Inside the Gender Jihad: Women's Reform in Islam (17 page)

structive

discussion

on a topic which

coincidentally is not only one of

the most sensitive in modern Islam,

but also

addresses

genuine

and

oppressive problems for many women in the Muslim world, at every minute. One tedious component in my proposal is to begin with Islamic Studies itself. The remainder of this chapter will focus on the growth of

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contributions to Muslim Women’s Studies despite the absence of any foun- dational theory for establishing clear parameters.

Over Two Decades of Research and Proliferation of Books on Islam and Women

Upon quick observation it is clear that any non-Muslim woman who visits a large Muslim population and writes a book can have it published, thereby

contributing to an as-yet-undefined area of

Muslim Women’s Studies.

That not only says something about the girth of random material on this subject, but also says that publishers, aware of a great vacuum and interest in this area, are willing to accept almost any articulation about real Muslim women under direct observation. They do not seem aware of any boundaries to determine what falls appropriately within this category of study. There are no consistent criteria of evaluation from the perspective of “Islam” as a component bearing on the lives of Muslim women or men. In creating such criteria, I build a rationale for locating Muslim Women’s Studies as a sub-discipline of Islamic Studies first, even when it crosses other areas of study or disciplines within the social sciences and humanities. Simply speaking, adequate knowledge of Islam is a prerequisite to formulating adequate analysis in Muslim Women’s Studies. The Islamic intellectual discourse is as essential to understanding Islam and Muslims (women and men) as it is to understanding any number of topics related to them.

Furthermore, despite a proliferation of literature on Islam and women, by Muslim and neo-Orientalist or Western feminist scholars in the past decade, precious little has been proposed to create an Islamic gender theory – whether from without or within. As such, this boom in literature remains rather haphazard. This has complicated and will continue to complicate what remains one of the most sensitive issues among Muslims. Rather than being helpful, this proliferation is viewed with great suspicion by both scholars of Islam and by Muslim laity. It is part of the problem of resolving real issues of concern to the Islamic gender
jihad
. Yet rigorous and intellectually solid academic publications could become vital in leading toward greater understanding and comprehension for the general public worldwide, as well as for better-informed participation by Muslim women and men activists in the matters addressed.

Although we may learn something even from the existing works, it depends on the goal of our learning. Within all this literature, certain

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presumptions prevail about the way in which specific variables affect the outcome of particular cases. Islam is always measured as one, if not the major, variable. It does not matter how inconsistently Islam is defined or how haphazardly it is referred to. Based on the stress already discussed about the use and abuse of the term “Islam,” I reiterate that the extent to which those who claim to discuss topics related to Islam need sufficient background and a standard basis for defining Islam before their works achieve scholarly adequacy.

In addition, with regard to Muslim Women’s Studies, it is too easy to listen empathetically when one encounters familiar language supporting preconceived notions about Islam as oppressive to women. It is also easy to accept perspectives with which one is already in agreement. A predilection toward the familiar emphasizes why some particular prerequisites are necessary for a comprehensive or reasonable understanding in the complex study of Islam and women. Instead the greatest lesson learned from most of this literature is the biases of the ones engaged in the study. Nevertheless, eventually this material can add to a growing wealth of material from which a genuine and critically beneficial discipline of Muslim Women’s Studies might be wrestled.

Muslim women scholars, no matter what their discipline, have also contributed to the growth of literature on this topic. The mere fact that they are Muslim does not make them all experts in every area of Islam and Islamic Studies. For many years I was invited to deliver a presentation on “Islam and Women.” At first I accepted these invitations because, after all, I did have something to contribute within this vast and borderless area of research. I then just got tired of the same title and offered to work out an appropriate title using details about the larger framework of the forum, the audience, and the topics of interest. I was still limited to gearing my presen- tation specifically toward my expertise: gender-inclusive theological analysis. Few general audiences were ready for all the technicalities required for an adequate presentation, but at least I could narrow down that broad umbrella topic to address particular aspects more relative to my academic training and interests as specifically beneficial to different audiences anxious to learn about Islam and women.

On the other hand, it was amusing how invitations were extended to me from the flip-side of this pattern of overgeneralization. As a female Muslim presenter I was sought for very specific aspects regarding Islam and women, including areas about which I had insufficient training or time to become familiar, and I began to decline these invitations. Sometimes, if I knew of

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other specialists, better prepared for the topic, I would direct organizers to these experts. Often I was still pushed very heavily to accept the invitation despite my limited knowledge of the topic. The rationalization was that, since I know something about Islam and women, I should use whatever knowledge I had and the specified topic would make no difference. Several occasions of complete burnout eventually led me to reject all invitations that did not address narrow specifics of my expertise or experience.

Eventually extensive travel working on human rights issues increased my knowledge base of Muslim women’s networks, human rights programs, and issues of family and sexuality regarding women within the framework of Islam. I now work better as a consultant to experts in these areas from my particular discipline: gender-inclusive interpretation for more gender mainstreaming. I could help create spaces for making meaningful, authori- tative, and appropriate knowledgeable assistance across geographical borders in these forums as the challenge of Islamic legitimacy is continually used to disclaim women’s contributions. However, other scholars continue to publish and accept invitations to discuss topics in which they have little or no expertise because of the lack of structure under this vast umbrella called Islam and women. This is so with both Muslim and non-Muslim scholars. Audiences must leave such forums no better informed than when they came, or unfortunately misinformed. This public role of scholarly work, sometimes referred to as scholarship-activism, can be problematic. While it emphasizes the need for properly establishing the area of Muslim Women’s Studies, it also contributes to the chaotic state of a yet to be clearly defined academic discipline.

