I see her as she approaches me, draped in black. Nothing to indicate, or confirm, she is male or female. Her presence is incongruous, totally out of context. We are in Europe, after all, where her attire is not commonplace. Still, wasn’t the sole purpose of this attire, to conceal any signs of femininity from men?

I could have assumed the worst, who would expect this in a Western university? This could have been a suicide bomber disguised as a Muslim woman. But, I knew her. She was in my class. She stops and stands beside me and says, “Sister, why aren’t you following the right path? Do you really want to burn in hell for showing off your hair and figure to strangers this way?”

Her comment should annoy me more, but it doesn’t. What really annoys me is when Westerners stereotypes me in an attempt to supposedly understand me. But how could they not, when they see me as a type and not a real person with real aspirations and life challenges?

To them, all Arab women are oppressed by their own societies and obviously seeking rescue, or release, by the west and, for sure, are all uneducated, underprivileged, uncivilized, and illogical, due to their holding on to a belief system that is underdeveloped.

I find the juxtaposition of these two points of view intriguing and can’t but wonder, when will this stop?

Arab women have always been under scrutiny, both within their own world and without; as much as by their own people as by others. Centuries of entrenched misconceptions and misconstrued imagery of Arab women certainly cannot be eradicated overnight, but why are we still paying the price to this day?

We have inherited a large body of literature that has instilled, for generations, certain filters through which Arab women are perceived. These filters, unfortunately, strip Arab woman of all the unique attributes and universal commonalities they have with women everywhere.

Arab women have become a conflated image that is too easily conjured up, when needed, to support an argument against both Arabs and Muslims.

Pre, and post, colonial imagery of Arab women as ‘shrewish’ and ‘shrill’ still thrive in the popular Western imagination, alongside those of being ‘passive’ and ‘oppressed by religion and culture’. How is it possible that these images still exist in the 21st century?

As an academic I know of the many reasons why, not least of which is that these images have been popularized, politicalized and systematically circulated to such an extent that they have become, for some, ‘the truth’. But, as a woman who is subject to just such constant stereotyping, from both East and West, I believe that these images are still alive because of us. Because of you and me. We are all complicit in keeping these images alive.

The story of the two women above reveals a dangerous and fundamental reality. ‘We’ are the ones guilty of facilitating the reproduction and circulation of these outdated stereotypes and images. Their narratives show how both women have internalized these commonly-held misperceptions of Arab women and now keep ‘alive and raw’, carried almost with pride, as scars that show.

Their prejudices determine and control their relationships with each other, as well as the way they choose to present themselves to the world. In rejecting each other, they create that impalpable distance that too easily comes to define them as opposites. Each assumes a moral or logical authority over the other and each dismisses, ignorantly, any possibility of shared principles or experiences.

Women are the same regardless of their settings and circumstances however, these very settings and circumstances are what define them and gives them their value systems. Do we really need to call ourselves feminists just so that we can respect the choices made by other women, no matter how different those choice might be from our own? And shouldn’t we be focusing on the real challenges that women, Eastern and Western, face? Isn’t it time for women to set their differences aside and focus on what really matters?