'Gender Jihad' in the Service of Women's Right
-
MazharReading above i can see, who is blind. But anyways thanks for your input.
What hinders you to respond to this
Quote
Look closely at the conversation between Mariam and the Spirit/angels, is it not the same place?
At both places she says "how can I have a Son? when no man has touched me?" it means the same story is been narrated.Look closely at the conversation between Mariam and the Spirit/angels, is it not the same place?
At both places she says "how can I have a Son? when no man has touched me?" it means the same story is been narrated.This concluding observation, that is why I keep saying Raaajah that you are half blind. In one place Angels are more than two; plural; and she is not responding to them, but interrupting them and directly addressing Allah. And read her words spoken to Allah. The second occassion is the isolated location at her own home. There only one Messenger Angel has intruded her privacy in the shape of nice mannered looking human being. And note here answer to him, this is more elaborate that her words to Allah, since she is making a living being of another species different from her, how a child is born in human beings. She is pointedly telling him that a child is born to a woman by touch of a man which has in turn two manners, in wedlock or in debauchery.
Has it become clear or not that occasions are different, locations are different.
-
Mazhar
Has it become clear or not that occasions are different, locations are different
.No!
Ayisha
she was praying! yes its the same conversation,
Let those who read decide for themselves.
I think further discussion will lead us nowhere on this particular subject. -
Interview with Ziba Mir-Hosseini
"We Need to Rethink Old Dogmas"
Born in Iran and now based in London, Ziba Mir-Hosseini is one of the most well-known scholars of Islamic Feminism. In this interview with Yoginder Sikand she talks about the origins and prospects of Islamic feminism as an emancipatory project for Muslim women and as a new, contextually-relevant way of understanding Islam
In recent years, a number of Muslim women's groups have emerged across the world, struggling for gender equality and justice using Islamic arguments. Most of them are led by women who come from elitist or, at least middle class, backgrounds. Many of them seem to lack a strong popular base. How do you account for this?
Ziba Mir-Hosseini I think the majority of the women who are writing and publishing about what is popularly called 'Islamic feminism' are definitely from the elite or the middle class. But then, globally speaking, feminism has always had to do with the middle class, at least in terms of its key articulators and leaders. I believe that Islamic feminism is, in a sense, the unwanted child of 'political Islam'. It was 'political Islam' that actually politicized the whole issue of gender and Muslim women's rights. The slogan "back to the shariah" so forcefully pressed by advocates of political Islam in practice meant seeking to return to the classical texts on fiqh, or Muslim jurisprudence, and doing away with various laws advantageous to women that had no sanction in the Islamists' literalist understanding of Islam.
It was this that led, as a reaction, to the emergence of Islamic feminism, critiquing the Islamists for conflating Islam and the shariah with undistilled patriarchy and for claiming that patriarchal rule was divinely mandated. These gender activists, using Islamic arguments to critique and challenge the Islamists, brought classical religious texts to public scrutiny and made them a subject of public debate and discussion, articulating alternative, gender-friendly understandings, indeed visions, of Islam. That marked the broadening, in terms of class, of the fledgling Islamic feminist movement.
But, that said, I am not sure how far the Islamist feminist discourse has been able to effectively reach out to and influence the so-called "grassroots". One heartening development, however, is the emergence of a number of NGOs working with Muslim women who are using this discourse and relaying it further, using Islamic and human rights frameworks to stress the need for gender equality and justice in Muslim communities.
Surely it isn't possible to bracket all Islamists together. There is a large diversity of opinion, including about women, even among Islamists. Some of them do at least sound less regressive than others on women's rights.
Mir-Hosseini That's true, of course. But, for all Islamists the gender issue is of paramount significance. One of their main claims to legitimacy, which they all seem to share, is their critique of the West, a central plank of which is a moral vision that rests on strengthening the family. They don't say that women have no rights ? after all, the language of political Islam is also one of rights. Rather, they claim that Islam gives women all the rights they need, though, what this actually means for women is, for all practical purposes, the same patriarchy.
The tension between Islamic feminists and patriarchal Islamists is as acute as that between the former and many fellow feminists, who believe that Islamic feminism is an oxymoron and that, in fact, it will only strengthen the Islamists in the long-run with its use of Islamic, instead of secular, human rights, arguments.
A number of NGOs working with Muslim women, including some prominent ones that are engaged in articulating what could be called an Islamic feminist discourse, rely heavily on Western funding. Doesn't this further open them to the accusation of being 'tools' in the hands of what are branded as 'enemies of Islam'?
