Analysis Of G. Willow Wilson's 'The Butterfly Mosque'

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“Culture belongs to the imagination; to judge it rationally is to misunderstand its function” (Wilson 79). In “The Butterfly Mosque” by G. Willow Wilson, she acknowledges culture and explains why cultures can differ so greatly. She emphasizes why its highly inconclusive to try to find a meaning behind ones culture. As a young American Muslim women she is faced with cross cultural ironies as she tries to find her identity and where she fits in. Her conversion to Islam brings into light her internalized prejudice and the different perspectives of Westerners towards the Middle East and vice versa. In her memoir, she depicts both positive and negative aspects of both cultures and, her struggle to find a common ground between the two. The representations …show more content…

As she is forced to explore the differences between herself and her new community , she comes to a realization that culture isn 't a concrete idea or written down in a code of laws, culture is something that stems from ones imagination. Muslims have reasons to why they are skeptical and hateful towards Americans. When American expatriates go to Middle eastern countries to “help” and they are rejected they become “anti-Arab” pessimists. Wilson declares that people who have lost so much because of the Westerners can not be expected to believe that they are now going to be helped by the same enemy that destroyed them. She states “they fail to realize that people who have lost dignity and opportunities to the “clash of civilizations” can not be expected to welcome peacemakers who have lost nothing” (Wilson …show more content…

“In Islam, celibacy is considered unhealthy and unnatural” (Wilson 58). This is hard for me to understand because why does a women have to have sex with her husband if she doesn 't want to? I feel like their is a contradiction in this belief because Islam talks about how women are respected and their bodies are reserved , symbolic in the veiling of a women however, its almost like they do not have a choice when it comes to having intercourse with their husband. This goes against the feminist beliefs that I am used to that a women have control over their bodies and can choose when to have sex and can not be forced by her husband. In the same notion, does that mean that martial rape is not a “thing” in this culture? In order to comprehend this concept using Shepard’s principle I would have to bracket out my own feminist and Christian beliefs and understand that sex is only legitimate in a marriage and that it is a sin if a man or woman had sex outside of it. Looking at it from a Muslim perspective, the Quran states that everything that Allah created has a purpose and a women 's biological part of her body is to reproduce. Islam recognizes the human being natural sexual instincts and desire and it should not be

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