There've been a number of articles recently about women in Islam, and the (non) response of western feminists. So do we get to hear the other side of the story? - the view from a western feminist? Yes indeed we do. Here (at CiF, of course) is Geraldine Brooks, explaining why "finger-wagging won't help Muslim women":
By Allah, we're an arrogant lot.
By "we", I mean modern western feminists, a group among which I am generally proud to be included. Except when we're full of ourselves.
Western feminism is not the only ideology exquisitely sensible of gender injustice. Nor are western feminists the only ones willing or able to speak up about it. Muslim women have been doing this themselves for decades, loudly and often effectively. To cite just a few examples: It was Egyptian Muslims, Huda Shawari and Saiza Nabarawi, who publicly threw off their veils in 1923 at the Cairo railway station, leading to wide acceptance in Egypt that wearing hijab is a personal choice. Tamam Fahiliya, a Palestinian Muslim, started a women's group to protest honor killings in 1991. In the US recently, a young Muslim writer named Asra Nomani posted her list of theses regarding women's Islamic rights on the door of her local mosque in West Virginia, sparking spirited nationwide soul-searching among members of America's fastest growing religion. And in Iran, it is observant Muslim women who have achieved the most positive change in matters of economic and social equality.
By contrast, western feminist finger-wagging or attempts by pro-western governments to alter Islamic laws by fiat have been spectacularly counter productive. In 1979, Anwar Sadat enacted mild reform of marriage and custody laws, but by 1985 Egypt's Islamists had succeeded in having those laws struck down.
Well, it's one way of arguing. If any advance is made, it's because of the Muslim women themselves. Any setback, though, is due to Western interference. And so we must leave well alone. Even feminism is an ideology apparently restricted to the West. Muslim women, who may also be "exquisitely sensible of gender injustice", are excluded from the ranks. They have to fight their own battles.
In Iran, on the other hand, a young generation of Koranically-literate Islamic revolutionary women sparked a national conversation on personal status issues, using Islamic jurisprudence rather than legislative measures. By educating women in the use of Islamically sanctioned pre-nuptial agreements, for example, an Iranian woman can secure for herself the right to divorce in set circumstances, to continue study or work after marriage and to establish her share of property if the marriage is dissolved. All of this was done without parliamentary debate, because Muslim women argued their case from within the Islamic establishment.
Reporting in Iran in 1995, I witnessed a similar exercise of Muslim feminist power. A university professor had looked out on his incoming engineering students and commented with disgust about the number of females, who would marry and waste their training. The women in the group who were the more "westernized" and less Islamically "correct" in their dress and beliefs felt their position too tenuous to object. But a band of chadoris, young women who were conspicuously observant, led a demarche on the professor, demanding a retraction and an apology. Which they got.
I'm not saying here that a human right is what the local despot says it is. I find the kind of moral relativism that justifies practices such as female genital mutilation disgusting and fatuous. What I am recommending is a little humility. Western feminists with a genuine desire to raise the status of oppressed women in Afghanistan or elsewhere should call their nearest mosque and make an appointment to talk to the sisterhood there. (I'm not talking about Wahhabi or Salafi-dominated mosques, which really are hopeless.) But in the majority of mosques they will learn of efforts long afoot to reclaim the positive messages about women's rights in the Koran, messages obscured for too long by patriarchy and oppressive social customs. It is those efforts that we western feminists should support if we care about the women, and not the sweet sound of our own politically correct bleatings.
But in the majority of mosques they will learn of efforts long afoot to reclaim the positive messages about women's rights
efforts long afoot, my arse.
Posted by: Richard | August 30, 2009 at 12:04 AM