Mir-Hosseini It certainly leaves them open to that oft-hurled charge, but then anyone who works for gender justice, even if she doesn't depend on foreign money, is quickly branded with the same label! So, what other option do they have? The fact of the matter is that many Muslim women live in undemocratic contexts that lack strong civil society institutions that can support the sort of work they are engaged in. This forces many NGOs working with Muslim women to fall back on Western funding agencies. After all, the oil-rich Saudi Wahhabis are certainly not going to fund NGOs working for justice and equality for Muslim women, even if these are articulated in an Islamic paradigm. But that said, those women's groups who, for lack of any other alternative, are forced to depend on Western funds, must be clear that they don't become their puppets.
With just a few notable exceptions, the key articulators of Islamic feminist discourse are all non-Arab Muslims. Does that strike you as strange, given the marked tendency among many Arabs ? and many non-Arab Muslims as well ? to see the Arab world as the "heartland" of Islam?
Mir-Hosseini Yes, most of the cutting-edge writing and publishing on Islamic feminism is happening at the so-called "periphery" of the Muslim world, outside the Arab belt ? in countries like Iran, Indonesia, and, of course, among Muslims in the West. Interestingly, much of this publishing work is happening not in Arabic, but in languages such as English, Persian and Bahasa Indonesia. I think political conditions in the Arab world are simply not conducive for such discourses to be publicly articulated. Doing this could well cost you your life. You could easily be branded as an apostate and killed.
The focus of many key Islamic feminist NGOs is the reform of personal laws in Muslim contexts that militate against women's equality. Do you see this as a somewhat narrow focus? After all, personal law is not the only problem that many Muslim women face? For many of them, gruelling poverty, for instance, might be an even more pressing concern.
Mir-Hosseini I think the issue of gender relations within the family ? which is what personal laws are all about ? actually relates to the core of power in society at a broader level. Since the family is the basic unit of society, only if there is justice and democracy within the family can you possibly have justice and democracy in the wider society. In other words, the key to democratizing the whole society is to democratize its basic unit, the family, and for this legal reform is crucial.
Are Islamic feminists simply arguing for the same ends as secular feminists but by using Islamic arguments?
Mir-Hosseini For me feminism is both a consciousness that women suffer discrimination at home, at work and in society and in life because of their gender, as well as action to do something about this. So it is a striving for justice and equality for women in a just world; it is a frame of mind and a way of life, a kind of path that can be followed by everyone ? regardless of gender, sex, race, faith and other differences among us.
But justice and equality are contested and relative concepts, in the sense that they mean different things to different people in different contexts. There is also an epistemological side to feminism, it is also a knowledge project; in the sense that it tells us how we know what we know. Feminist scholarship in Islam as in any other religious tradition has a lot to offer to both the understanding of religion and the search for justice. But feminism, as an ideology, as a movement, as well as a knowledge project, in order to grow and not to become dogmatic, needs to have a critique from within.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Black and 'Third World' feminists provided that critique; for instance, Audre Lorde's criticism of mainstream feminist literature of the 1960s for its focus on the experiences of white, middle-class women and their values; Chandra Mohanty, with her seminal article "Under Western Eyes Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourse" offered a potent critique of the complicity of feminism and colonialism. Such criticism helped feminism to grow theoretically and become more inclusive.
What could secular feminists learn from Islamic feminists? Do you personally agree with the overall secular feminist critique of the notion of the complimentarity of the sex roles that underlies general Muslim understandings?
Mir-Hosseini I would certainly insist that we all can learn from each other. As for the notion of complementarity of sex roles, I passionately disagree with the way it has been conceived and articulated by dominant Muslim discourses. It is simply a new and "modern" way of justifying inequality and discrimination, but expressed in a language that can fool women and Muslims.
But then, feminist theory has now come to appreciate that the kind of equality that basically entails a purely legal or formal reversibility of roles does not bring women real equality. Women do not start from the same starting point in life as men, and they are not on a level playing field, so we need a new concept of equality that takes into account difference. The fact is that neither are all women exposed to discrimination nor do they experience it in the same way; race, class, education, ethnicity, being part of the 'third' or 'first' world ? all these factors matter. Men are as oppressed as women in many situations, and are sometimes are dominated by them.
There has been a shift in feminist theory from formal models of equality to what is now called substantive equality ? there is now a big debate going on, and Muslims need to take part in this debate. We need to rethink old dogmas, both religious and feminist, and this is where we can learn from each other.
