I have a good friend who is generally good politically, not one of us but not bad. A socdem who is aware enough to know NATO is bad and Palestine deserves justice etc.
They’re very strong on feminism, advanced. More than me by far and I value their pov on feminism. A lot.
But they have Islamophobe brainworms. Mostly surrounding sexual violence in Europe by Muslims. They have a suite of rage bait statistics or anecdotes of sexual violence by Muslim men in Europe.
“See this isolated and context-free statistic which shows really the problem is Islam and the cultural values of these immigrants.”
The discussion for them becomes rooted in feminism.
“Why should women pay the price for all the sexual violence Muslim men bring with them? Honor killings are 100% Muslim!”
“X% of rapes are by muslims when they are only Y% of the population.”
“Why are all the immigrants men? We should ban the male refugees from these places, but as a good pro-refugee progressive we should allow the women and children in because they aren’t a problem.”
It’s tempting to try and fight this on data but I think that would kind of be conceding the deeper clash of civilizations argument in some way?
It’s also tempting to fight this on the grounds of material circumstances and point out that gender equality largely follows economic development but then that’s really just entirely conceding to the world view that Islamic immigration is an affliction upon European women for several generations until they assimilate.
I think a core problem here is that I am completely disconnected and unaware of what feminism looks like in the Muslim worlds and so I can’t speak to or challenge the underlying Islamophobia.
Of course there are issues with patriarchy in the Islamic world and when my friend points to the veil in Iran being enforced by the religious police and it’s impossible for me to deny that and I completely agree with them (while disagreeing with them insofar as I totally accept many Muslim women choose to wear it but then it becomes a complex go-nowhere discussion about peer pressure and bikinis) but then there’s this bridge from that true fact to the assertion that Islamic men are a threat to European women which is just like woah man wtf.
How do I approach this? Where’s my Muslim-world feminist perspective at? What are some considered debunks or analyses of the use of isolated statistics on sexual violence?
Like the best internet gotcha would be a statistical analysis that simply debunks the sexual violence statistics and that would be helpful but I believe there’s a deeper Islamophobia and sense of western cultural supremacy, clash of civilizations, thesis that they don’t explicitly acknowledge and I sense that feminism is being abused to ennoble that.
And on the flip side, I’m a male. I’m very unlikely to be a victim of sexual violence at this point in my life. I’m not going to be a victim of an honor killing. Do I have privilege I need to check here?
Overall I think the best would be for me to discover and learn feminist theory and female perspectives from Muslim / Arabic / Palestinian / Iranian / Afghan / Pakistani authors, both in the “Muslim world” and from those living in the west.
Maybe it would also be useful to look at how panic about black men raping women was used and is used to justify racial oppression as a consciousness raising exercise?
Considered feminist critiques of Islam?
Considered feminist critiques of Islamophobia in Europe?
Aside from the fact that the overwhelming majority of sexual violence is committed against Muslim people in Europe (primarily by policing and border control agents) and that in general most sexual violence is a result of intimate partner violence regardless of a person's cultural or religious background, there's something so weirdly insidious about being angry about Muslim men "bringing sexual violence" to Europe when you look at the overwhelming centuries of European soldiers bringing sexual violence to the Muslim world.
Anyway, I have a lot of thoughts on this topic, but I think your request for Muslim feminist perspectives is absolutely the right move. So here's some recommendations, and I've added a bit of a focus on Palestine since you mentioned they were sympathetic to Palestinian liberation (including queer perspectives, which is intrinsically tied to feminism):
Do Muslim Women Need Saving? - Lila Abu-Lughod (this one specifically addresses interventionist Western "feminism")
Greater Than the Sum of Our Parts: Feminism, Inter/Nationalism, and Palestine - Nada Elia (look at feminist movements in Palestine, and the women's intifada)
Palestinian Women's Activism: Nationalism, Secularism, Islamism - Islah Jad
Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality - Sara Ahmed (this is about the way that culture creates the stranger, and touches on exactly the issue you're dealing with: a repetition of myth-building about the dangers of a specific out-group. I also recommend a lot of Sara Ahmed's other books, like Living a Feminist Life, Uprootings/Regroundings: Questions of Home and Migration, Differences That Matter: Feminist Theory and Post-modernism).
Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique - Saed Atshan
Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times - Jasbir Puar (examination of the leveraging of "progressive" Western values in creating the terrorist body subject to Western violence and dehumanization, and how "feminism" was used as a primary tool in the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan)
Embodying Geopolitics: Generations of Women's Activism in Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon - Nicola Pratt
Gender and Sexuality in Muslim Cultures - Gul Ozyegin
Islamic Homosexualities: Culture, History, and Literature - Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe (kind of an old ethnography, but interesting nonetheless)
Gender and Colonialism: A Psychological Analysis of Oppression and Liberation - Geraldine Moane
Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror - Mahmood Mamdani (this one isn't about feminism, but rather about the way that Islamaphobia has been inserted throughout western society and the shaping of western discourse on Islam. Mamdani has a lot of great books)
Anti-Veiling Campaigns in the Muslim World: Gender, Modernism, and the Politics of Dress - Stephanie Cronin
Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society - Lila Abu-Lughod (this one is more about getting to know the cultural feelings of womanhood in bedouin society)
Writing Women's Worlds: Bedouin Stories - Lila Abu-Lughod
Militarization and Violence Against Women in Conflict Zones in the Middle East: A Palestinian Case Study - Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian (This one is about the weaponization of sexual violence, which is an important piece of understanding how the West are the largest perpetrators of sexual violence against Muslim women, not Muslim men)
Israel/Palestine and the Queer International - Sarah Schulman
Even a Freak Like You Would Be Safe in Tel-Aviv: Transgender Subjects, Wounded Attachments, and the Zionist Economy of Gratitude - Saffo Papantonopoulou (quick essay on how Israeli "progressiveness" is leveraged to oppress queer Palestinians and pinkwash Israeli violence)
Border & Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism - Harsha Walia (not specifically what you were asking for, but has a lot of great information about how militarized borders are one of the largest vectors for sexual violence against women; anyone arguing about keeping certain people from immigrating is, de facto, arguing for supporting the funding of militarized borders to keep those people out, and thus adding to the amount of sexual violence)
Thank you so much this is amazing. I really appreciate the effort you’ve made here.