Journal of International Women's Studies Review: Arab America: Gender, Cultural Politics, and Activism

Varied concepts of Arabness exist in the world and especially so in the world’s only remaining economic and military superpower, the United States of America. These concepts may have driven much of the USA’s involvement in the Middle East and the Arab world, even before the most recent past and especially the attacks of 11 September 2001 on the USA. A framework of analysis called Orientalism, dominated much of western scholarship on Arabs and other Asian peoples through essentialist representations that renders them incompatible with western civilization. It is against this background that Naber analyses middle-class Arab American families and Arab and Muslim social movements, through what she calls an interrogation of ‘the dichotomies that ensnares Arab communities as they clamor for a sense of safety and belonging in the United States”.