Carnegie Reporter, Vol. 2, No. 3 | Islam & Feminism: ARE THE BARRIERS COMING DOWN? page 2

Increased contacts in the American workplace—where Muslim women have become increasingly visible—and in international development projects have contributed to the change. Global gatherings such as the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women, in Beijing, also brought interactions between the two sides. In addition, the mass rape of Muslim women by Christian Serbs in Bosnia, the Taliban’s mistreatment of Afghan women, and the trauma of September 11th all challenged Western feminists to reach out to Muslim women. “There is an understanding that the world has changed,” says Gisela Webb, associate professor of Islamic and women’s studies at New Jersey’s Seton Hall University, “and that the first wave of feminism had the possibility of becoming patriarchal itself.”

Signs of growing mutual understanding are not huge but nevertheless noteworthy. In April, Women’s eNews added an Arabic-language page to its web site to cover women’s issues in
the Middle East and among Arabic-speaking women in the United States. The move was sparked in part because Women’s eNews (www.womensenews.com) had noticed that its English-language site was receiving a significant volume of visitors from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, editor-in-chief Rita Henley Jensen says. The new page, she adds, is also meant to “communicate to the Arab-speaking world that some of us are struggling to find out more about Islam and about Arab-speaking nations.”

Another example of collaboration is the recent book, Nothing Sacred: Women Respond to Religious Fundamentalism and Terror (Thunder’s Mouth Press/ Nation Books, 2002). The volume contains essays by secular American feminists such as columnist Katha Pollitt and dramatist Eve Ensler, as well as scholarly specialists in Islam, notably Karen Armstrong and Leila Ahmed. The book’s theme is that extremists in several religions—not only Islam—threaten women’s rights around the world. In addition, the first conference of an organization called Women for Afghan Women held in late 2001 in New York included both Muslim women’s rights activists and American feminists. “That’s what was so remarkable about it, the inclusivity,” says participant Irena Lieberman, a Virginia attorney who has assisted Muslim women fleeing gender-based persecution. And last May, Muslim women were among female theologians of various faiths who met for a conference on women, religion and social change at Harvard University.

These are small steps on a still-long journey towards deeper rapprochement, which depends on many things, including greater clarity about definitions.

Feminism is the principle that women have an equal right to the same opportunities as men in all spheres of life. But feminism’s content depends on the circumstances of individual women. The word means one thing to a female executive in New York frustrated that the “old boys network” hinders her ascent through the corporate ranks. It means something else to a rural Pakistani widow resisting pressure from male relatives to withdraw her teenage daughters from school so they can be married off.

One reason why Millett’s vision of an international women’s movement foundered was its underlying assumption that all women everywhere wanted exactly the same rights and opportunities that Millett enjoyed as an American. The reality is that there are different expressions of feminism because women in different countries have different priorities. And for some Muslim women, the American feminist movement has become too narrowly identified with issues that are not their top priorities, such as abortion and lesbian rights. “Women’s rights are universal but they have to be fought for in a specific context,” says Nayereh Tohidi, an Iranian-born associate professor of women’s studies at California State University, Northridge. “I don’t believe in global feminism. It’s a fantasy, a romantic idea...The feminist movement is not one movement, but many.”

Another reality is that many Muslims in foreign lands believe that the United States is hostile to Islam and is using women’s rights as the tip of its spear in a cultural “invasion” of the Muslim world. In this atmosphere, the word feminism has taken on nefarious connotations, viewed as a Western movement of men-haters who extol the individual over the community, are sexually libertine and contemptuous of marriage and the family.

As a result, many Muslim women working for gender equality both in the United States and abroad refuse to call themselves feminists. “We don’t use that [word] too much, but we are coming from a female perspective,” says Irfana Anwer, executive director of KARAMAH’s Washington office. “We don’t try to put it into people’s faces...and put people off unnecessarily.”

It is another sign of shifting attitudes, however, that some young American Muslims are no longer averse to the label. Mohja Kahf says she has left behind her earlier reluctance to call herself feminist, adding, “I’m a little tired of defensive Muslim women and men who are for gender equity” and use “verbal acrobatics” to avoid the word. “Why not do it openly and accept the term?”

Honest dialogue also demands a better understanding of Islam. As with Judaism and Christianity, Islam is expressed in many different ways. Islam is practiced in Saudi Arabia very differently from how it is practiced in Egypt, Turkey or the United States. Even within the same country, Muslims hold different views on how Islam’s moral message should be applied.

Non-Muslims often overlook this diversity, taking the most intolerant and ultra-orthodox expressions of Islam as representing the religion as a whole. They often also fail to distinguish between Islam—a faith that unquestionably affirms human dignity and gender egalitarianism—and misogynist customs and prejudices prevailing in many male-dominated Islamic societies.

Take the idea that women cannot drive.

Or that women are obliged to wear head-to-toe garments.

Or that girls should have their clitoris cut so they do not become sexually promiscuous.

Or that men have the right to restore family “honor” by murdering a female relative who has had a sexual relationship outside marriage.

Do these things happen in some Islamic countries? Yes. Are they required, condoned or suggested by Islam? No.

It is true that some Muslim religious authorities cite Islamic scripture and Islamic law, or shari’a, to justify these practices. But it is also true that other Muslim clerics go to the same scriptural sources to denounce these customs as contrary to Islam. Simply put, such practices are examples of women’s repression by patriarchal societies that happen to be Muslim. “It’s important to know,” says Azizah al-Hibri, “that just because a Muslim country is passing laws doesn’t mean that those laws are in accord with Islam.”

Many Western feminists also are often unaware that, to a greater degree than ever before in Islam’s 1,400-year history, Muslim women are challenging the religious rationales for these patriarchal traditions. The work of these female scholars is part of a revolutionary theological reassessment going on in Islam as Muslims around the world seek to revitalize their faith. Using the ancient Islamic practice of ijtihad, which means exerting one’s utmost effort to understand, Muslims are re-examining Islam’s holy book, the Qur’an, and its other scriptures to understand how Islam’s ethical message should be applied in a modern context.

Sometimes said to be on a “gender jihad,” these female Muslim scholars base their work on two premises. First, because Islam is a compassionate, just and egalitarian faith, its implementation must be the same. Second, for most of Islam’s history, men have monopolized the interpretation of Islamic scriptures and Islamic jurisprudence, a situation that did not produce genuine gender equality in Muslim societies.

“For centuries, men have been the main interpreters of Islam and what it means to be a good Muslim woman...To be blunt, many of the interpretations have a misogynistic bent to them,” says Tayyibah Taylor, editor of the Atlanta-based Azizah magazine. In these male-designed models of Muslim womanhood, she adds,“‘pious’ was defined as the silent, invisible one. The quieter you are, the more pious you are.”

Next page: But women scholars are now demanding recognition of widely ignored rights for women that are clearly laid out in the Qur’an.

Page 1 | 2 | 3