What this exploration does do, though, is shed some light on just how multi-faceted their history is, allowing for a deeper and less partial understanding of who supports these practices and how how they became so widespread.
Hirschkind and Mahmood ("Feminism, the Taliban, and Politics of Counter-Insurgency") use Salman Rushdie's beliefs as a perfect example of such a partial, one-sided view of Islam from the West's persepective: Islam itself is wholly incompatible with Western ideals of modernization and freedom. This, in addition to his other controversial remarks, only heightened the tension between the West and the Muslim world. As Said insists ("The Clash of Ignorance"), pitting the West against Islam is a "gimmick" which serves more as a tool to bolster the idea of our "superiority," rather than creating a working model of how the world works, paying great attention to the effects of each civilization or culture upon the other.