? Qantara.de 2010
-
Let me, a Muslim feminist, confuse you
http//media.metronews.topscms.com/images/82/6d/64733db146248bdd4626f0ce0d3a.jpeg
I a Muslim. I'm a feminist. And I'm here to confuse you,? I told attendees at the TEDWomen conference, where I was a speaker, in Washington this week.
The conversation on Muslim women usually revolves around our head scarves and our hymens ? what's on our heads (or not), what's between our legs, and the price we pay for it.
For kick-ass feminist icons, I have a long history to choose from.
In the 7th century, there's Khadijah, Prophet Muhammad's first wife. She was a rich divorcee who owned her own business, who was his boss, who was 15 years older than him and who proposed to him.
My fondness for younger men clearly has a precedent.
But the first wave of feminism for many Muslim women started at a Cairo train station in 1923 where Hoda Shaarawi removed her face veil, which, long before anyone was burning their bras, she described as a thing of the past. She must be turning in her grave as some today try to justify covering women's faces.
My paternal grandmother was a teacher, a furious smoker, a fast walker and an adamant supporter of a soccer club hated by most of her children
My maternal grandmother ? whose sexually racy jokes would outrage her children ? was pregnant 14 times. Eleven of those children survived.
My mother ? the eldest of those children and the first woman in her family to get a PhD ? has three children.
I am the eldest of the three and I've chosen not to have any children. My mother had her youngest when she was 42. My sister is now herself working on a PhD and is longing for a baby.
I was born in Egypt, where I belonged to the Sunni Muslim majority. When I was 7, we moved to London, where I learned to become a minority and learned too how little was expected of Muslim women, Teachers assumed my dad's work brought us to London and were shocked to hear Muslim wives didn't take the husband's name.
We moved to Saudi Arabia when I was 15 and I fell into a deep depression as I struggled to find a place among very different Islams.
At home, I was taught an Islam by parents who were equals and who were raising my brother and me to be equals. Outside our new home was an Islam that treated women like the walking embodiment of sin. I was done with Muslim men.
I chose to wear a head scarf and became a feminist (the two weren't mutually exclusive) after I discovered essays by Muslim women scholars who taught me women could reinterpret religion. They terrified the hell out of me.
When I returned to Egypt at 21, I learned Muslim men were not the enemy after all, as progressive, liberal Muslim women and men helped me define my own place in Islam.
My headscarves-and-hymens moment came when I took off my head scarf ? it no longer represented the Muslim woman I was becoming ? and I became increasingly obsessed with female genital mutilation after I learned how many members of my extended family had been subjected to it.
Both Muslims and Christians practise genital cutting in Egypt. It's not about religion. It's about hymens ? and that's about controlling women's sexuality.
I moved to Israel, where I was the first Egyptian to live and work there for a western news agency. I became a liberal Muslim because my ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighbours reminded me of ultra-orthodox Muslim Saudis. Orthodoxy serves men much more than it does women.
I moved to the U.S. 10 years ago after marrying an American, but when we divorced two years later I got into my car and spent 18 days driving alone to New York City. It was my American pilgrimage. My reward was a community of like-minded Muslims together with whom I prayed behind Amina Wadud, an American Muslim scholar, in the first public female-led mixed-gender Friday prayer. Without a head scarf and on my period, I prayed next to a man ? sacrilege to many but a delight to me.
I belong to Musawah ? the global movement for equality and justice in the Muslim family. A young British Muslim woman told me at the launch in Malaysia last year that if she had to choose between Islam and feminism, Islam would win. A young Egyptian Muslim woman told me if she had to choose between Islam and feminism, feminism would win.
For my sister-in-law, it is about head scarves and hymens. She wears a head scarf and she's a gynecologist. For the past five years she was the only woman ob/gyn doctor in a tiny Ohio town.
She was the true ?jihadi? ? every time her patients heard Fox News talk about Moozlums and ?them Ayrabs? she was there as the antidote.
This summer I confused people outside the Islamic Community Centre near Ground Zero known as Park51. When a bigoted couple came to insult and provoke us, I gave them the middle finger. I mustered patience with others. But when Bill Keller, a right-wing televangelist came to shed crocodile tears over Muslim women it was clear he was boosting his ego, not my rights.
I'm no fool. I know that terrible violations of women's rights are committed in the name of my faith. But Islam belongs to me too.
