Reframing Asian Muslim Women in the Name of Honor: Neo-Orientalism and Gender Politics in Mukhtar Mai's Constructed Narratives

Abstract

Honor rape has oftentimes been severely criticized as extreme violation of human rights by western human rights advocates. Although the mainstreaming of human rights discourse since the 1990s is part of the aspiration for a global civil society, it often does so by-pigeonholing non-western others into stereotypes. Mukhtar Mai's memoir, In the Name of Honor, for instance, was published as a hot commodity in the West after her ordeal of honor rape had been addressed by a New York Times journalist as a barbaric tradition and an act of terrorism. Mai's memoir, however, is expressed in the rhetoric of neo-Orientalism, as it reframes Asian Muslim women in terms of the notion of honor. By exploring her constructed narratives, this paper investigates the ways in which false gender representations sustain the continuity of neo-Orientalism.