FEMINISM

There is a struggle within Islamic societies over the definition of Islam and the role of women within it. This struggle has accompanied Muslims throughout their history.

The term "feminism" is controversial. It may conceal a Western attempt at cultural hegemony or it may be labeled as that by those who oppose women's rights but would not admit to it. Many Muslim women who may support women's rights may not choose to identify themselves as feminists. For many women there may be a perceived psychological, social, and physical danger even in expressing the desire for equal rights.

Whereas one cannot avoid making general comments about Muslim women, it ought to be kept in mind that Muslim communities are widespread and diverse, consisting of a complex set of interwoven subcultures. For example, the issues and realities of Saudi Arabian Muslim life, where women must cover their bodies and hair in public, are very different from those of Indonesian Muslim women, where there is currently a female Muslim head of state.

A common claim is that pre-Islamic Arabia oppressed women and Islam liberated them. There is a similar claim made today by Islamist movements that Western societies or women in non-Muslim cultures in general are oppressed and traditional Islam liberates them. One should remember that spiritual or emotional liberation through Islam is individual and personal and cannot be judged from the outside. But economic, social, and political rights can be gauged by intersubjective criteria and Muslim women lag far behind Muslim men in all these areas, especially in Muslim majority countries. Whether this is due to or despite Islam is open to debate.

At the other end of the spectrum from the Islamists, there is a stream of feminist thought that considers Islamic tradition as irredeemably misogynist and patriarchal. These sentiments are an echo of those voiced by the women of al-Ta?if in the seventh century who wailed and protested when the temple dedicated to the Goddess was destroyed at the instruction of prophet Muhammad. Between these two extremes lie a variety of approaches and convictions, both defined and undefined, regarding the issue of women and Islam. Whereas the Islamists may desire to discredit feminism as a Western ploy, one may posit that neither Islam, nor feminism as a movement for the full dignity and equality of women in society, are either Western or Eastern. Feminism represents a deep human aspiration for a sense of community with the world, and Islam, at its core, represents the same aspiration for a sense of community both with the human race and the realm of the Unseen.

Most of the literature produced by Muslims in the previous centuries is still in manuscript form waiting to be discovered or published. The extent to which women participated in the production of the Muslim cultures that they inhabited cannot be determined without access to information that may not have been recorded or that may not have been adequately preserved even if initially recorded. One of the tasks for feminists today is to use the available sources to construct a more accurate picture of women in early Islam, from which they can deduce early Islam's implications for modern women. This study may entail a wider use of noncanonical texts and sources, as theological canons generally reflect the biases of the male elites.

In the recent past there has been an urgent attempt to understand the definitive political defeat and colonization of Muslims at the hands of the Christian West, as this shattered the imperial Muslim self-image. Modernist male Muslims forced to study and understand their subjugation, and thus feminization, began to name its causes. Some identified the malaise of the umma (community of believers) as intellectual backwardness and lack of dynamism, whereas others identified it in falling away from the path of the earliest generations of Muslims whose political success was seen to stem from their adherence to a certain static conception of Islam. The former stream of thought endeavored to study and emulate the West whereas the latter warned of its moral decadence and sought only to appropriate its material technologies of power to regain Muslims' freedom, dignity, and even supremacy.

It was from among the reformist modernist male thinkers that the first proponents for the education and rights of Muslim women arose. Women raised in reformist homes became the first Muslim feminists. As anticolonial nationalist movements took over the Muslim world women participated in them along with men. However, the disillusionment of the postcolonial era with its dire economic problems, political instabilities, corruption, and military or dynastic dictatorships, as well as covert and overt interference from the super-powers, militated against civil liberties and human rights in Muslim countries. Under such conditions Islamist movements gained ascendancy in many of the Muslim countries causing women to lose many of the rights that they had gained in earlier decades. The loss of women's human rights where religious fundamentalism gained in power is merely an indication of the lack of human rights for all in such societies. Such a situation has given rise to a spectrum of Muslim feminist responses.

