We Muslim feminists view it as a struggle that taps Islamic theology, thinking and history to reclaim rights granted to women by Islam at its birth but erased by manmade rules and tribal traditions masquerading as divine law....
To many, we are the bad girls of Islam. But we are not anti-sharia (Islamic law) or anti-Islam. We use the fundamentals of Islamic thinking — the Koran, the Sunnah, or traditions and sayings of the prophet Muhammad, and ijtihad, or independent reasoning — to challenge the ways in which Islam has been distorted by sharia rulings issued mostly by ultraconservative men.
What we are wrestling with are laws created in the name of Islam by men, specifically eight men. The Muslim world of the 21st century is largely defined by eight madhhabs, or Islamic schools of jurisprudence, with narrow rulings on everything from criminal law to family law: the Shafi, Hanafi, Maliki and Hanbali schools in the majority Sunni sect; the Jafari and Zaydi schools, for the minority Shiite sect; and the Ibadi and Thahiri schools among other Muslims. But the first centuries of Islam's 1,400-year history were quite different — characterized by scores of schools of jurisprudence, many progressive and women-friendly. It is not Islam that requires women to wear a headscarf, but rather the scholars in the contemporary schools.
December 16, 2005
"In Islam, there is no place for feminism."
Asra Q. Nomani disagrees:
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7 comments:
This is very similar to the viewpoint of Prof. Khaled M. Abou El Fadl, a UCLA law professor, in his book "The Great Theft : Wrestling Islam from the Extremists." His book gave me a more meaningful frame of reference to the issues facing your average Muslim today. It's both accessible and scholarly; and I highly recommend it.
Islam, as practiced by many, is creating a society devoid of the civilizing influence of women. This is disastrous for the men, their families and non-Muslims who have to deal with them.
The whole struggle within Islam today could be characterized as "Manhood in Crisis."
I'm glad she's writing about this. The silence from the feminist establishment in the West on this subject is cowardly, to say the least. I'm sure this writer would have a few choice words for those who justify this with the cultural relativism argument.
- progress is moving fast in Saudi Arabia for instance - though women were not allowed to vote in a recent election, they were for the first time in history allowed to discuss the elections with their husbands in the privacy of their homes. You've come a long ways, baby! The hot issue amongst muslim women in the ME is which will come first, voting or driving? I for one have always loved a spirited debate.
From a seminar in Tehran 1/5/86 on the study of Hi(e)jab and delivered by Sister Zahra Rahnavard:
We may look at the hejab from the window of economy, and then construe the abolition of hejab as an Imperialist plot for the inflow of the putrefied surplus products of the Western Capitalist countries like the readymade garments, cosmetics and even the attractive bodies of women for the publicity of the surplus commodities manufactured in their factories.
http://al-islam.org/alpha.php?sid=355262166&cat=146&alpha_id=53
Boy! Wal-Mart can't be pleased with such fiery rhetoric! Though it is a bit outdated, one wonders if its veracity isn't still intact in light of Iran's President proclaiming there was no holocaust and Israel should be wiped off the map. Am I confusing fashion with religion here or is it just Friday??
Originally some schools of Islamic thought were or liberal, but after Avicenna and Averroes there is virtually nil.
It would be as if Western thought stopped at Aquinas, disavowed him, and then regressed for 1,000 years.
There needs to be a Luther and a Wittenburg Door, but there is no centralized institution to reform. Reform is going to take a long time and be piecemeal at best.
No one's arguing their growth Brylin. Growth may be an indicator of vitality, but cancer grows fast too sometimes.
Many churches (especially the mainline Lutheran, Episcopalians, etc.) are empty in the U.S. but are exploding in Africa and Asia -- the new expansion of Christianity.
Ironic that the religion, generally, that has embraced this world in all its Millsian Kantian relativist glory is sucking wind while the religion that dares to stand apart grows..... Could it be that people are looking for something different and the vacuum is being filled by Islam and not Christianity? a head scratcher... and one the Church needs to get on (and is doing so)
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