I'm in a boxing ring. On one side is Bill Keller's right wing bigoted and xenophobic. On the other side is the Muslim right wing, which uses Islam against me to fuel its misogyny.
I'm a bumble bee who carries ideas ? pollen ? from one place to another in the hope that they will blossom into a wild and challenging orchard. The pollen might be sweet, but I ?sting like a bee? because like the great Muhammad Ali, I will not hesitate to knock you out.
Confusion is both my right and left hook.
Mona Eltahawy is an award-winning columnist and public speaker on Arab and Muslim issues.
-
Nice article and nice thread! hail
I only became a feminist last year (thanks to Kathleen Hanna and Bikini Kill) and its really helped me raise my social awareness, not only of sexism, but of racism (we can't deny that the early feminists/suffragists were pretty darn racist AND classist) aswell. I dabble in womanism here and there but I identify as a (Muslim) Feminist 99% of the time. Though of course there's the social stigma; I told my friend Michael about my new found feminism and the first thing he said to me was "So you hate men now?" I don't really understand much of the men and feminism arguments but men can be feminist and pro-feminist, and I don't think any reasonable feminists object to that (my little brother identifies as pro-feminist.)
I don't know if this was a "share you stories" thread but I'm just boss that way. It would be nice to see what other people's stories are (if there is already a thread dedicated to that please excuse my ignorance and the inability to use the search function, and point it out to me).
-
I do not know whether anybody has posted this already. There have been already four world congresses of Islamic feminism in Spain. Many of the writers auoted in this thread were participants en them.
I put the link to the last one.
http//feminismeislamic.org/
They give a very good overview and are a good way of encouraging islamic feminism worldwide. They are getting better and better and I do thing that Islamic feminism has a future. We do not need any more to be apologetic about it. Many men are participant and supporters of the movement. It is the most islamic movement I can think of. If justice an equity are cardinal values of islam and of any religion, then justice and equite between the sexes are cardinal for real spirituality.
Salaam
-
I quote here a post put in the thread about platonic friendships, since it seems to fit here better.
Quote from David_K on Yesterday at 114957 AM
Peace Rana, allGood article. Thanks for sharing.
I mostly agree with what the author says in his article. But I don't agree with everything the author says about masculinity. There is a difference between masculine men and macho men. It seems like the author misunderstands what masculinity is. A masculine man is a man that takes responsibility, is a hard worker, is a provider, is able to protect himself (self-defence). A man can stand for equal rights, support women rights and still be masculine. And still have a masculine vibe/energy. You don't need to loose masculinity to support women rights. And It seems that the author believes there are small differences between men and women, which is a myth. There are huge differences between women and men that go beyound socialization. This is reality. And this is a very controversial topic. In the politically correct societies of the west it is almost taboo to talk about the differences between women and men. Because from an early age we learn that women and men are not very different. We learn that our differences is mostly because of socialization. But that's a lie. The truth is that men and women are very different. The brain of women and men are different. And women and men have different abilities. and there are lots of other differences between men and women. It is how our nature is. Men and women are intelligent on the same level. Women are not more intelligent than men. And men are not more intelligent than women. Women have abilities that men lack, and men have abilities that women lack. Masculinity and feminity is biologically programmed in human beings. It is hardwired into us. But it needs to be activated. A balance. Ying and Yang you know
A man can only be happy when he is masculine. And a woman can only be happy when she is feminine. A man can be masculine, and still be emotional. A woman can be feminine and still be strong. A man is happy when he acts like a man. Not when he acts like a woman. Just like a dog only can be happy when it acts like a dog. If a dog plays the role of a cat, it can't be happy. You probably get my point. Many people are brainwashed by feminist propaganda, they believe in the myths of feminism. And many people are brainwashed by the male chauvinistic ideology, they believe in the myths of male chauvinism and patriarchy. Why be a feminist when you can be a HUMAN? Why be a male chauvinist when you can be a HUMAN?
By the way, these days I don't believe in equality anymore. Now I believe in equal rights and equal opportunities instead of equality. How can men and women be equal when they are different? That's illogical. Why can't we celebrate our differences? Why should women look like men and men look like women? Isn't it stupid? However, if any one can convince me why equality is important I will change my mind.
