Inside the Gender Jihad: Women's Reform in Islam (19 page)

Many of those first considered “Muslim feminists,” as known in the West, had never been given the opportunity to choose Islam. One wonders, if the threat of death did not loom over them, how many would just as soon
not be
Muslim. Since they have had no choice in the matter, perhaps they are simply trying to make something good come out of being stuck with Islam. How will those who “analyze” the literature know which Muslim women writing in Muslim Women’s Studies are pro-Islam, what definition of “Islam” they adhere to, or whether they are merely coincidentally Muslim? Surely what is being proposed as the problem, let alone what is being recommended as the solution, will bear a considerable mark of differ- ence. This is obscured behind a popular notion that any
one
who is Muslim, commenting on gender, is qualified to do so as if competency in one area of Islamic Studies is the same or equal to proficiency in the any other area of

studies.

For example, unfortunately, this has led Oprah Winfrey to use a

liberal male transnational Muslim scholar to set the standards for all of Islam and women in her highly popular television programs.

A person’s qualification to comment on Islam is not prefaced upon one’s “upbringing” by Muslim parents in a Muslim cultural context. Emphases need to include the aspects of volition regarding methods of study, defini- tions of Islam, cultural affiliations or identity, religious ritual observation, and spiritual motivations. Professor Leila Ahmad once commented that being “in the West,” with its sizable community of new Muslims at various

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stages of transition (converts, reverts, born-againers) along with trans- nationals (immigrants, their descendents from non-U.S. cultural and ethnic traditions and neo-traditions), conservatives, and newly forming clusters of reformists still not clearly identified against liberals, she was asked, “Are you a practicing Muslim?” Now she must face new criteria in determining her status as “Muslim.” In her memoirs she described how she was allowed exemptions from such concerns within the female space of her cultural upbringing, which also created its own female Muslim self-identity in distinction to practices and perspectives given in the dictates of the mosque discourse. This is an interesting new imposition. She remains
within
the boundaries of Islam in ways most meaningful to both her personal identity as Muslim and the methods and motivations behind her work. Her contri- butions
as a Muslim woman
are extremely valuable to the development of Muslim Women’s Studies. Those contributions are, however, distinctively self-determined on the basis of both academic/professional affiliations as well as personal or public insider aspects of identification.

This “in and out of the closet” status is only more problematic when attempting to determine “what is Muslim Women’s Studies,” and then to further determine who is capable of rendering definitions and to engage in such a study. So this brings me again to the question:

[I]s Muslim women’s studies merely a study of that vast complexity of real women living within Muslim cultures and history? Or is it the arena where a gender analysis is made not only of its sacred texts and primary resources but also of its self-definitions, self-implementations and deviances? How do these two interact in the completion of the disci- pline? It is a particular academic arrogance to assume any discussion of feminist theory without examining our many difference.
32

There is no essential Muslim woman who applies her energies and love to the tasks of improving the status of women in the global context, as demonstrated by Azza Karam in her book
Women, Islamism and the State: Contemporary Feminisms in Egypt.
She provides a thorough case study of women’s collective activities in Egypt with detailed corollaries and contra- distinctions between secular feminists and Islamist activists, a distinction previ- ously unclarified in Western and some Muslim academic arenas.
33
Margot Badran, known for her primary contribution to the history of secular, national-

ist, or cultural feminist methods and leading Muslim women’s activism and re-examination of Islamic and cultural traditions from the early twentieth century, also based on a detailed case study in Egypt, recently wrote another

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noteworthy article with Nikki Keddie: “Islamic Feminism: What’s in a Name?”
34
They contribute to the issue of plurality of Muslim women’s activities and scholarship, while finally bringing clarification to the strata between secular and Islamist strategies and ideologies. While each bears the mark of the contributor, they have made a valuable contribution to remind readers how all methods have contributed to the larger issue and need for Muslim women’s mainstreaming. Fortunately this is now more readily acknowledged by Muslim women’s networks, creating less hostility and giving greater coherence to the significance and benefit of mutual collective work. A more recent need has developed and remains unclarified – the similarities and distinctions between liberal and reformist Muslim women’s activism and thought.

Sometimes, with the Western secular or Judeo-Christian hegemony in the academy, distinguishing all of the nuances between Muslim women contri- butors to this field of Muslim Women’s Studies seems just too much trouble to unravel. Sweeping generalizations are made on the basis of very selective information, further exacerbating an already complex and extremely sensitive issue. How does any one scholar propose to have
the
Islamic, feminist perspective on any notion which in itself is not monolithic? Yet those are the titles given to their works. I return to the notion that the only way properly to locate the proliferation of literature flooding the market is by clearly establishing a more comprehensive evaluative measure or criteria referent based on some framework of Islamic feminist theory.

CONCLUSION: TOWARD AN ISLAMIC FEMINIST THEORY IN MUSLIM WOMEN’S STUDIES

Constructing an organized and organic sub-discipline in academia with Muslim Women’s Studies as the focus is a reasonably tenable idea. The establishment of Islamic Studies and Women’s Studies already sets two precedents. A careful examination of the development of these two disci- plines by corroborating or cross-referencing the process and procedures used for both these larger fields of studies would expose the fact that their beginnings were not as clear about the long-term developments as they would unfold in academia. The nuances, c omplexities, and cross-disciplinary components as each claimed a place within the academy indicate the space for the distinct discipline of Muslim Women’s Studies as one continuum in those developments. Removing patriarchal biases from Islamic Studies as a whole by integrating gender as a category of thought is one of the

84 inside the gender jihad

most significant means for expanding the interdisciplinary component. At the same time as this awareness is emphasized within the multiple sub- disciplines under the larger area, the space for gender-inclusive research developments would also further clarify the gender-specific aspects of study that might be best supported in a Muslim Women’s Studies sub-discipline. Islamic Studies is ripe for this radical reformation in research, learning, and thought.

