I guess they are empowered. Though in this case, that's probably not a good thing :(

i think that empowerment is a double-edged sword here. they are empowered, but very much within a miltaristic system that they are unable to break out of. the inability to consider themselves outside of this system that also has seriously pernicious effects on women. and maybe i'm underestimating them...but it seems a little truncated.
also i find the tone of the article a little problematic. mainly because i find it unfortunate that the western media is consistently so *awed* by the idea of muslim women who have any sense of power or autonomy. can we get to a point where that doesn't warrant an article??

Idgie, the reason why people in the west (myself included) are awed at sightings of muslim women who have a sense of autonomy or power is because we hear so much about muslim women being denied education, denied the right to vote, and denied high government positions. Perhaps we are misinformed? My question to you then, is this: Have muslim women gained real power and autonomy in the muslim world? If not, then I think there will continue to be people who are awed at the idea of an "empowered" muslim woman who are allowed to fire ak-47's at enemies, but be denied the ability to drive a car.

sleepycoder,
while i do think that there is something interesting about a woman who is allowed to tote a ak-47, but not allowed to drive. i think the intereesting part is in the rationalization process of the system that allows these two opposite things. perhaps calling into question the holding of an ak-47 as a powerful image. but what i have trouble with in the western media and mindset is the idea that all real power comes from driving, voting, and having a phd. i do think that muslim women have real power and autonomy because they manage to negotiate an incredibly complicated world and maintain their dignity. i think that they are powerful because in places like iran (even under taliban rule) they were finding ways to modify their code of dress to challenge gender stereotypes and some of them were publishing a feminist magazine (without any dollars from western feminists). the desire for freedom is indigenous to everyone/everyplace, but not everyone conceives of it the way we might, whether that is because they have different values or because their lives are so truncated by a system within which they exist it's hard to say. but i don't think that we can claim to be outside of a system either.

The muslim culture will support these women, as long as the women in return support the dominant paradigm of the culture (militaristic, etc) . I doubt the men see the see these women as empowered, and therefore not a threat, so much as co-opted to their belief system and therefore, quite useful.
Also why, when and where muslim women ARE becoming empowered, by publishing feminist magazines, going to school, etc- they are being killed. (for example, in Afghanistan, the 3 girls who were poisoned for going to school).

txfeminist,
i think that you make a lot of good points. a friend who i was talking about this with this morning also pointed out that buying into highly racialized militarism and its images, whether you are a man or a woman, may not be very empowering. further, while there is violence against muslim women as they struggle against the confines of what they are expected to be and do and say, and i would never deny the existence or horror of that violence. there are also instances that we never hear about where women are creating a counter-discourse and finding ways to have power within, yet also against, the system.

I think it would be awesome if these women took the weapons they have been issued and turn them on the men who insist they stay completely covered and always under the control of a man. There is no empowerment here - only a different form of servitude.

idgie I would be very interested in hearing about the things "we never hear about" that somehow lead to real empowerment among this particular population (muslim women forced to wear burkas).

I am so super duper impressed with this discussion. I agree with many of you, and I think these images/instances of women being allowed to carry weapons is in fact a double edged sword. It makes you wonder, as they fight for what they believe in, will the end product of that fight (in this case yet to be determined and a VERY complicated situation), honor their contributions. Will it change there subordinate position in society or will they be given new modes of agency and ways of activism. In most revolutions/struggles of the world, women get to participate in non-traditional ways, but after the war they are put back in the house, barefoot and pregnant.

However, as idgie so articulately puts it, this is not to say that these women are not organizing and creating feminist resistences in their own right. They are and it is not discussed, reported or circulated in mainstream discourse. For many reasons. They would threaten their lives if plans of feminist revolution and activism were to emerge for one thing. But also in general the media or the world is not concerned with the resistances of women. They are concerned with showing how crazy hamas is that EVEN the women are participating in this struggle, (you know those subservient arab women and all...)

Either way, these images are powerful, in fact they are gangsta. But ultimately, I don't get a happy feeling from them, I get a when is all this violence going to fucking stop feeling from it.

