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During the period
of nineteenth-century colonialism, feminism was strongly opposed in Britain
and Europe. What was the nature of the introduction of feminist discourse into Muslim
countries like Egypt at that time? How did that affect the future attitude of many Muslims
toward the feminist enterprise? |
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It will show that
the status of women in Islamic societies has never been uniform or monolithic
but has shifted from place to place, from age to age, and from class to social class. There were
also differences between nomadic and sedantary, Arab, Turkic, and Mongol Tribes provided
avenues for strong women [of tribal status]. |
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We know little about Muslim in societies beyond the core zones. Ibn Battuta tells
us about West
Africa, Mauritius, etc. There were matriarchal societies. |
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The greatest disparity,
however, has been between the norms of the Prophetic period and
those of subsequent ages. Prophetic society lacked the rigid divisions of social space that
became characteristic of many traditional Islamic societies, and, as a rule, Prophetic society
was more open and less patriarchal, giving women greater freedom and allowing them a
conspicuous role within the matrix of social and civic life. |
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Gender is a charged issue. Some Muslims confront it simply by declaring that "Islam
liberated
women." This is about as meaningful as saying that "Islam is peace" or "Islam is
against
terrorism." Such pronouncements are hollow if they do not address the real issues and problems
in
Muslim societies: the status of women needs liberation; Muslims must stand up against terrorists
in their midst and solve the underlying social and economic problems. Yet who condemns Osama
ben Laden, who condemns the suicide terrorists, who have become so common that Islam has
become identified with them? |
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Many Muslims are psychologically and spiritually insecure. They need to be told over
and over
again that Islam is great and we are great--despite the wretched present that we find almost
everywhere than we find Muslims. |
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There are those in Muslim societies--including Islamic centers and mosques--who have
vested
interests in blocking women's rights in Muslim society. They "camouflage their self-interests
by
proclaiming that you either have their way (which is Islamic) or the other way, which is un-Islamic.
Women's rights are not a problem because of the Prophetic legacy but because of male elites that
benefit from the status quo. |
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Concern with the "socio-moral degeneration of Muslim society." [We used
to talk about this in the
1970s. Then it became popular to talk about how bad everybody else was and how oppressed we
were. We became very judgmental--judging everyone but ourselves.) |
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'Abduh: Reforms regarding women are necessary for the rebirth of sound Islamic society.
Many of
our problems go back to child rearing and are a function of the feminine matrix in which that takes
place-- uneducated, neglected women, disempowered women. Anti-social behavior is typical of
women in the Muslim world: dirty bathrooms, dirty prayer areas, talking during khutbas. In the
West you expect women to be cleaner than men; in the East it is the other way around. |
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'Abduh: Men who want only to be masters of their homes and oppress the women in their
households, should also be content to raise a generation of people only worthy of being slaves to
others. |
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Both men and women need liberation in the context of modern Muslim societies.
There is an immense waste of our human resources throughout the Muslim world--
in body and
mind. |
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The Muslim mind must be liberated --empowered. These are the greatest shackles that
keep us
from Qur'an and Sunnah and the light of guidance.
Deconstructed, reconstructed--made authentic--and empowered. Made understanding,
self-
confident, and dynamic as of old.
Liberation from the overpowering bonds of false understanding, misdirected values,
invalid ideas,
strange conceptions that have dominated Muslims for decades and centuries.
Complex ignorance = applied complex ignorance. |
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Women must have access to social and economic space. They must know what is happening
in
"the world of men." |
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Pluralism, human rights, women's rights, equal suffrage, economic equality: Cultural
Modes that
are adapted to the new dynamics of economy and communication. THE NEW AXIAL AGE. |
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Modernity has had
a severe impact on the social system of Islam. But the
family remains central to the Islamic social system and sense of identity.
Thus, issues of women in the context of the family receive a
disproportionate amount of attention in the discussions of Islam in the
modern context. |
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The world is old but the future springs from the past. The sleeping past can animate
the present.
That is the virtue of memory. Let us raise the saild of the memory ship: this is to speak the
language of freedom and self- development. NOTE: And we must allow ourselves to be inspired by
the inspirational tradition. |
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I wanted to study the biographical dictionaries on women--simply because, in terms
of
methodology, this is a first. We cannot judge a thing without knowing what and how it was. We
cannot generalize in historiography about women based on how they are in the Muslim world today-
-Just as we cannot generalize about Islamic Civilization in the past based on the ruins and
garbage heaps of the contemporary Muslim world.
MY SURPRISE: When I began to look into the dictionaries--I opened to al Udar. Then
I found this
amazing array of great women. |
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Basrah: mu'tazili but among the greatest of Islamic thinkers and the most remarkable.
NOTE: Jahiz has Fakhr as-Sudaan ‘ala l-BiDaan; the Book of Misers; the Book of Mules;
the Book
of Animals. The Book of Granting Precedence to Dogs over Many Who Walk Upright. |
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Men and women spoke with each other in Jahiliyah
and Islam until the hijaab was placed upon the wives of
the Prophet, peace be upon him.
Jahiz is arguing
from the lives of the Companions and the early generations of Muslims that it is
permissible to discoure with women properly and look at them in the course of that and that it is forbidden
to look at that of their bodies which only the husband and mahram can see. |
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He then discusses
how the early Muslims saw no harm in women remarrying as long as there
were men who were still interested in her.
“But today
they loathe that and regard it to be a type of depravity in
some [women], and they expect a free woman who has already been
married [once] to remain chaste [the rest of her life without
remarrying] and they attribute shame and scandal to anyone who
seeks to marry her. |
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We do not say nor
does anyone with intellect say that women are above men or below them by
one degree or by two or more than that.