And when it comes to friends. I only have one friend of the opposite sex. Not because don't want more friends from the opposite sex. But because almost no women see me as a friend Almost every women I have been friends with wanted to get to know me on a personal level. Especially the last couple of years. They were attracted to me So whenever a woman says she wants to be my friend, it is hard for me to trust her (because of my past experiences). And many women have hidden intentions (just like many men). They say that they want to be your friend but they have other plans for you. Lol. Talk is cheap. So I would rather hang out with my male friends. Haha And NO, we don't talk about things most guys talk about. We don't talk about sports, cars etc. But I think basketball is a good sport. And it can be fun too
I could not disagree more with this. Starting from the starting point of putting things on its head by assuming that the core question is that of equality and not of justice. Precisely it is the assertion of equality as the principal contention that leads to injustice downstream if people are unequal one must treat them unequally. So I reject comletely that anyone, and least of all feminists, have ever cared principally about equality. It is clear that women and men are not equal. The reproducion burden obviously is completely and overwhelmely unequal. But it is the contention of many antifeminists that what feminists seek is equality. Obviously core feminism along history has never pretended such a thing, because then there would only be one sex. But antifeminists choose and persist in saying that that is what feminists seek. No. Justice, justice, justice.
Then the other trick of this kind of dicourse derived from the first is to make out of the difference between females and males a sort of elastic material where you can establish between women and men any characteristic that may come to mind as difference between men and women, and stretch the thing to discretion, saying that the differences between males ar female go way beyond biological differences to comprise psychological differences and unquatifiable, but usable factors that nobody can certify. We are back to square one and, for instance, women only have that emotional disponibility and disposition that makes them unique to do the washing, clean babies shit, vacuum the carpet and so on. Biological differences need no arguing and nobody argues abut them. The rest is litterature, and not very good at that. And I am baffled that anybdy should look for "extras" as far as differences are concerned, when in fact biological differences already entail plenty, plenty plenty, and certainly it is squeezed to the utmost to extract dividends.
There is another point. Since those "masculine" (meaning characteristics "real" men have) and "feminine" (meaning characteristics "real" women have) are so clear, any man or woman who deviates from such clear conception as what is manly and what is womanly, gets stamped as "feminist" or virago and the equivalent for sissy menor whatever they get, and those are manufactured into a personal intimate and untractable problem fofor those people, when in fact it is a mental construct of those who refuse to acknowledge that psychology is personal, individual and not sexual, or racial or collective in any way. It is this absolutely arbitrary conception that has made life a hell for many men and women who happen to not be what is stipulated as manly or womanly, and in this specific aspect, I think that it is "feminine" men who are more repressed and punished. Woman have it bad, but I think may be not as bad. And then some people disparage about homosexuality and that kind of thing when in fact they make it impossible for certain men to be themselves. If that is not cornering and cruelty, I do not know what it is.
In fact I would laugh at this whole thing if it wasn't so painful and tragic for so many poersons who are penalized all their lifes for being "different". And that is on the extreme of it. Without going to the extrems, many people are forced to assume attitudes and manners which they wouldn't if they were not socialised on that, and socialisation is not mere sloganising, but myriad of reactions, actions attitudes which we are not even conscious of and which point the way unequivocally everywhere and under every circumstance for everybody. No matter what anybody does, at this stage it is simply not possible to delimit or disengage what is innate and what is socialisation. To pretend that that can be done is a chimera, a fraud and a trick.
Also when you start from saying that some things are manly and others are womanly, you are bludgeoning freedom of choice as you say, because who is the man or woman who wants to be branded unmanly or unwomanly? The fact is that there have been millions of men and woman to whom that has been done. A medal, a gold medal to human bigotry and cruelty, enormous cruelty, should be handed to societies for that.
"Femine" and "masculine" are abstract qualities and, as Ibn Arabi and other monuments of thought and spirituality have said, both qualities exist in men and women. They are necessary for men and women. The balance of those qualitie is what makes al insan al kamil.
Lastly and most vigorously the Qur'an nowhere condones such vision. It rejects it. No moral or psychological quality is branded as manly or womanly anywhere. The opposite.
Point to a single line in the whole of Qur'an that points to differences between man a woman other than reproductive function. And at that, the Qur'an does not even impose suckling on the woman...
What is important, is not to seek for additional differences between men and women, but to strengthen the sense of mutual and general responsibility of both. Men do not have any reproductive charge, therefore it is obvious, not because of any psychological specific disposition, but because of plain moral decency that they must assume other charges if they do not want to be reproductive pimps who live off women. And in fact there are men who do that, live off women to whatever extent and do not balance any of women's burden. That is not because of any manly disposition, but because of moral wickedness, they are morally pimps, and therefore unworthy men, and there is nothing psychological in that, but moral.
Salaam