The controversial French magazine Charlie Hebdo hit headlines again last week after publishing derogatory cartoons purportedly in defense of Iranian women while making a mockery of the same women.
Faraan: Looking back at the magazine’s Islamophobic history, the cartoons did not come as a surprise as it continues to aggressively promote stereotypes against Muslims worldwide. The profoundly offensive cartoons were published in the name of so-called “freedom of speech and expression”, with sheer disdain for limitations to that freedom.
Even free speech advocates agree that Charlie Hebdo’s hideous campaign is everything but satirical and seeks to demonize Islam and human values. Dr. Zohreh Kharazmi, a professor at the University of Tehran and expert on women’s affairs, believes Charlie Hebdo cartoons are part of a “fake reality campaign” to attack other cultures, particularly Islam. In an interview with the Press TV website, Dr. Kharazmi said the French magazine aims at attacking Islamic values and preventing non-Muslims from understanding the religion.
“The fact is that media, literature and different other genres have helped the West construct a distorted image of other cultures, particularly Islamic culture,” she said. Pointing to the objectification of women in the West, Dr. Kharazmi said for centuries women in Britain and other European countries were considered “animal-like” while Islam and Prophet Mohammad “appreciated and recognized the exalted position of women”. Charlie Hebdo, like other such Islamophobic publications, attempts to push anti-Muslim narratives and prevent others from getting to know the status of women in Islam.
“As Leila Abu-Loghud wrote in her book Do Women Need Saving in 2013, it is fabricated or hyper-real that the West has been almost successful in misrepresenting Muslim women and the relationship between Islam and women in a very fake emerging media,” Dr. Kharazmi told the Press TV website. “As Abu-Loghud points out, Muslim women don’t need to be saved by their Western counterparts. The West already has many problems but still, women’s rights are instrumentalized to attack Muslim countries and even militarily invade them and this is an absolutely politicized issue.”
According to Dr. Kharazmi, Charlie Hebdo cartoons are yet another display of not only Islamophobia but also Western capitalist man-made values and a worldview that is snatching rights from women and destroying societies. The West has made women part of the capitalist market, Dr. Kharazmi said, pointing to the degradation of women’s rights in Western countries. “I would not deny that the West made some achievements, for example in terms of equality in education, in promoting health, in giving more chances for employment and decision-making positions for women,” she said, adding that it does not necessarily mean everything is hunky-dory.
“Women are counted as labor. American and European sociologists already say that women are prepared and trained to be a chain of the whole market, women and men alike; just learning to work and to consume,” the professor said, calling it a “vicious cycle” in which “women and men are trapped.” The 50-50 concept between men and women, as she calls it, which the United Nations has been trying to construct cannot create an ideal world for women.
“Probably women would like to be in a half-half-divided world with some rights and opportunities. But at the end of the day, I am not sure how helpful this pressure and burden on women’s shoulders are, forcing certain standards on them in a way that they should have maximum engagement in the market and economic activities,” Dr. Kharazmi stressed. Such a “50-50 lifestyle” where women have to put food on the table and take up economic responsibilities and work outside the home represents “a hyper-pressure for women to compete in this market-based life”.