Meanwhile Women’s Studies owes its current location in the academy to over thirty years of coordination between the second wave feminist movement and the basic philosophical and epistemological theories that were developed within other disciplines until the specific demarcations of women’s or gender studies were integrated. Careful examination of this academic development would also expose its nuances, complexities, and cross-disciplinary components as each claimed a place within the academy. Paramount to the disciplinary integrity of Muslim Women’s Studies is the critical analysis or need for further diversification as was mandated within Women’s Studies by womanists, lesbians, majuristas, and Third World women’s particularities and complex specificities without forfeiting the general consensus that “women suffer discrimination because of their sex, that they have specific needs which remain negated and unsatisfied, and

that the satisfaction of these needs would require a radical change.”
35

It is not too much to expect Muslim women to advocate the particulars of their circumstances being identified as Muslim, while simultaneously crossing numerous contextual planes of diversity in other aspects of their identity. This has been demonstrated by the multi-leveled discussions I have had to negotiate even in this chapter. The neo-Orientalist propensity toward academic hegemony has allowed non-Muslim male and female scholars to give the determinations of what qualifies as academically acceptable within the Muslim Women’s Studies context while bold-facedly constraining the diverse intra-Muslim academic contributions. Overwhelmingly, Muslim male academics participate in or agree with this hegemony, because it justifies their own limited efforts to radically interrogate gender as a category of thought in the Islamic Studies areas of the academy, which still privileges them over Muslim women scholars. Lesbian Muslim women will share some commonalities and some distinctions with both non-Muslim lesbians and heterosexual Muslim women. Already the discourse on non- heterosexual Muslims is being forefronted by gay men, with the attendant

privileging

of male heterosexual and homosexual underpinnings.
36
In

other words, there is a plethora of roadblocks already being laid to limit

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the necessary and dynamic component of diversity that Muslim Women’s Studies
will
eventually manifest within Western academic circles and insti- tutes. How soon or how late each particular institute gets on the bandwagon will determine the quality of the scholarship available in their colleges and universities. The longer they wait, the more inferior and haphazard their own programs will be. Muslim Women’s Studies is already in process earnestly, critically, and with the requisite scholarly discipline. Now comes the opportunity to facilitate this movement within the context of North American academia. The quantitative growth in Islamic Studies in the academy is qualitatively redundant on Muslim Women’s Studies. We are already trailing behind the establishment of clear institutional affiliations in other parts of the global realm of institutionalized education.

86 inside the gender jihad

3

Whoever does an atom’s weight of good shall see it, and whoever does an atom’s weight of evil shall see it.

– Qur’an 99:7–8

INTRODUCTION: THEORY AND PRACTICE

I began my work on Islamic gender reform as a graduate student of Islamic Studies, exploring theological ideas about gender in the Qur’an. I had no intention of, and no understanding of the significance of, translating ideas into practice because I was unaware of the full breadth of the experiences and politics of gender in Muslim history and societies. After I completed my research and earned my Ph.D., I was employed at the International Islamic University in Malaysia. I then began my relationship with a fledgling women’s association that eventually became known as Sisters in Islam. Our interactions reflected the crossroads between theory and practice. Before working with this group I understood justice as a concept. While working with this group, I understood that “justice” could only have meaning when implemented in real human contexts. It is far easier to articulate the abstract idea than it is to bring it into practice.

To look at Muslim women’s activism, this rudimentary discussion on the relationship between theory and practice shows how that relationship is integral to the Islamic worldview. In giving an overview of some theories affecting Islamic praxis throughout Islam’s intellectual history, I intend to

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show how these ideas and theories significantly affect modern movements of Islamic reform. All of this stems from the idea that alternative interpre- tation of the Qur’an from a female-inclusive perspective is instrumental in reform movements for women and men in modern Muslim societies, but only to the extent that that perspective is not continually reduced to being secondary or subsidiary to the normative male social and epistemological privilege.

A theory flows from an idea
1
or a belief that something is possible or

could come into reality. The projection of an idea does not necessarily include the process, procedure, or method that will bring it into being. Procedures and methods are actions that confirm the theory. On one hand, a theory can be disproved when actions fail to yield the desired results. Failure can also indicate errors in the process used to fulfill a particular idea or theory. On the other hand, a set of actions can prove a theory correct. In any case, a theory is nothing of substance unless it can be proven in action. Actions can produce positive and negative results or consequences even with no direct link to an underlying theory. This signifies one reason why the theory behind actions is not always self-evident. It is also possible for the relationship between action and theory to get lost in the process of acting. We can act, even if we have no idea what we are acting on or what we wish to achieve. Although a theory may not be directly linked or articu- lated as foundational to a set of actions, this does not mean that there is no underlying idea. Underlying ideas are disproved and proven by successful actions even if these ideas are unknown, unconscious, or underdeveloped. However, since the results of the actions can be haphazard and unpre- dictable, it is more difficult to assess the causes of these results. They are as likely to fail as they are to succeed, when no clear ideas lie beneath them in the first place. Indeed, it is impossible to say why they worked
unless
a theory is attached to them. For this reason, the theory or idea underlying a set of actions, whether failed or successful, needs to be ferreted out, articulated, explained, understood, and brought into service in order to determine or clarify a process, method, or course of actions that can lead