Keep in mind that Muslim women are very much like Christian women (or feminist women for that matter) in that they are a grouping of vastly different women, joined together under a common identifier. Amish women aren't like Catholic women aren't like Born again women aren't like Protestants.

I've seen a few documentaries on the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, and none of the women wore Burqas. Some women wore head scarves, other women wore regular clothes like you'd see at the mall in middle America. These were all Arab women, not Israeli.

I also seem to recall from all those horrorific beheading videos they kept showing on the news, that the men in these terrorist groups also had their faces fully covered. So perhaps the Hammas women in the photo are simply masking their identity? I would say that is a very good thing, since I recall reading an article in Al Jazeera in which they spoke with a man who lost his wife and three children (aged 9mo to 5 years) when his apartment was bombed. The reason why it was targeted was that a Hammas leader resided in the same building.

Palestinian women go to school. A fourteen year old Palestinian girl was killed with multiple shots to the face earlier this year as she walked to school (apparently they suspected she was a terrorist). We've become so anti-Islam because we are misinformed and think they're all like the very worst of them, and as a result we give Israel unconditional support and $3.5 billion a year in aid. I'm not anti-Israel, and I'm certainly not anti-semmitic, just as I'm not anti-American even though I hate the war in Iraq.

What I think of these women- I think they are justifiably angry, but their guerilla style actions will do them more harm than good. It's sad, hypocritical and somewhat ironic. It's not exclusive to the Israel/Palestine situation either. The United States has been going through the same thing with the Muslim world. There was a wave of patriotism after 9/11 and people enlisting in our armed forces, yet no one bothered to stop and realize that this was how the Arab world felt after the first gulf war and during the sanctions that followed. The war in Iraq isn't fighting terrorism, it is breeding it.

Remember that some women actually want to wear burqas because it is part of their religion, and the same goes for driving cars. I don't get it, but then I also don't get how some women choose to mate for life with the same man, and only have sex to procreate. To me, all religious people are kooks, but I do believe in religious freedom, including the freedom to adhere to an oppressive faith. Think about it- if it weren't a part of their faith, do you think Muslim men would advocate women dressing like that? Since when have men of any creed had such a strong dislike for seeing a little skin? I bet that when the veils come off, it doesn't cause them to lose their erections.

Oh, I should make it clear that I would never advocate forcing any woman to wear a burqa. When I spoke of religious freedom, I meant across the board, including the right to oppose religious practices.

Also, I made a mistake when I said the women I saw were not Israeli. The whole thing confuses me, but I guess some Arab women are Israeli, and some are not. What I meant was that they were not Jewish.

The Author Irshad Manji ( she wrote The Trouble with Islam). Commented on the fact that women were inlisted with the Hamas on a talk show called "les francs tireurs"in Montreal. If i understood correctly, She explained that some of these women were inlisted because it was a way to be "forgiven" and to re-establish honor in the family. Unfortunatly, dishonored women, are for instances of rape, infidelity, flirting or any other instance perceived as disgracing the family's honor.

The sad thing here is that there is a real story to be written about empowered Palestinian women, but this certainly isn't it. With so many men killed or imprisoned or in hiding (I've heard that about a third of Palestinian men end up spending time in Israeli prisons at some point in their lives) women are increasingly taking charge not only of their families but of their families' businesses and local politics as well.

Even with the Intifada winding down, many Palestinian women I know are hopefull that their society has been changed in a fundamental enough way that the men will no longer be able to oppress them to nearly the same degree as is prevalent in the Arab world once they return to family life.

This process has also been having an effect in Israel as well -- young Arab Israeli women see that their friends across the Green Line are making money and running for office, while they still feel suffocated by their family and the patriarchy of their community. Increasing numbers of Arab Israeli women have been going to college in recent years, as a way to become independent of their families, and a number have even joined the IDF.

Also, for the record, it's only in Saudi Arabia that women can't drive. Elsewhere, it's not unusual to see even a woman in a full burqa driving a car (more often than not, talking on a cell phone at the same time).