalists was influenced and eventually engulfed by the agenda of the religious right.
Book Chapters:
In recent years, the status of the Muslim woman – often coded in the image of a veiled female figure – has become a major preoccupation of the mainstream media in the West, where it is framed as an issue of “Islam and gender.” Regardless of whether the tone of the commentary is critical or sympathetic, the organizing logic is the same – that something called “Islam” exists and that it can explain all aspects of Muslim society. Note that the terms – “Islam,” “Muslim society,” “Muslim culture,” etc. – circulating in this discourse are all in the singular, implying that there is one essential, monolithic thing called “Islam” which remains consistent across time and space, and that all Muslims are somehow essentially identical regardless of where they may come from geographically and culturally. The overwhelming conclusion of this discourse is that there is something uniquely sexist – even misogynist – about Islam, “the Muslim world,” and thereby all Muslims, which in turn explains the low status of Muslim women.
| 99 |In 2008, the World Bank put Pakistan on a list of 36 countries that faced a serious food shortage, warning that if the situation worsened, people might raid storage facilities for food. However, it must also be noted that Pakistan had a bumper wheat crop in that same year, and that wheat is the major food crop for the country. The essay begins by talking about the most recent crisis and its causes; moves on to discuss the structural and historic reasons behind food insecurity in Pakistan; and finally considers why the issue is unlikely to go away—and in fact is going to get much worse—unless some structural changes are made, the most important of which is substantive land reform.
The issue of child labor in Pakistan's export industries has become the topic of much controversy and in some ways has triggered the debate over trade and labor standards. Consumer protests and boycotts in the North have led to initiatives being taken by various national and international organizations. However, this article takes issue with the current projection of child labor as a function of children's poverty and lack of education and families' lack of awareness. The author argues that it is impossible to understand and even address the child labor problem without placing it against the back drop of the dynamics of the current neoliberal international political economic system. She concludes by arguing that the only way in which the issue of social and labor rights can be once more given precedence in an increasingly socially disembedded world economy is through political engagement with the forces of globalization: the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization.