Islamic feminism revisited
Surveying the most recent developments in Islamic feminism,
Margot Badran finds an increasingly dynamic global phenomenon
that is as varied as it is radical
I gave a talk in Cairo in 2002 titled: "Islamic Feminism: What's in a
Name?" There I explored the paradigm shift in feminism occurring
within the Muslim umma at various locations during the
1990s that Muslim observers led in the process of naming Islamic
feminism (see Al-Ahram Weekly, 17- 23 January, 2002). Now, four
years later, I would look at the current chapter in Islamic
feminism.
I had offered a concise definition of Islamic feminism gleaned from
the writings and work of Muslim protagonists as a feminist discourse and
practice that derives its understanding and mandate from the Qur'an,
seeking rights and justice within the framework of gender equality for
women and men in the totality of their existence. Islamic feminism
explicates the idea of gender equality as part and parcel of the
Qur'anic notion of equality of all insan (human beings) and calls
for the implementation of gender equality in the state, civil
institutions, and everyday life. It rejects the notion of a
public/private dichotomy (by the way, absent in early Islamic
jurisprudence or fiqh ) conceptualising a holistic umma in
which Qur'anic ideals are operative in all space.
Islamic feminism aims to recover the notion of gender equality,
radical in its day, that the Qur'anic revelation introduced into 7th
century (C.E) patriarchal Arabia. Insan -ic equality, from which
gender equality cannot be separated, did not sit well with the
patriarchal cultures into which Islam was first introduced and spread.
Patriarchal thought, institutions, and behaviours largely remained
resistant over time to the revolutionary Qur'anic notion of gender
equality to the extent that the equation of "patriarchy and Islam"
became axiomatic.
Islamic feminism has taken on the two-fold task to expose and
eradicate patriarchal ideas and practices glossed as Islamic --
'naturalised' and perpetuated in that guise -- and to recuperate Islam's
core idea of gender equality (indivisible from human equality). For this
Islamic feminism has incurred enemies from within and
without the Muslim community: 1) from within -- men who fear the
loss of patriarchal privilege and women who fear the loss of patriarchal
protection, and 2) from without -- those whose pleasure and politics are
found in denigrating Islam as irredeemably anti-women.
The new Islamic feminist paradigm began to surface a decade and a
half ago simultaneously in old Muslim societies in parts of Africa and
Asia and in newer communities in Europe and North America. I give three
examples.
In Iran, immediately post-Khomeini, Muslim women, along with some
male clerics, associated with the then new paper Zanan, as
Muslims and citizens of an Islamic Republic called, in the name of
Islam, for the practice of women's rights they found being infringed
upon or rolled back, grounding their arguments in their readings of the
Qur'an as the virtual constitution of the republic.
In South Africa, Muslim women and men, who had engaged as South
Africans in one of history's fiercest battles for human dignity and
justice, in the immediate post- apartheid period focussed their
attention upon questions of justice, and especially gender justice,
within their own Muslim community. Having been shunted around and
cordoned off, conscientised (to use the expression from the
Struggle) South African Muslims were sensitive to issues of access to
space and the injustices and indignities attendant upon selective use of
space and mandatory cordoning off of some human beings (on the basis of
physical attributes) from "preferred others." These sensitised South
African Muslims fought equal access to mosque/communal space for
all Muslims, women and men alike.
In North America, women in immigrant (especially the
second-generation) and convert communities turned to the Qur'an as a
guide to life in new complex environments in which they did not have
ready-made life-templates as Muslims. Patriarchal patterns of life in
the villages and cities from which first-generation Muslim immigrants
had come, which they tried to re-impose on women as Islamic, jarred in
their new environments. Convert women in western societies were faced
with a painful contradiction between what they understood to be Qur'anic
ideals of justice and equality and various patriarchal notions and
practices urged upon them as novices by self-appointed custodians of
Islam.
Islamic feminism is an inter-Islamic phenomenon produced by Muslims
at various locations around the globe. There is no East/West fault line.
We cannot speak of Islamic feminism and the West. Islamic
feminism, like Islam today, is in the West as it is in the East.
