It’s so utterly gross and never fails to make my stomach churn. Discussions of Women’s rights and patriarchy within Muslim communities are happening all the time, in mosques, youth groups, hoyseholds (I speak with my mother consistently on these issues), bot as much as they really need to in my opinion but they occur nonetheless. Yet it is divorced from the invented reality which white liberals (and even leftists) live in, and if they were to peer into our conversation, which I’d prefer they didn’t as they can’t help to insert their chauvinistic views onto us often, they’d find it unrecognizable to what they expect, and that makes sense. They aren’t a part of the community nor do they have insight on how it operates very well, I don’t expect them to understand, but I’d personally like them to stop this overt fetishism for Muslim women if they genuinely wish to improve the situation at all. It only feeds into conservative narratives of patriarchal norms and the “necessity” (status quo) of maintaining “tradition” since all of us see the intervention of liberals in our spaces as dangers to our community.