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Countless volumes
have been written on the issue of Islam and women, by Muslims as
well as others. Indeed, the ‘Muslim woman’ question has, for long,
occupied a central place in discourses about Islam. Interestingly,
the vast majority of works on this furiously-debated question have
been penned by men. For many male Muslim writers, the notion of
normative Muslim womanhood is key to their understanding of Islamic
authenticity. For non-Muslim scholars of Islam, it is a central
trope in their critique of the religion. Caught between the two, the
diverse voices of Muslim women themselves have received but scant
attention in the scholarly literature.
Margot Badran is
one of the foremost chroniclers of Muslim women’s struggles for
gender justice. This latest book of hers explores broadly two types
of women’s struggles for equality waged in different parts of the
‘Muslim world’. The first, which she traces to the colonial period,
is what she labels as ‘Muslim secular feminism’, through which
Muslim women (and some men) in different countries sought to assert
their rights to education, employment and political participation.
The arguments they put forward were, typically, secular, presented
as a means for the empowerment and advancement of the ‘nation’ and
the ‘community’.
At the same time, these women were cautious to
present their demands as being in accordance with their
understanding of Islam. The second form of feminism is what Badran
terms as ‘Islamic feminism’, which really emerged in a major way
just a few decades ago. Much of the book is devoted to a detailed
discussion of the forms, arguments and practical achievements of
‘Islamic feminism’.
Far from being the
oxymoron that many might think it is, ‘Islamic feminism’, Badran
writes, is an even more radical and forceful form of feminism than
was Muslim secular feminism at one time. ‘Islamic feminism’, she
states, is based on the firm conviction about the fundamental
equality of men and women as creatures of God, as stated in the
Quran. On the basis of this belief and their re-reading of the
Islamic tradition, ‘Islamic feminists’ argue that Islam itself
demands the fundamental equality of women and men in all spheres of
life, both in the personal as well as pubic domains.
This demand for
equality, Badran says, extends even to the religious sphere, for
instance as regards religious professions and mosque rituals. Badran
backs her case by citing certain Muslim women scholars—Aminah Wadud,
Asma Barlas, Riffat Hasan being only the better-known among them—who
seem to argue on somewhat these lines.
Unlike secular
feminists, these ‘Islamic feminists’ seek to argue for women’s
equality and gender justice wholly through the framework of Islam,
broadly defined. Badran briefly describes (although one wishes that
this could have been at greater length) the different methodologies
that these women adopt in approaching the Islamic scriptural
tradition, particularly those parts of the Quran, Hadith and fiqh or
Muslim jurisprudence that might seem to militate against the notion
of gender equality and gender justice.
Badran terms the
basic tool that these women apply in this regard as ijtihad, but,
curiously, leaves out of the discussion the various rules and
conditions governing ijtihad that have enjoyed wide acceptance among
Muslims for centuries, according to which some of the formulations
of these women writers might not be qualified to be regarded as
genuine ijtihad at all. Just because these women might see some of
their formulations as ijtihad does not mean that, from the
perspective of ‘mainstream’ Muslims to whom these women appeal,
these can be regarded as ‘authentic’ or ‘proper’ uses of ijtihad.
Badran is, of course, aware of this problem but, yet, gives it scant
attention.
Can these
admittedly scattered voices—mostly of elite women, many based in
universities in the West—be really taken to represent a social
movement, in the true sense of the term? This is something that
Badran does not deal with. The actual impact of the writings of
these women, in terms of policy or legal changes or women’s
mobilization at the ‘grassroots’, is missing in Badran’s otherwise
engaging narrative. Absent, also, is any substantial discussion
about the internal Muslim critique of their writings, mainly, though
not only, by conservative ulema and Islamist ideologues on precisely
Islamic grounds. This is, needless to say, an issue of immense
practical import in that on it hinges the possibility or otherwise
of popular acceptance of their interpretations of the faith.
Besides these
elite Muslim women, some of who may well insist on being called
‘Islamic feminists’, are a much larger number of others who, working
within a broadly-defined Islamic framework, shun the label, seeing
the term ‘feminist’ as being tainted by its association with the
West. They see their struggle as one that aims to recover what they
variously understand as ‘authentic Islam’, and not, as the title of
the book suggests, ‘feminism in Islam’. They may not go so far as
the elite women-scholars Badran describes as being at the
cutting-edge of the development of ‘Islamic feminism’ in their
demands, such as, for instance, advocating women-led prayers for
joint congregations or women muftis. Yet, Badran seems to lump them
together with the elite women-scholars, inadvertently homogenizing
what is admittedly a very diverse set of voices.
Badran chooses to
discuss these women as also representing forms of ‘Islamic
feminism’, but, this, to my mind, does injustice to how these women
see themselves and their struggles. Why impose categories on people
against their will, one might ask? Why bracket them in boxes that
they refuse to recognize? Why describe their struggles as ‘feminism
in Islam’, when this is not how these women see themselves as
promoting? If they see themselves as engaged in an ‘Islamic’, as
opposed to an ‘Islamic feminist’ struggle, then why not let them
define themselves on their own terms?
Despite these
caveats, this book excels, and is bound to create more than just a
splash in the midst of ongoing debates about the vexed ‘Muslim woman
question’.
The Book:
Feminism in
Islam: Secular and Religious Convergences
Author:
Margot Badran
Publisher:
Oneworld Publications, Oxford, 2009,
PP. 349
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