Muslim detractors allege that "the West" has foisted feminism, first
secular and now Islamic, upon Muslims to the detriment of Islam and
society. Muslim proponents, on the other hand, hold that Islamic
feminism promotes the enjoyment of social justice within the umma
while it will also contribute to the creation of a more pluralistic and
socially just West where all insan will be treated equal whatever
their ethnic, religious, and gender affiliations. The triumph of Islamic
feminism will also be part of the enhancement of social justice and
equality in the African and Asian societies where Muslims live.
Turning to the older Muslim societies in Africa and Asia, Islamic
feminism appeared first in countries where (patriarchal) Islamism got
its earliest start, countries which had a large and expanding educated
and professional female middleclass, and countries with a history of
homegrown feminist thought and activism. Islamic feminism appeared on
terrain prepared by Muslim women's earlier secular feminisms that were
an amalgam of Islamic modernist, secular nationalist, and humanitarian
(later human rights) discourses. Islamic feminism gave paramount
attention to the Islamic modernist strand of secular feminism and,
through engaging in new Qur'anic hermeneutic work, articulated an
Islamic doctrine of the full equality of women and men across the
public/ private spectrum. As such, it was more radical than the secular
feminisms that had accepted the notion of gender complimentarity, not
gender equality, within the sphere of the family.
It is important to note that Islamic feminism is the creation of
women and men for whom religion is important in their daily lives and
who are troubled by inequalities and injustices perpetrated in the name
of religion. Islamic feminism continues to spread because it is
relevant. It is engaged and enlightened. It is also controversial and
unsettling.
Islamic feminism circulates globally with great speed and
penetration. If early secular feminist thought circulated with the
advent of the printing press and the rise of print journalism in Muslim
societies, Islamic feminism is spreading infinitely faster and globally
via the Internet and the Satellite. It has a vibrant presence in
cyberspace reverberating in what Fatima Mernissi colourfully calls the
"digital Islamic galaxy."
The theoretical core of Islamic feminism continues to be grounded in
Qur'anic interpretation or tafsir. The central focus remains the
explication of gender equality in Islam. There is increased evidence of
the application of Islamic feminist theory in practice. This is seen in
the revision of the Moroccan Mudawwana or Civil Code, now the
most gender-egalitarian sharia -grounded civil code. It is also
evident in the new draft revision of the Family Code in Indonesia,
devised by a commission of religious scholars (half of whom are women)
appointed within the Ministry of Justice. Another example of the
application of gender-just interpretation of Islam is found in the
arguments marshaled, through a dynamic investigation of fiqh
(jurisprudence), that led to the acquittal of two Nigerian women accused
of adultery and condemned to death under the new hudud (criminal
laws) instituted in their northern Nigerian states while their partners
were never held accountable.
The terms Islamic feminism and Islamic feminists are now more widely
accepted. Islamic feminism is also part of the philosophy and politics
of the movement of Progressive Islam. The term Progressive Islam first
appeared in South Africa in the 1990s. Two years ago the Progressive
Muslim Union was formed in the United States and recently the
Progressive British Muslims group was launched in London at the House of
Commons. Islamic feminism and progressive Islam are trans/nationally
organised. The first international conference on Islamic feminism, held
last fall in Barcelona, drew participants from old and new Muslim
societies.
Muslim women are moving beyond passive knowledge of religion by
engaging in ijtihad (independent investigation of religious
sources) and becoming new authorities. In my historical investigation of
Muslim women's early (secular) feminisms it was clear that Islam was
salient in their gender thinking and activism. In the early decades of
secular feminism (the late 19th and early 20th centuries), and let me
take the Egyptian example, some women from within their
gender-segregated worlds accessed the ideas of Islamic modernism
advanced by Shaikh Muhammad Abduh (the famous late 19th and early 20th
century Egyptian reformer) that were relevant to their lives as female
Muslims. However, women's limited education at the time did not equip
them to undertake their own interpretation of the Qur'an (Nazira Zain
al-Din being an exception that proves the rule).
