I’m to meet two friends for lunch in a French café on a summery day in London. Having this casual lunch is such a treat in our super busy-schedules. I’d spent my morning in the British library, preparing for a paper I will be presenting in two weeks in the States. My Kuwaiti friend, Aysha, is a feminist researcher who has just published a two-year study on divorced women in Kuwait. My second companion, Maryam, is a Saudi dentist whose PhD thesis was the talk of the conference she has just attended in Scotland a week ago.
Once we’re together, we find ourselves conversing about the misconceptions we face wherever we go, no matter how intellectual the setting. Aysha tells us that when others see how publicly active she is, their questions are about women’s private spaces. Their questions turn into statements about how Islam has failed women in the marriage institution and how the Islamic family law is clearly biased. The problem here, she says, is that the news distributed about certain cases of injustices come from a very limited number of countries but still get the maximum media attention: stories such as women denied custody rights, marriage rape, and children marriages. How can Islam be blamed here?
I add that this preconceived notion of Muslim women in need of rescuing from their religion is enriched in the Western popular mind and is being fed by images of women fully covered in black and by reported stories of honor killings, female genital mutilation, and child marriages. Even though these cases do exist, what these reports fail to capture are the underlying factors behind such abnormalities—such as poverty, traditional patriarchal families and tribes, and oppressive regimes.
Maryam says she is usually faced with condescending comments such as, “Muslim women will never be able to progress because their religion marks them as the subordinate inferior gender!” I interject that though Western feminism attempted to construct a set of rules to equalize them, the Islamic holy book gave women equality and respect more than 14 centuries ago. Women have the right to education, work, and political activity under Islam. When they are denied their rights, one needs to look at each example as an individual case. Instead of making Islam the scapegoat, one needs to explore the social, economic, and political realities of these women. The real problem is, rather, the challenge that women face in male-dominated institutions and societies. A problem that is termed internationally as sexism! Muslim women are held captive between protection and rescue: Religious fundamentalists claim that they are protecting us, and the Western media are calling for our rescue. We need to speak for ourselves. We have a voice, and we intend to use it.
In the heat of the conversation, we don’t recognize that we’ve become the center of everyone’s attention in the café. An Arab lady next to us turns to her daughters and tells them: “just a bunch of feminists!”
This piece is published in Carnegie Mellon Today magazine in their October issue. [Link]
Douaa Dalle
I think that the problem is that the west define the term of equality as the same and identical, however that is not equality in Islam. Islam. acknowledge the differences between men and women and yet give both their rights and define their duties. in Islam a woman is different than a man because she has abilities that men don't have and the verse. Islam says men and women are different but equal. west says they are the same. we are not the same. as a woman living her in Qatar I think we are being respected more than many women in the west. I'd like to be treated like a lady not like a man, because we are different but we are equal.October 15th, 2009 @ 12:24 pm
Amna Al-Hetmi
Muslim women don’t need rescuing from their religion; they need rescuing from the preconceptions of their societies. Arab women are not victims of Islam, but if they were victims of anything, it would be their societies. Take women working/studying in a coed environment as an example. A lot of people think that Islam forbids women from working in such environments; however, Islam was never against the idea. Khawla bint AlAzwar lead an army of men in the Battle of Ajnadin and set an example to men and women alike that one should fight for what he believes in. Nusayba bint Kaab fought in defense of the religion as well. She took part in the Battle of Uhud and the Battle of Hunain. Other great women in Islam such as Aisha bint AbuBaker and Khadija bint Khuwailid also worked with men. Islam praises those women and considers them role models. It’s the society that limits the women, not Islam. It was society that created the idea that women should only stay at home and look after their family. It was society that marked them as the subordinate inferior gender. And it was also society that made feminism sound like a bad thing!!October 25th, 2009 @ 1:44 am
Ali
People in our region fail to separate religion from culture. Over the years, they mixed both until we ended up with a wrong perception of Islam. A lot of women had great roles in the society during the lifetime of the prophet Muhammad, however most men still undermine the role women can play in our society today. Aren't women the ones who raise the generations of the future? Haven't they heard of "الجنة تحت أقدام الأمهات"? To western feminist activists, I would like to say that if you want to judge the way Islam treats women then look at the rulings of Islam, instead of looking at what some "Muslims" do. To religious fundamentalists, by isolating women, you are weakening them instead of protecting them, which will lead to a weak society as a whole. Thank you for the article Amal. Very nice blog.December 21st, 2009 @ 11:25 pm