Among Muslim women who had the benefit of higher education are feminists who consider Islam to be a matter of personal choice that ought not to be "used or abused" for political purposes. There are also women feminist scholars who are socialist, agnostic, atheist, or Marxist in their orientation. There are scholars who see Islam as a rich and viable culture in need of a thorough and yet sympathetic feminist critique. There are liberal Muslim theologians writing in the politically free Western environment who nonetheless remain apologetic, staying within the prescribed traditional approach to the Qur?an and the sunna.

Finally, in the Muslim countries where one sees a mismatched marriage between feminism and Islamism it is not clear whether the Islamist Muslim women leaders/preachers are contributing toward the relative subjugation or relative liberation of their large female following. The ideological or intellectual differences among Muslim feminist scholars are paralleled in the various forms of feminist activism in various parts of the Muslim world. In certain areas one finds highly visible feminist movements, in others only guarded private conversations.

In general, the area that takes up the attention of most feminists, whether they work within a traditional Islamic framework or not, is the implementation of various Islamic laws. Until recently the area of shari?a (Islamic law) that was discussed and implemented in most of the Muslim world was the Muslim family law covering issues of marriage, divorce, child custody, and inheritance. In all of these women do not have equal status with men. For example, Muslim family laws and the social consciousness associated with them circumscribe and constrain women's lives, and so-called honor killings that dishonor the lives of innocent women and the indiscriminate application of hudud (Islamic criminal) laws directly threaten their lives.

Dishonor killings (an integral feature of all patriarchal societies) as well as female infanticide (a preemptive dishonor killing practiced in pre-Islamic Arabia) were outlawed by the prophet Muhammad as evidenced both by texts in the Qur?an and the sunna. However, the taking of innocent female life in the name of male honor continues to exist in many Muslim countries with the tacit approval of law enforcement agencies and clerics, instilling a deep-seated fear of their male family members in the hearts of women.

More recently, the enforcement of some of the most severe hudud punishments has alarmed a majority of Muslims, human rights activists, and feminists internationally. Pseudoliberal Muslims, who in principle do not disagree with an informed application of hudud laws, question its implementation in the absence of social welfare and economic justice, as is the case in some of the areas attempting to implement shari?a laws. But these Muslims fail to recognize or address the significant lack of political, social, and religious freedom for individuals in such areas to carry out an expression of religion that is harsh and lacking in compassion.

In the twentieth century, progressive Muslim scholars have come to look at the hadith corpus as a record of the concerns and understandings of earliest Muslim male communities rather than an authoritative divine guide to all the details of one's life. Yet they have continued to adhere to an understanding of the Qur?an as the literal word of God. This, however, is giving way to a more complex and self-reflective reading of the Qur?an as a vehicle engendering a "theoethics" and aesthetics of mercy and justice as well as a record of the Prophetic struggle, both within his own person and with the community of Muslims. The Qur?an, the primary symbol of Muslim identity, for the most part has become an idol that petrifies the community's understanding of the compassionate will of God in their lives. In an intellectually and spiritually mature and honest Muslim community the Qu?ran and its readings would be seen as progressive records both of an individual's and a community's encounter with, as well as projection unto, the Unseen. Such a Muslim community that understands the good example of the Prophet not in terms of any particulars of his life, apparel, and so on, but in terms of the ethical values that he struggled to embody at his best, shall provide the context within which women and other groups targeted for discrimination (simply due to a difference in their religion or sexual orientation) will find dignity and equitable treatment.

See alsoGender .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Afkhami, Mahnaz, and Friedl, Erika, eds. Muslim Women and the Politics of Participation. Implementing the Beijing Platform. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1997.

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Mernissi, Fatima. Beyond the Veil. Male-Female Dynamics in Muslim Society (1975). Rev. ed., Syracuse, New York: Al Saqi Books, 1985.

Spellburg, Denise. Politics, Gender and the Islamic Past: The Legacy of A?isha bint Abi Bakr. N. Y.: Columbia University Press, 1999.

Wadud, Amina. Qur?an and Women. Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Ghazala Anwar