It looks as though the contemporary world is hanging over a dark and deep pit and people are walking through a narrow bridge and every step a human being takes becomes a fatal test by itself – whether he/she will shiver and struggle, meet some accident and fall into the pit or will somehow pass through either with some jerks and shocks or with all firmness and steadfastness and will find themselves in safe heaven.
The problem is why in the first place the world is hanging over a pit although the world is originally created by the Creator, Master and the Sovereign, Allah with all firmness, justice and balance. It seems people overlooked, neglected and sometimes even rejected the straight and the rightful bridge of Divine guidance which Allah blessed them with and they created their own loose and shaky bridges, paths, ways and sub-ways based on their ignorance and extremist and unjust actions and brought all havoc in the world, disturbing its balance and justice. However, nothing to be pessimistic. There have been always few people who never become victims of the shaky and dwindling bridges and remain firm on the just, moderate and the strong bridge built by the Almighty Allah, whose one of the attributes is that He is al Mateen, All-Strong and All-Overpowering.
Many of the modern ideologies on socio-economic and political issues and on the issues of human rights and women’s rights are nothing but shaky and loose bridges which are hanging over the dark and deep pit and people and nations following them are rocking in extreme directions with agony and anxiety. Sometimes, these modern ideologies are painted and decorated with religious terms and tones only to globalise the ideologies to promote the hidden goals and objectives of the ideologies. One such decorative term is Islamic Feminism.
In our last two articles on Islamic Feminism published in this magazine (Vol. LIII No. 17, 26 July-1 August, 2015, pp.8-12, & No. 20, 16-21 August, 2015), we have already discussed the inherent problems and agenda of Islamic Feminism. Here in this article, we would present the views of the Muslim women scholars and activists around the world who do not accept the terms and contents of Islamic feminism, but they are pro-active leaders, fully engaged themselves upholding the rights of women based on the Qur’ān and Sunnah and early Islamic history. There are some who are inspired by the Qur’ān and the Sunnah and do not totally reject feminism, but they are not comfortable with the terms Islamic Feminism and Islamic feminists and raise pertinent questions on the terms.
There are others who outright reject these terms and assert that Islam alone is capable enough to regain the rights of women and that feminism of any brand is not least suitable to work for the rights of Muslim women. This study thus emphasises that although few so-called Islamic feminists have been trying to win over some prominent Muslim women scholars and activists on their side, but these Muslim scholars remain firm and steadfast on their understanding of Islamic position on women and never submitted to the manipulation of the Islamic feminists.
It may be noted here that this kind of Muslim women scholars who say ‘no’ to feminism and ‘no’ to Islamic feminism and ‘yes’ to women’s rights in Islam are few prominent scholar-activists around the world, but they are less in number when compared to Western feminists, secular Muslim feminists and so-called Islamic feminists. We have not covered all these scholars in this small article and we are discussing only few of them.
To begin with, it seems better to present briefly here how Islamic feminism emerged. According to Margot Badran, an expert and a staunch protagonist of the so-called Islamic Feminism, discourses on Islamic Feminism may be traced back to 1980s and 1990s. She writes: “In the 1980s and early ‘90s, a major paradigm shift in Muslim gender thinking – what would eventually become known as ‘Islamic feminism’ – was underway.” (Margot Badran, Re/placing Islamic Feminism, November 12, 2010, in Gender, State & Society. http://www.sciencespo.fr/ceri.)
Afsaneh Najmabadeh, an Iranian-American historian and gender theorist and Ziba Mir Hosseini, an Iranian-born legal anthropologist, specialised in Islamic law and gender studies and few other Muslim women scholars promoted this term, Islamic Feminism, through Tehran’s women’s magazine, Zanan, founded in 1992 in Iran by Shahla Sherkat, a prominent journalist, and one of the pioneers of Women’s rights movement in Iran and the one who played a key role in promoting this term, Islamic Feminism. (Zanan, meaning women in English, is a monthly women’s magazine published in Iran. It was ceased in 2008, but was re-launched on 29 May 2014.)
Other scholars who started using this term in 1990s include Shamima Sheikh, who was a notable Islamic feminist and journalist from South Africa, and Mai Yamani, Egypt born, Saudi Arabian scholar, and anthropologist and also few women’s rights scholars and activists from Turkey like Yesim Arat, Faride Acar and Nilufer Gole. (Margot Badran, ‘Islamic Feminism: What’s in a Name?’ in her book, Feminism in Islam: Secular and Religious Convergences, Oxford, One World, 2009, pp.243-244).
