Page - 97 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 02/01

Images of the Muslim Woman | 97www.jrfm.eu 2016, 2/1, 91–110 In my opinion, this type of intellectual discourse on the veil of the Muslim Woman is symptomatic of a paradigm of thought that has dominated postcolonial, postmod- ern discourses for far too long. In my forthcoming book Women and Shari’a Law: The Impact of Legal Pluralism in the UK,16 I term this approach an “essentialist paradigm”, noting that its advocates insist on treating people as members of homogeneous groups, essentialising their cultures and religions, underestimating the consequences of their academic discourse on human rights, and discarding voices of people from these very cultures as “not authentic enough”.17 Four features characterise the essentialist paradigm: 1. It combines multiculturalism as a political process with a policy of soft legal plural- ism, dividing people along cultural, religious, and ethnic lines, treating them dif- ferently on account of their “cultural differences” and in the process setting them apart and placing them in parallel legal enclaves. 2. It perceives rights from the perspective of the group: the group has rights, not the individuals within it. It insists that each group has a collective identity and culture, an essential identity and culture, which should be protected and perpetuated even if doing so violates the rights of individuals within the group. 3. It is dominated by a cultural relativist approach to rights (in both its forms, as strong and soft cultural relativism) and argues that rights and other social prac- tices, values, and moral norms are culturally determined.18 4. It is haunted by the white man’s/woman’s burden caused by a strong sense of shame and guilt for the Western colonial and imperial past and by a paternalistic desire to protect minorities or people from former colonies. The essentialist paradigm is a mindset that perceives the other – whether a mem- ber of a minority group, as in this case, or an entire Third World country – as the op- pressed and understands human rights as tools imposed by the Western oppressor. It considers those who fight for universal human rights in their own societies as not authentic representatives of their countries and in the process ignores or justifies dire human rights violations committed in the name of the rights of groups or cultural and religious rights. I identified this paradigm of thought during my research into calls to introduce Islamic law in Western legal systems. Because proponents of soft legal pluralism have used Britain as a positive model,19 it was imperative to research the British case. I ap- proached Islamic sharia councils and Muslim arbitration tribunals in various British 16 Manea, forthcoming 2016. 17 The study is based on field research by the author in the United Kingdom (36 interviews conducted in 2013) and makes use of the results of previous field research by the author in Syria, Kuwait, and Yemen (71 interviews between 2006 and 2008). In addition, discourse and content analyses have been used to deconstruct the postmodern discourse on group rights. 18 Donnelly 1984, 401. 19 Bowen 2012; Williams 2008; Yilmaz 2005; Kemper/Reinkowski 2005.