The Herstory of Islamic Feminism

This is the transcript of a talk I gave at UN Women UK in March 2016.

“Thank you for inviting me to speak to you today about a subject area that has been a passion of mine ever since my feminist consciousness awakened when I began working in the VAWG sector in 2010 

Whilst I have always dealt and worked passionately within the context of equalities, human rights and faith, looking back it feels like all the different strands of a career spanning 20 years all crystalised and brought me to a specific place in life..looking back it feels like as if I was destined to discover and to be utterly fascinated and inspired by Feminism and more specifically Islamic Feminism.

This reminds me of the seminal work authored by the respected activist-anthropologist and co- founder of Musawah, Ziba Mir-Hosseini, In her 2011 essay, “Beyond ‘Islam’ vs ‘Feminism’”. Mir-Hosseini reminds us that both the terms Islam and Feminism are contested.  Whose Islam and whose Feminism she asks. They mean different things to different people in different contexts and used for different agendas, politics and identities. It is also worth noting that often faith and feminism are juxtaposed against each other, as if equality and feminism can only exist with the absence of religion and faith. Until recently and to this day many in the Feminist tradition advocate the complete exclusion of any form of religious belief in the sector and it wasn’t until women began to talk about how their feminism is impacted by a diverse range of issues including identity markers and coined the term ‘intersectionality’, that ‘Western’ Feminism developed more nuanced and diverse frameworks of understanding. No doubt religion has been used in the most insidious and brutal ways to perpetuate violence against women and strengthen patriarchy but to assume that is an inherent feature of all belief is as misguided as saying that hatred towards men is an inherent part of Feminism.

 To me Feminism is the recognition and quest for equality and justice between genders. It is also the recognition that there is unequal distribution of power between men and women and that is both local and global. It is clear that society has institutionalized this form of discrimination in many ways and organized religion and its structures are not immune from this inequality. On the other hand, the Islam that I recognise and practice is that which can be found in the Qur’an and the inspirational acts of its messenger and its women. It’s a source of empowerment, a well of nourishment and beauty to replenish the soul and make sense of an increasingly complex and contradictory world. A set of tools and a body of armor by which to fight for equality and bring about a vision of the world where human dignity and respect of universal human rights and responsibility for environmental sustainability is the cornerstone of society. That is my Islam and that is my Feminism.

So if there is such a thing as Islamic Feminism, when did it begin, what are its roots and what are its defining features?

The seventies were the defining moments in modern history that saw the awakening of feminist consciousness and the rise in the women’s movement, personified by the adoption by the United Nations’ Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women, known as CEDAW. It was also the decade, which saw the Islamic Revolution come to power in Iran. It inspired a new generation of political activism that placed religion at the heart of its legitimacy and vision of governance, a form of politics called Islamism or political Islam, I use the two terms interchangeably. Here we have two seemingly opposed ideologies competing for legitimacy and relevance. Both calling for social justice, re-distribution of power and wealth but using very different tools to achieve such aspirations. CEDAW gave women the necessary tools and language to challenge patriarchy and form transnational coalitions across boundaries and cultures, which included Muslim countries.  It highlighted the varying forms of gender-based violence that is rooted in politics, cultural and religious traditions. Whereas Islamism introduced and strengthened regressive practices and policies that further discriminated against women, violated their sovereignty and in many cases reinforced violence with impunity. The gap between Islamists and secular Muslims and non-Muslims widened both using essentialists and stereotypical notions of the other to make their points heard..Islamists claiming that Feminism and the call for equality is a colonial conspiracy to attack and weaken Islam and Muslims, and secularists using orientalists and at time racist argument to illustrate the incompatibility of Islam with modernity and equality.

Whilst writers like Fatima Mernissi, Nawal Al Saadawi and Huda Sha’arawi could be described as the founders of Feminism in the Arab world, The Feminist Project in Islam as coined by Mir-Hosseini (2011) started to gather pace and momentum in the late 1980s and early 1990s in the Arab and Muslim worlds. Paradoxically, this rise was the result of political Islam’s increased influence in such society.

Political Islam or Islamism, argues that all Muslims have a role in building the Islamic community and everyone can contribute to the Islamist project. Unlike other interpretations of Islam, Islamism allowed women a public role and positions of responsibility, limited and defined in comparison to liberalism and democracy and the human rights framework, but nonetheless a role. As political Islam was in the ascendency it became possible for the first time for many decades for, practicing and believing Muslim women to seek out a defined public role in society and one that utilized their skills and abilities outside of the home or domestic settings.

In addition, Political Islam argues that all answers to philosophical, economic, political, social and practical questions in life can be found in Islamic tradition; more precisely in Shariah, the Sunnah of the Prophet and the Holy Qur’an. It then followed that ‘true’ gender equality and emancipation is what was already detailed and outlined in Islamic texts and practices. Gender activists turned to fiqh and Islamic legal tradition to search out and identify what ‘Islam’ had to say about concepts like equality, marriage, family relationships and women’s position in society. As Mir-Hosseini outlines, their messages were “a mixture of conformity and defiance “ and many times contradictory with regards to gender equality (2011). Political Islam’s priority then and remains so now, is to come to power and stay there, rather than enshrine equality as we see it.