However, from its inception, the term Islamic Feminism remains a debatable and contested term. Women scholars like Margot Badran, Kecia Ali, Miriam Cooke and all those scholars attached to Zanan in Iran, and few women exegetes and activists from South Africa, and few women scholars and leaders from a known women’s organisation in Malaysia, Sisters in Islam ( SIS) find no objection in the term, Islamic Feminism and they use it in their writings and speeches. (Margot Badran, Feminism in Islam, op.cit., p.244. See also Fatima Seedat, Islam, Feminism, and Islamic Feminism: Between Inadequacy and Inevitability, in the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Indiana University Press, Vol. 29, Issue 2, 2013.) Besides them, there are scholars who earlier rejected the terms Islamic Feminism and Islamic Feminists, but later they accepted these terms when many other Muslim Feminist scholars label their work as scholarly writings on Islamic Feminism.
A prominent scholar, Amina Wadud may be included in this category. In the past, Amina Wadud, according to Badran, ‘adamantly objected to being labelled an Islamic feminist. Now she shows less concern if others identify her as such; what is important to her is that people understand her work.’ (Margot Badran, Islamic Feminism: What’s in a Name?, Al Ahram Weekly Online, 7-23 Jan.,2002, Issue No. 569.).
Now we come to those few Muslim women scholars who are on one hand seriously dedicated to work for the rights of women from within the Islamic paradigm, but on the other hand, they do not reject feminism altogether, but they do feel uncomfortable with the terms Islamic feminism and Islamic feminists. These women scholars struggle hard with some genuine questions on the very convergence of the term Islamic feminism. For instance, Fatima Seedat, a known woman scholar and activist from South Africa, writes: “I argue that Islamic feminism may appear to be the inevitable result of the convergence of Islam and feminism, yet it is also inadequate to concerns for sex equality in Islam. Not only do some scholars resist the naming but, as an analytic construct, Islamic feminism precludes new understandings of sex difference originating in non-Western and anti-colonial cultural paradigms.” (Fatima Seedat, Islam, Feminism, and Islamic Feminism: Between Inadequacy and Inevitability, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Indiana University Press, Vol. 29, No. 2, Fall 2013, p.25)
It is quite clear from the above reflections of Seedat that she is uncomfortable with this term because she finds it inadequate when sex equality in Islam would be discussed within its framework and that it excludes discussions on gender issues from non-Western and anti-colonial cultural paradigms.
Another point to note in this discussion is how Badran tries to impose the term Islamic feminism on gender activism in South Africa. Seedat writes: “About that time Badran visited South Africa and took to naming local Muslim gender activism ‘Islamic feminism,’ even though this was not how we named our work. It was then, too that Naeem Jeenah, a fellow South African, interviewed me similarly arguing for Islamic feminism in South Africa. These two moments continue to raise unanswered questions for me even as I have come to embrace a feminism of my own. My questions relate to what is at stake when Muslim women’s equality analysis is called Islamic feminism?” (Fatima Seedat, read the whole article mentioned above, pp.25-49)
Something similar was experienced by Asma Berlas, a known Pakistani-American woman scholar-activist. In the case of Berlas, she was termed as Islamic feminist by Badran, which she never wanted for herself. Berlas writes: “What? How can people call me a feminist when I’m calling myself a believing woman?” “How can other people tell me what I am and what I’m doing?” “So what if I use some of the same language as feminists? Can’t one do that without buying into an entire ontology or epistemology!” “What?! Do feminists think that they discovered equality and patriarchy?!” And, eventually, “so what if they did? I derive my understanding of equality and of patriarchy from the Qur’ān, not from any feminist text!” (Asma Berlas, Engaging Islamic Feminism: Provincializing Feminism as a Master Narrative, in Anitta Kynsilehto ed., Islamic Feminism: Current Perspectives, Tampere Peace Research Institute, FI-33014, University of Tampere, Finland, pp.16).
