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| Feminism and Islam |
Intro ...
Muslim Iranian lawyer and women's rights activist, Shirin Ebadi won the Nobel Peace Prize last year but feminism, at least Western feminism is far from comfortable with the Islamic approach to women. This month's topic looks at Feminism and Islam with special attention given to the wearing of the hijab.
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Quotes ...
"I am against (patriarchal) culture, not Islam" - Shirin Ebadi
"...if women's rights are a problem for some modern Muslim men, it is neither because of the Koran nor the Prophet, nor the Islamic tradition, but simply because those rights conflict with the interests of a male elite...Not only have the sacred texts always been manipulated, but the manipulation of them is a structural characteristic of the practice of power in Muslim societies..." - Fatima Mernissi
"For the West, the scarf means oppression and patriarchy. The only thing anyone asks about Afghan women now is "have they taken the burqa off?" Yet the West's obsession with the hijab is not only misguided, it is misplaced. Far graver matters weigh on the minds of women in Iran, Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan. When women become the sum or absence of a head scarf, it is impossible to further the debate on women's rights. " - Mona Eltahawy.
"Sometimes women are forced to cover, as in Iran and Afghanistan, and that is certainly a restriction. But in other countries, hijab appears to be a matter of the woman's choice, of her own decision based on her reading of religious texts. Sometimes this dress gives women extra authority as they struggle with male Muslims to achieve gender equality." - Elizabeth Warnock Fernea
"The hijab was my way of choosing what to do with my body. I showed what I wanted to show. Why could a woman wear a mini skirt and consider herself a feminist while I had to defend my choice?" - Mona Eltahawy
"Veiling internalises the Islamic notion in women that they belong to an inferior sex, and that they are sex objects. It teaches them to limit their physical movements and their free behaviour. Veiling is a powerful tool to institutionalise women's segregation and to implement a system of sexual apartheid." - Azam Kamguian
"In the Western world, the hijab has come to symbolize either forced silence or radical, unconscionable militancy. Actually, it's neither. It is simply a woman's assertion that judgment of her physical person is to play no role whatsoever in social interaction. Wearing the hijab has given me freedom from constant attention to my physical self. Because my appearance is not subjected to public scrutiny, my beauty, or perhaps lack of it, has been removed from the realm of what can legitimately be discussed." - Naheed Mustafa
"Beloved France, respect my freedom" - banners at the demonstration in Paris against the French government's proposal to ban the wearing of the Islamic headscarves in state schools.
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Articles ...
The Iranian lawyer and human rights activist Shirin Ebadi was born in 1947. She received a law degree from the University of Tehran. In the years 1975-79 she served as president of the city court of Tehran, one the first female judges in Iran. After the revolution in 1979 she was forced to resign. She now works as a lawyer and also teaches at the University of Tehran. With Islam as her starting point, Ebadi campaigns for peaceful solutions to social problems, and promotes new thinking on Islamic terms. She has displayed great personal courage as a lawyer defending individuals and groups who have fallen victim to a powerful political and legal system that is legitimized through an inhumane interpretation of Islam. Ebadi has shown her willingness and ability to cooperate with representatives of secular as well as religious views. http://www.nobel.se/peace/laureates/2003/ebadi-bio.html
Shirin Ebadi returned to Tehran on 13 October to a mixed reception that is itself a symbol of the country's deep political divisions. Where ordinary people and activists greeted her with joy and pride, pro-regime hardliners unleashed an unprecedented wave of hostility against her. One of the most notorious cases Ebadi defended was that of Leila Fathi, an 11-year old rural girl who was raped by three men and then killed. The court ruled that since Leila's life was worth half of the value of each man who had murdered her, her family - in so-called compensation for the death sentence imposed on them - actually had to pay blood money for the men. http://www.opendemocracy.net/themes/article-10-1557.jsp
