DYNAMICS OF FEMINISM, THIRD WORLD WOMEN, CULTURE AND ISLAM: A POSTCOLONIAL READING OF AURAT MARCH

Abstract

This article takes issue with the Western notion of feminism and argues that it is not adequate to explain the lives of Pakistani Muslim women. Highlighting Western feminism contentious, the study explores an inevitable network of Islamic culture and feminism at play in Pakistan for being not only an Islamic but also a Third World country truncated in its postcolonial history. To further problematize this issue of how these overlapping projects continue to  engage and collide in the recent debates on culture, Islam, and women’s rights in which the scope and nature of post coloniality,  I will interpret Lila Abu-Lughud’s philosophy of cultural difference building upon women discourses of R. Seodo Herr, and Chandra Talpade Mohanty in terms of the ideology of colonialism and third world and fight against it for sociopolitical and cultural freedom a crucial element of Pakistani feminism especially of women’s representation and conflicts of individual autonomy through a reconceptualization of Aurat March in the context of Islam and culture in Pakistan.