Since the final years of the 20th century women started to become
part of new interpretive communities, producing compelling tafsir
(analysis) and treatises on gender issues. While new female exegetes
have commanded considerable respect in the global umma, they have
also, not surprisingly, been discredited and maligned. However, if the
messenger and her authority are attacked, the new gender-sensitive
exegesis itself is becoming an authority. Meanwhile, it is
becoming increasingly apparent that it is difficult to square Islamic
notions of equality and justice with (secular) patriarchy still
supported by conventional male religious authorities. The new Islamic
feminist theorists and interpreters include: Asma Barlas (Pakistani),
Riffat Hassan (Pakistani), Amina Wadud (African-American), Ziba
Mir-Hosseini (Iranian), Qudsiyya Mirza (Iranian), and Aziza al-Hibri
(Lebanese), to name just a few.
Muslim women are moving beyond patriarchal protection and re-figuring
obedience. Islamic feminist tafsir elaborates a compelling
explication of the equality of all human beings, male and female alike,
while at the same time recognising gender difference. (There is a
male/female duality in all creation, reflected in the grammatical
construction of the Qur'anic language in reference to humankind and
animals, which are rendered in the dual form: insan and
hayawan. ) Recognition of biological duality in no way diminishes
the idea of fundamental equality of all human beings. Neither sex is
superior to the other. Neither sex is ordained to rule over the other.
Patriarchy, as ideology and practice, with its stringent hierarchal
ordering, fundamentally disrupts the Qur'anic ideal and practice of
human equality.
In explicating human equality Islamic feminist exegetes focus on the
Qur'anic notions of khilafa and tawhid. The Qur'an speaks
of khilafa, or the trusteeship of God on earth, delegated to all
human beings, a divinely ordained human agency. This trusteeship or
agency, logically and morally cannot be diminished, or "de-equalised",
by the biological attributes of insan -- sexual, racial, or
whatever.
Islamic feminist exegetes connect the idea of equality of all
humankind in its (biological) duality with the idea of tawhid --
the one-ness of God. No human being can partake of this one-ness. No
human being can or should act like a God or exact what is owed only to
God. Ta'a, or obedience, is due to God alone. Within the
patriarchal universe women owe obedience to men, and younger males to
older males. This obedience has often been so starkly constructed and
stringently imposed that male human beings have made themselves into
virtual gods.
The new gender-sensitive exegetes have focused attention on male
supremacy in marriage and the family imposed in the name of Islam that
is fundamentally disruptive of the Qur'anic principle of human equality.
In 4:34 of the Qur'an, the term " qawwamuna 'ala " has been used
to justify and perpetuate male authority over and protection of women as
a prerogative and duty of men. The new women exegetes offer a rereading
that affirms the Qur'anic ideal of human equality. They place the
statement that men are qawwamuna 'ala women in the context of
childbearing and nursing when women exert labor that men do not and
cannot, and read this as men having responsibility "a degree above" in
this context in a way that acts as a balancing or equalising of labour.
Patriarchal interpretation reads this verse as ordaining that the male
is in charge of the woman or has authority over the woman and he is a
"degree above" her. The patriarchal reading has been so firmly and
pervasively held over time and place that it is seen as "Islam
itself."
This reading has promoted and entrenched the notion of male
protection of women, the fundamental duty of a husband to support his
wife materially and take charge of her spiritually and morally. Many
women have welcomed this notion of male protection and material support
as intrinsic to Islam and a decided benefit. But with this protection
and material support have come exaggerated forms of obedience to men, to
the point that it became a commonplace notion that a woman's path to
heaven lay through obedience to her husband, thus detouring her
obedience to God and rendering her khilafa second-class.
Along with deconstructing the notion of female dependency and male
protection, Islamic feminists elaborate the idea of mutual
support/protection of males and females embodied in the notion of
awliya enjoined upon male and females believers, specifically
citing the two genders . (Qur'an 9:71: "The believers, male and
female, are protectors of one another.") Why has this idea historically
not been made the touchstone of gender relations?
