An Examination of Feminism in Islam

Précis

In Women and Gender in the Muslim World, Moghdam and Mitra assert that in the “Muslim world” (162), gender is intertwined with fundamentalist “cultural and political reassertions” (162) of Islam. While those that adhere to Islamic law have argued that Islam lays a base for human rights, secular feminists attribute “women’s impediment” to this phenomenon. However, Islam is interpreted and practiced differently over time, so these generalizations are inaccurate. Moghdam argues that “whether the content of the Qur’an is inherently conservative and hostile toward women or egalitarian and emancipatory…is less central or problematic than is often assumed” (163). To examine feminism within Islam, is it imperative to consider the “broader sociopolitical and economic order within which these are realized” (163). While “the world-system and ‘world cultures’” influence gender relations on an international scale, the histories of particular nation-states are also crucial. On an international scale, the “Muslim world is located in the hierarchical world-system of stages, economies, and cultures,” (153) thus the variance in the Muslim nations that aligned with worldwide groups is undermined through this framework. Furthermore, the role of women as nationalists in male-dominated movements alongside feminist movements “have shown that,” despite the contradictory nature of gender politics toward feminist movements, “women can be major participants in [national] movements” (164) and they have been. There has been notable change and development because of the work of these women in partnership with transnational human rights networks. Still, there is “much ignorance of the presence of dynamic feminist groups dedicated to women’s empowerment, and of an array of women’s organizations that engage with policy issues” (164) in the Middle East.

Badran tells us that in attempts to engage with the global phenomenon of modernity, “pioneering women constructed new feminisms, appropriating the discourses of Islamic modernism and secular nationalism” (216). Though gestures towards “Islamic feminism” (325) were already occurring in the 1980s, the term was officially coined in the 1990s when outside observers witnessed the shift in gender thought and practice. Feminism was “articulated in an Islamic paradigm,” (326) but Muslim scholars did not wish to identify with the Western term “feminism”. With the emergence of the internet in the beginning of the 21st century however, younger producers of Islamic feminist discourse “were embracing the term Islamic feminism and claiming the identity” (326). Regardless, this points to an ongoing controversy surrounding the use of the term ‘feminism’. Due to the complicated nature of modernity in the Middle East in colonial and imperialist context, feminist discourses have faced challenges with preexisting dichotomies. Feminist movements worldwide originated simultaneously, showing that in in the first half of the 20th century, feminists “did not import feminism from the “West”, but rather “constructed their own feminisms from an amalgam of nationalist, religious reform and humanitarian discourses” (327). This type of feminism was referred to as “secular feminism,” deriving its motivations from the individualist, protectionist qualities of secularism. However, the connotation of secularism later developed in opposition to religion. This divide furthered the antagonism between religious and non-religious women. Islamic feminism and Muslim-secular feminism do not function in opposition but strengthen one another.