Topic : Qaisra Shahraz’ The Holy Woman as a Counter Discourse to Orientalism Prepared By : Sheraz Anjum

1. Qaisra Shahraz’ The Holy Woman as a Counter
Discourse to Orientalism
 Born in Pakistan and settled in England
 Educationist by Profession
 The Holy Woman & Typhoon
 Rural Sindh at the backdrop
 Traditional havelis, vast verandas, long corridors, drawing
rooms, open fields, river banks & festivals.
 Oppression of women, feudalism, patriarchal dominance are
the major themes.

2.  Dilemma of a young Muslim woman
 Untimely death of a future heir
 A doting father turns into a feudal father
 A feminist is forced to transform herself into Holy Woman
 A Protest against a monolithic Orientalism
 Edward Said (1978) described Orientalism as a general patronizing
attitude of the west towards east
 Essentialism of orient societies as static and undeveloped
 Fabricated view of oriental culture
 Implicit falsification that west is rational, flexible & Superior
 Prejudiced outsider interpretation of Eastern customs, imagining,
exaggerating & distorting differences, labelling it as exotic,
backward & uncivilized.

3. • Helen Tiffin (1987) theorized that post-colonial literature involved radical
dismantling of European codes, subversion and appropriation of dominant
European discourses
• Shahraz uses the veiling practice of Muslim woman as a tool for counter
discourse
• As Said described, Jane Foster, a Londoner looks at Zarri Bano’s Hijab as
imprisonment.
• She takes the veil as a symbol of Muslim patriarchal oppression of women
• She expresses her fabricated view that Muslim women have no voice of
their own.
• Zarri Bano speaks for all Muslim women and dismantles the falsified
European code
• She asserts that Veil has given her sense of self-worth, respect & dignity.
• She disillusions a dumb-founded European by saying that Veil is not
imprisoning, in fact liberating, freeing from vanity, gives mobility.

4. • She removes all essential doubts by presenting veil as a religious norm,
followed by Eastern women willingly.
• She refutes West’s tainted vision of Islamic culture as degrading the
woman.
• She highlights that Eastern societies are dynamic not static, progressive
not backward.
• Qaisra Shahraz finally presents the Eastern Woman who can have her own
will in the matter of marriage.
• She wins over the customs, breaks the myth that a holy woman dies
physically and socially.
• The Eastern woman, contrary to West’s essentialism, is capable of handling
the matter of her life.