Berlas further asserts: “Even so, I felt that the insistence on calling my work feminist denied something very real and specific about my encounter with the Qur’ān and I tried to express this by comparing myself to Muslim feminists who believe that Islam is a sexist and patriarchal religion that puts a ‘sacred stamp onto female subservience,’ in the words of Fatima Mernissi.” P.17. Hence, Berlas sharply remarks: “In a sense, then, it is the very inclusivity of feminism – its attempt, as a meta and master narrative, to subsume and assimilate all conversations about equality – that I find both imperializing and reductive.” (Asma Berlas, p.22. Read the whole article, pp. 15-24, Al-Aam Weekly Online 7-23 January 2002 Issue No.569)
Similarly, other Muslim scholars and activists like Heba Rauf Ezzat and Nadia Yassine also do not accept the intercession and combination of this term, Islamic Feminism. Yassine is a political activist from Adl wal Ihsan, or Justice and Welfare organisation, and one of the foremost leaders for women’s rights in Morocco. (Yassine is the daughter of Shaykh Abdesslam Yassine, the founder of the influential Justice and Spirituality Movement in Morocco). In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, she responded to one of the questions as to how one can be an Islamist and a Feminist? She said: “Those are just labels. Simplifying things stems from the logic of the media. But seriously: The history of the women’s movement in the West has unfolded completely differently from here. It is based on other traditions and pursues different goals. Seen superficially – if all that matters are the rights of women – you can call me a feminist if you like. But I speak for a different culture, the Islamic one. Our religion is very much friendly to women. In theory, in our sacred texts, we have many rights. But the men, these little machos, have robbed us of that. It’s their fault that the whole world believes the opposite.”( Interview with Moroccan Islamist Nadia Yassine: ‘Our Religion Is Friendly to Women’, SPIEGEL ONLINE INTERNATIONAL, Interview conducted by Daniel Steinvorth).
It is important to note here that although Nadia says that she can be called a ‘feminist’, but she looked at it just as a superficial label for her, because she made it quite clear that the feminist movement in the West and the women’s movement in Islam are different from each other in terms of traditions, cultures and goals. Other thing is, she is well aware of the internal problems created by some male interpreters of Islamic sources which need to be addressed.
Not only this, in this interview, she also clarified that the secular Muslim women activists who try to point out certain problems in Muslim traditions are small in number and imitate the West. She states: “The secular feminists are only part of a small elite. They live in an intellectual bubble. They imitate the West. They have removed themselves from Islamic culture. They are followers of small political parties that are dependent on the king. That is why, more than anything else, they want to defend their privileges.” (Interview, op.cit.).
When compared to the secular women’s movement, Islamists live with the people and try to solve the problems of women on the basis of Islamic values. She states: “The Islamists, on the other hand, are popular. They represent the people. Because the fact is that we are living in a Muslim society here. So I ask you: How else should the women’s movement work than on the basis of Islamic values? Our religion is much more capable of solving social problems than Western models that only benefit the elite. If you solve the social problems, you also help women. Women have no problem with Islam. They have a problem with power.” (Interview, op.cit.). It is self-evident from all these views of Nadia that she does not believe in any form of mix-matching of Feminism and Islam and strongly asserts that Islam by itself is capable enough to resolve the problems of women.
Heba Rauf Ezzat, a known Islamic political scientist and a prominent women’s rights activist from Egypt totally rejects the enforcement of the term Islamic Feminism. She argues that studies on the rights of women in Islam and the problems of Muslim women in family and in social structures dates back to the early history of Islam itself much earlier before the emergence of Feminism. Hence, it is pertinent not to enforce ‘feminist’ concepts while discussing Islamic position on woman.
She writes: “Women’s contribution to Islamic sciences dates back to early Islam, and has not seized through the centuries, with interruptions here and there in history due to different reasons in each case. This history of women’s involvement in ‘Ilm and Fiqh was recorded by male scholars themselves in books of history of Islamic sciences. The issue is not initiated by contemporary Western feminism but has its roots in our culture.’ (Heba Raouf Ezzat, Women and the interpretation of Islamic sources, Islamic Research Foundation International. http://www.islam21.net/pages/keyissues/key2-6.htm). Hence she asserts: “The issue is not necessarily “feminist” and other terminology can – and sometimes should – be used instead of the confusion and the enforcement of the concept “feminist” on the Islamic concepts and their semantic field as a key concept.” (Heba Rauf Ezzat, op.cit.).
Not only this, Heba unequivocally points out the very inherent characteristic of Islam, i.e., the liberation of ‘man’ from ‘man’ through his/her submission to Allah. She argues that Islam has potentials to liberate women from all kinds of man-made bondages, when they clash with Islamic message. She writes: “This is important to clarify that the liberating potential of Islam is inherent in Islam itself and its history and is not a result of forces outside the culture and civilization of Islam or a result of the contact with the West in the colonial era.” (Heba, op.cit.).
Another important point highlighted by Heba is the fact that some Muslim women scholars present and elaborate the works accomplished by the scholars of their own choice, and overlook the contribution of those Muslim women scholars who perceive Islam as complete system of life. Heba gives an example: “Ann Sophie Roald (In K.Ask & M.Tjomsland, 1998) for example studied Bint Al-Shati, yet forgot Zainab A-Ghazali – the leading Egyptian Muslim activist of the Muslim Brotherhood.” ( Heba, op.cit.).
(to be continued)