In critically developing this area of study one might also note how the overwhelming majority of the literature published falls under the case study category of anthropology, personal narrative, or historical reconstruction. These materials provide adequate evidence for the needs of Muslim women to find methods in attaining political, cultural, economic, and educational gender parity. However, recapping each and every particular cultural or historical context as
the
epitome of a non-existent monolithic Muslim

woman obscures the very complexity of Muslim histories and societies.
22

As the literature increases without a theoretical foundation exposing a clear intra-Islamic basis for gender analysis, such literature often further obscures the root causes and distorts potential solutions or methods needed by a broad-based movement to eradicate the persistence of unequal practices, gender violence, misrepresentations, and legal manipulations.

As such, the flood of books caricaturing veiled women, presenting them

74 inside the gender jihad

behind bars or posing a seemingly contradictory image – like a veiled woman casting a vote – must be viewed with greater scrutiny, attending suspiciously to the objectives of these texts. Each book needs to be examined on the basis of the goals and objectives provided by the author, the definitions and resources used to locate the work within Islamic Studies, and the detailed specification of the examples projected or analyzed. Authors should clarify their subject matter; locate it within some overarching aspect of the Islamic intellectual or legal worldview while providing justifications for not utilizing other subject areas in which they have expertise, or at least relate their methods and discipline to Islam. These are some of the most persistent problems that reduce the prolifer- ation of works created to a scarcity, which provides the means for properly integrating specific studies within an Islamic gender framework.

The time it would take to correctly prepare to work from the perspective of gender and Islam might increase the time it takes to study and produce works from within the major field of the author, but it is worth the time if Muslim Women’s Studies is to become a rigorous area of academic studies. It would require experts from their various disciplines to shuffle through a larger framework of Islamic Studies, and then designate what gender possi- bilities might be made within Islam as central to their particular analysis. Another mechanism would be to coordinate more meaningful collabor- ations between specialists in various fields of study with Islamic specialists, especially reformist thinkers.

Meanwhile, such case studies, in addition to including the country of

national origin, and the history and developments of Islam within the contexts of these women’s experiences, must also equally locate the sample group on the basis of class, education, and methods of exposure to Islam’s intellectual traditional and contextual developments. Information about the subjects’ exposure to Western ideas would also assist this prerequisite con- textualization. An intra-Islamic framework is a crucial part of the necessary background for entering the discussion. Sufficient research into the relationship between that framework, the specifics of the sample group, and the academic specialty of the author would be clear enough to notify readers of the exact nature addressed in the publications and presentation in order to define the extent of their benefits to issues faced by Muslim women and rights networks and to the learning process of students inter- ested in this area.

I can eventually see that Muslim Women’s Studies could be placed within

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several intersecting lines in academia – Women’s Studies, Religious Studies, Islamic Studies, certain social sciences and humanities – when case studies on real Muslim women’s literature, histories, and divergent lives are clearly located in the ways discussed here. One prerequisite is developing defin- itions of Muslim Women’s Studies wide enough to encompass all the variables mentioned here, while still narrow enough to be distinct from other areas of study. Muslim Women’s Studies cannot presuppose a neutral background for engaging in one of the most vexing issues of popular interest today. Each of these intersecting parts form prerequisite building blocks in the scaffolding of modern Islamic Studies for a truly academically viable area of Muslim Women’s Studies. I have especially found that the sociological method of study often distorts the integrity of the Islamic worldview, the guideline toward which Muslims strive, albeit with varying degrees of sincerity, piety, consistency, or success. Instead, sociology simply traces existing atrocities, mostly decontextualized from ethnicity, class, local customs, national origins, religious understandings, and the relation- ship of those understandings to the sources of Islamic thought and develop- ment. In other words, it matters little what Islam is, only what some Muslims do. This is one area of academic discourse that is particularly charged, and the contributions accepted for publication in the past decade have been part of the problem. To pretend otherwise is both hypocritical and academically deficient. For while Muslim Women’s Studies might be able to accommodate all of these intersecting lines, to adequately provide for an understanding of the diversity and complexity of Muslim women’s lives, it is necessary for those who study or learn in this field to be appropri- ately familiar with the history, culture, and developments that proceed from their particular discipline when approaching this sub-topic.

Nevertheless, even this material adds to a slowly growing wealth of material from which genuine and critically beneficial literature about Islam and women might eventually be constructed. Depending on the learning goal, a reader may learn from and apply critical analysis even to these works. If they distinctively point to the multiple variants that exist, all which deserve adequate analysis, they help to create a well-rounded discipline which is informative on a variety of levels within academia while simultaneously helping to remove the veil of mystique and exoticism of Muslim women beyond the simple reflection of preconceptions, prejudices, and biases of the ones engaged in the study. It is disingenuous to ignore the self-definitions of Islam as a way of life in which Muslims have variously lived for over fourteen centuries. Analysis of the “place” or “role” of

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women within the many contexts that claim allegiance to the Islamic way of life is one of many tools needed to evaluate how particular social groups reflect or reject those standards through interpretation and practice. These parts, as well as those “issues” deemed significant by anyone who encounters “Islam” and Muslim women – whether in their own lives or through some kind of relationship to others – help to prevent the intel- lectual hegemony and elitism that Said warned against in his classic work.