Islamic feminist interpreters work at the intersection of idea and
reality. Gender-tuned interpreters of the Qur'an are mindful of changing
social and economic realities as they approach the sacred text for
guidance. Today in the greatly expanding middle classes in Muslim
societies, husbands and wives have increasingly to pull their joint
weight in the economic support of the family and in the everyday running
of its affairs. Ideas of socially and religiously ascribed gender roles
give way to practical imperatives. The Qur'anic notion of mutuality of
spousal support is becoming increasingly operative in the middle strata
of society as it has always been among the urban and rural poor who have
historically constituted the majority of Muslims. The Qur'anic notion of
gender equality, expressed in the notion of the mutual protection of the
spouses of each other, has recently been legally established in the idea
of dual headship of the family affirmed in the revised Moroccan
Mudawwana and the new Indonesian draft family law, both of which
are sharia - grounded.
Muslim women and men together are revamping ritual life. It is in
Muslim minority communities, especially but not only in the West, that
moves toward new ritual practices have been most apparent recently. In
Muslim minority communities, participation in mosque-centered activities
-- especially congregational worship -- has an intensity of meaning and
social significance different from that found in Muslim majority
societies. In minority contexts, individual and collective Muslim
identity is expressed and re-affirmed within mosque space. If they are
made unequal in religious space it casts them as second-class Muslims.
In Muslim majority societies, Muslim identity prevails in society at
large. However, while they may be part of the religious majority, women
have acquired greater equality in secular space than in religious space.
Muslim women find themselves equal in the larger national/secular
society and unequal in their own communal space.
To return to the South African Islamic feminist contexts, in Cape
Town in the mid-90s a woman (visiting theologian Amina Wadud) gave the
first-ever pre- khutba talk at the Claremont Mosque. The 'mosque
movement' in South Africa was a fulcrum for Islamic feminist demands for
gender equality, or "gender jihad" -- a term coined by an imam
(Rashied Omar) in South Africa --- within the Muslim community. Now, a
decade after the start of mosque activism in South Africa,
mosque-centered movements are underway in the United States and Canada
with women and men supporting the demand for female access to main
mosque space during congregational prayer and women beginning to assume
the role of imam, leading gender-mixed congregational
worship.
Within the past year women have acted as imams in Friday
services in the United States (the first time in a New York church when
mosque space was refused them) and at a mosque in Canada. Women's
demands for equal access to common mosque space and the ability to lead
the congregational prayer for one American male convert conjured up sit-
ins in the mid-20th-century United States by African- Americans who were
demanding equal access to public institutions and space, denied them
simply on the basis of race. This, in turn, reminds me of Muslims'
post-apartheid demands in South Africa for non-discrimination of Muslims
in mosque space on the basis of gender.
The mosque movement continues to spread and appears to be
un-stoppable. The first-ever International Islamic Feminist Conference
that took place in Barcelona last October, organised by the Junta
Islamica Catalana, reaffirmed the call for women's free access to the
mosque as a Muslim women's right. We note that here in Egypt ninety-four
years ago among the secular/nationalist feminist demands presented to
the Muslim National Congress meeting in Heliopolis (1911) was the call
by women for access to mosques for congregational prayer. This was at a
time when women of the middle and upper urban strata were segregated
from public space; thus their entry into religious space would become
part of their entry into public space.
Here I have only been able to touch the surface of the current
chapter in the story of Islamic feminism. As seen from the presentation,
the further elaboration of tafsir /theory and proliferation of
activist projects are part of the dynamism of contemporary Islamic
feminism. There are contradictions that Islamic feminist
theorists and interpreters have to work through but they always keep
their eyes on the highest Qur'anic ideals. There are practical
roadblocks Islamic feminists face that not even the shield of unmarked
discourse (the blotting out of the term Islamic feminism) can protect
from. But, observation confirms that women as Islamic feminists remain
committed to elaborating and living a gender- egalitarian Islam that
they understand to be at the very core of the religion -- a notion
radical at the time of revelation and still radical today.
A version of this article was presented recently as a talk at the
Netherlands/Flemish Institute in Cairo. Margot Badran is a senior fellow
at the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian
Understanding, Georgetown University.