A group of Muslim women in an Indian village, fed up with what they say are sexist decisions made by the male authorities particularly in divorce cases, have decided to build their own mosque.The women in the village of Parambu in the southern state of Tamil Nadu have formed a group called Chaaya (Shadow) and acquired land to build the mosque, reported the Hindustan Times daily on Thursday. "This decision was taken after we found male-dominated jamaats (dispute settlement forums) handing down discriminatory verdicts in family disputes, especially in divorce matters," said Sharifa, the convenor of Chaaya, who uses just one name. "When a man seeks divorce, only his case is heard by the jamaat. The wife is never called for a hearing, saying that women are not permitted inside mosques, where the jamaat usually sits," she said. A woman well-versed in the Quran and Islamic tenets is to take charge at the new mosque. http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/45BD1B0F-6366-4F42-92AA-3CAAC13C5 1C7.htm
"Ten years ago, at the age of 25, I took off my scarf in Cairo and went out in public with my hair showing for the first time since I had turned 16. It is difficult to overestimate the guilt I felt. Putting on and taking off the scarf, or hijab, was my choice. I was not an oppressed Muslim woman. In fact, I became a feminist at the age of 19 while at university in Saudi Arabia. I came across the work of Muslim women who questioned the centuries-long interpretations of Islam that favored men. They convinced me that reinterpretation of my religion was possible." http://www.muslimwakeup.com/mainarchive/000358.php
I intend to contribute to the debate about Islam and the liberation of women in the Middle East as an activist and writer engaged in issues affecting women in the Middle East. I shall examine Islam's resistance to women's rights in the economic and social contexts in the region and will discuss the impact of the Islamic Shari'a law and political Islamic movement on women's citizen rights, their civil liberties and individual freedom. http://www.secularislam.org/women/liberation.htm
An estimated 3000 people have demonstrated in Paris against French President Jacques Chirac's controversial pledge to back a government ban on the Islamic headscarf in state schools http://heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,8236181%255E1702,0 0.html
Fernea finds one big difference between Western and Islamic feminism. Whereas Western feminism has defined itself over the years as solidly secular, a movement set apart from religion, the Muslim women she interviewed invariably seemed to say religion was part of their lives and could not be divorced from them. Fernea's statistics indicate that Iraqi women, despite living under a dictator, are the most liberated of all Middle Eastern women. The Iraqi Women's Federation boasts a million and half women members, spread out through the several provinces of Iraq. A working Iraqi mother gets one year of maternity leave. In terms of inheritance, women as well as men get what the law says, even the land. And there is an 85 percent literacy rate among Iraqi women. Fernea has high praise for the Iraqi approach with its support for maternity leave, child care and other needs that are shared by both women and men, saying that this might be called "family feminism." In America, she points out, "the feminist emphasis on the individual woman has allowed the religious right to appropriate family values." http://www.mepc.org/public_asp/journal_vol6/9806_halsell.asp
"In particular, I look at three aspects of hijab: the social context of veiling - is it just about "controlling women's sexuality"? - and what the rules for men are; the emotional and spiritual benefits that hijab may bring as a religious commandment; and the question of women's choice. This is not a complete and comprehensive exploration of the issue of veiling, but I hope that it addresses the most common questions that non-Muslims have about hijab, God willing." http://www.muhajabah.com/onveiling.htm
Since the history and heritage of Muslim peoples have been radically different from that of Western Europe and America, the feminism which would appeal to Muslim women and to the society generally must be correspondingly different. http://www.jannah.org/sisters/feminism.html
Fatima Mernissi is a contemporary Moroccan feminist writer. In The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women's Rights in Islam, trans. by Mary Jo Lakeland, she writes: "I was born in a harem, and I instinctively understood very young that behind every boundary something terrifying is hiding. It is fear, or rather fears, that I want to speak about..." http://www.nmhschool.org/tthornton/mehistorydatabase/fatima_mernissi.htm or http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/reviews/veil-and-the-male-elite/
KARAMAH: MUSLIM WOMEN LAWYERS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS is a charitable, educational organization which focuses upon the domestic and global issues of human rights for Muslims. KARAMAH stands committed to research, education, and advocacy work in matters pertaining to Muslim women and human rights in Islam, as well as civil rights and other related rights under the Constitution of the United States. http://www.karamah.org/
Want to read more? Reading list of books on this topic, hosted on a Muslim Australian woman's blog site. http://www.maryams.net/dervish/archives/000017.html
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ARTICLE RESEARCHED AND COLLATED FOR THE FEBUARY 2004 NEWSLETTER
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