Yet we have seen
people who disparage them to no end and look upon them with the greatest
disdain and blatantly deny them most of their rights.
And verily it is
a [strange type] of incapacity [impotence] when a man cannot fulfill the rights of
his fathers and paternal uncles except by denying the rights of his mothers and maternal uncles,
and for this reason we have [taken it upon ourselves] to call to mention a large number [jumlah]
of the praiseworthy attributes of women…. |
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[NOTE: Jahiz had said at the beginning of the article
that the feeling of love in one’s heart is what produces
immeasurable good, while the feeling of hatred in the heart is what produces immeasurable evil.
Therefore, hatred of women produces great evil. |
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Jahiz notes that, although it is much more common
and apparent for people to speak of the superiority of
men over women—the [regardless of that issue]:
“…it must never be the case that we fall
short as regards the rights of the woman. It must never be the case
that the aggrandize the rights of the fathers by belittling the rights of the mothers, and likewise
the brothers
and the sisters, and the sons and the daughters…”. |
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It is our opinion that ghairah has no place except
regarding that which is forbidden. If there were nothing
forbidden, there would be no ghairah…. |
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“…But this is a matter in which the
the multitude [al- muta’addun] have gone too far beyond the limits of
ghairah to those of bad character and narrowness of parochialism [Diiq al-‘aTan]—such that
it has
become for them like an obligatory right. “…Can you not see that ghairah, when
it goes beyond the limits
of what God has made forbidden, is batil?…but some go to the extent that they have ghairah regarding
women even on the basis of zann or a dream that they saw in their sleep…..” |
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“There are limits that embrace everything
in the world and that comprise all of their extents that have been
set for them in due proportion. Thus, each moral attribute [khuluq] that goes beyond the limits
that have
been set for it—even in deen and wisdom, which are the most excellent of all things—is ugly
and deserving
of blame.
I will make clear to you what is beauty.
It is the perfection of moderation. [It is to be perfect in [your]
moderation….to go beyond that is to diminish beauty [in all things]]. |
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The issue of women
only emerged as the centerpiece of the Western narrative of Islam in the
nineteenth century, and in particular the late nineteenth century. |
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People like Lord
Cromer combated feminism within their own societies, but fostered in Muslim
societies white supremacist views, androcentric and paternalistic convictions, and feminism in
conjunction with the imperial idea. |
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Here the languages
of colonialism and feminism are combined to “render morally justifiable its
project of undermining or eradicating the cultures of colonized peoples.” |
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Colonial feminism:
feminism as used against other cultures in the service of colonialism. It was
shaped into various constructs each tailored for a particular culture as the immediate target of
domination: India, the Islamic world, and sub-Saharan Africa. |
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All essentially
insisted that Muslims had to give up their native religion, customs, and dress, or
at least reform their religion and habits along the recommended lines. |
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The assumption
that issues of culture and women are connected has trapped the
struggle for women’s rights with struggles over culture. An argument for women’s rights
is often perceived and respresented by opponents as an argument about the innate
merits of Islam and Arab culture comprehensively. But it is neither Islam nor Arab
culture which is the target of criticism but “those laws and customs to be found in
Muslim Arab societies that express androcentric interests, indifference to women, or
misogyny. The issue is simply humane and just treatment of women, nothing less, and
nothing more—not the intrinsic merits of Islam, Arab culture, or the West.”
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Feminism was given
the taint of having served as an instrument of colonial domination,
rendering it suspect in Arab eyes and vulnerable to the charge of being an ally of colonial
interests. “The taint has undoubtedly hindered the feminist struggle within Muslim societies." |
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Qasim Amin's The
Liberation of Women (1899): Amin’s book triggered the first major
controversy in the Arabic press: more than thirty books and articles appeared in response.
Most were critical.
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Analysts routinely
treat the debate as one between “feminists”—Amin and his allies—and
“antifeminists”—Amin’s critics. They accept Amin’s equation at face value.
But the fundamental
and contentious premise of Amin’s work was its endorsement of the Western view of Islamic
civilization, peoples, and customs as inferior, whereas the author’s position on women was
profoundly patriarchal and even somewhat misogynist. |
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The opposition
it generated marks the emergence of an Arabic narrative developed in
resistance to the colonial narrative. |
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The new feminist discourse among Muslims is dominated by Muslim women and highly influenced
by the effect of post-modernism and the academic and psychological space it opened. Modernism
came with a Western and class agenda. Post-Modernism opposed this with a spirit of
assertiveness and the will to direct our own futures in terms of our value systems. |
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Abu Shaqqa: There are 2 Jahiliyyas today: one of the 15th century=ghuluw, tashaddud,
and blind
taqlid; another of the 20th=libertinism, scandal and blind imitation of the West. |
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Abu Shaqqa: Many Muslims have fled from Islam today because of positions that its
scholars have
taken in its name. |
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What blocks full participation of Muslim women today is not pious adherence to a patriarchal
law--
although Verses and Traditions are sometimes used as sledge hammers--but it is that some men
have vested interests in blocking women's rights and camouflage their self-interest by denying full
access to our inspirational tradition. |
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Amina Wadud: Muslim women must be the subject and object of their own discourse. NOTE:
Women have a long legacy in Tradition and Law. Today they must resume that legacy. This does
not exclude men but does not allow them a monopoly either. |
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Barbara Stowasser said this. NOTE: Despite the fact that we are directed to take half
of our religion
'Aishah. The 'Aishah's of succeeding generations had little to say about how issues of gender
would be elaborated. |
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1. Untitled