Mir Hosseini brings us to the present day and says this: “ Islamic Feminism is a feminism that takes its legitimacy from Islam ..It is the unwanted child of political Islam , it emerged in spite of Islamism, as a reaction to one if its founding principles that a return to traditional Shariah interpretations and Legal Islamic text which support and reinforce patriarchal and rigid notions of gender and the role of women in society. Gender activists and human rights advocates who believe that their faith doesn’t contradict the concept of equality and democracy sought and began to critique the patriarchal interpretations of religious texts and interpretations of Shariah..and since the late 80s for the first time in modern Islamic history high quality academic and scholarly work was being produced that examined gender bias in Muslim laws and canonical work.

The field of Muslim feminism today is thriving. Respected and prominent figures such as Zainah Anwar, Amina Wadud, Leilah Ahmed, Ziba Mir-Hosseini, Marwa Sharafeldin, Omaima Abou-Bakr; Mulki Al-Sharmani to name but a few are instrumental to the Knowledge project that Islamic feminism is about. We have global and transnational NGOs and movements such as Sisters in Islam and Musawah as well as Women Living Under Muslim Laws that are not only providing a crucial space for solidarity, support and collaboration within activists outside and inside Muslim societies but in particular movements such as Musawah are working with activists from diverse backgrounds in creating and putting together resources that can support advocacy and lobbying for change, raise awareness , capacity build and connect academic and international activism with grassroots organisations and ordinary women in diverse Muslim societies.  the painfully small, by Western standards, but quite significant gains of Middle Eastern and Muslim women in places like Saudi Arabia, where women were allowed to stand for municipal elections, the high prominence of women in the Bahraini pro-democracy movement, the ascendency of women in Iranian politics, the banning of FGM in Gambia and Nigeria, the increasing public discourse on taboo subjects such as street harassment, child marriage, rape  and so called honour crimes in Egypt, Pakistan and India illustrate that the unacceptability of violence against women and girls has entered public consciousness and there is a willingness to discuss its manifestations and define them as abusive and unacceptable. We do indeed have a long way to change things but the silence is being broken and we can now begin to publically name inequality and call for an end to discrimination by using the very weapons of religion and faith that had for a long time been part of the patriarchal and oppressive repertoire of such societies.

But for every success there are multiple challenges. There is no denying the impact of the geopolitical context that we live in today, the legacy of colonialism, and the failed democracy-building projects in Afghanistan and Iraq, the political order post 9/11 , rising Islamophbia, and the re-invigoration of despotism and autocracy as a result of the failure of the Arab Spring. The horrific consequences of the war in Syria for Syrians and the impact that it is having on many levels both in Europe and the Middle, together with the failure of organisations like the EU, Nato and the UN in addressing these desperate circumstances has emboldened domestic and transnational right wing and racist discourse which rejects Muslims and Islam as a peaceful constituent of society, advocates that Islam equates with terrorism and vice versa, and where Muslim women are the weapon of choice for ideological polemics, the ‘othering’ of Muslims, particularly Muslim citizens of Europe, and the constant proclamation that Europe and the West have a duty to save Muslim women from themselves, their men and their faith, which has certainly played out in domestic UK policy conversely the rise of fundamentalist and extreme interpretations of Islam is having a similar effect. This puts Muslim feminists like other intersectional feminist activists in the position of fighting on multiple fronts, not only are Muslim feminists risking life and limb by challenging patriarchal interpretations of the values that empower them and hold dear but are constantly undermined and stereotyped as passive victims; misguided; not feminist enough or not feminist at all. I call it 360-degree activism.

So what may the future hold for Islamic Feminism..where will it be in 10 years or 15 years time? Are there any parallels with or lessons to be learned from mainstream ‘Western’ Feminism that emerged in the 1970s? Is it even a fair comparison? I don’t know but what I do know is that Muslim feminists are here to stay and we have a LOT of work to do. My wish list for the next ten years is the creation of a robust and wide ranging body of knowledge that obliterates every aspect of society, which utilizes religion to justify violence, inequality, injustice and prejudice.  For ‘believing’ Muslims it’s a crucial psychological as well as a practical shift in the development of a more just society. It is practically important because it allows us to provide people with a vision of the world that feels authentic, familiar, empowering and achievable.  Targeting and affecting change within the laws of governments that choose to adopt regressive policies and laws that impact women and the family would be another seismic step in improving the lives of women in such countries 

It would also be a real achievement if we, in collaboration with fellow activist, could bring about a more just and democratic form of political and civic governance that held dignity and respect as a corner stone of its modus operandi…perhaps that’s more like a 50 year plan but I am hopeful!

In addition, an increased acceptance by our sisters in the wider Feminist movement of our value and our shared struggle would bring about greater collaboration on issues that face women regardless of faith or culture. Muslim feminists at large are not interested in the Islamist project of bringing religion to power and governance..rather they /we reject that patriarchal hijacking of our deeply held convictions and beliefs that manifest themselves in the Islamic faith and use our spiritual and religious commitment to excuse and perpetrate violence, abuse, coercion and control. We are reclaiming our power.”