Islamic Feminism: A Contemporary Movement

Islamic Feminism: A Contemporary Movement

 

Islamic Feminism: A Contemporary Movement

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Asist. Prof. Suhair Nafie AbedulAziz (PhD in Literature)

College of Education for Humanities-Dept. of English/ University of Anbar/Iraq

suhair.nafie@uoanbar.edu.iq

https://www.uoanbar.edu.iq/staff-page.php?ID=176

Islamic feminism raised a wide range of debates during the last three decades among scholars and intellectuals. As a term Islamic feminism began to acquire currency particularly in Iran in the 1990s. Iranian feminist activists adopted and developed the term as a reaction to their deprived rights of the new clerics' regime after the Iranian Islamic Revolution in 1979. The Iranian historian and gender theorist Afsaneh Najmabadi asserts that the reformist strategy of these Islamic feminists is carried out through the pages of Zanan magazine in which the innovation of Islamic discourse and the reinterpreting of Islamic sources that have been greatly concerned with women’s rights are very exceptional. Zanan has changed the discourse on women in Sharia which provides an Islamic perspective based on the Qur’an as a substitution for the Western feminism in Iran during 1990s. Islamic feminists’ studies can be divided into two parts. The first concerns to define Islamic feminism as a phenomenon and attempts to analyze the works of the researchers who have written in this field, such as the works of Margot Badran, Miriam Cooke, Ziba Mir-Hosseini, Omaima Abou-Bakr and so on. As a definition, Omaima Abou-Bakr the Egyptian Islamic feminist, points that Islamic feminism creates a new Islamic knowledge and reforms the religious sciences of Muslim societies for the renewal of Islamic thought. For Margot Badran, Islamic feminism is a feminist discourse that provides equality between the male and the female within an Islamic framework, and that the Qur’an is the main source and foundation for Islamic feminism. According to Qur’anic preaching, men and women are equal and should be allowed equal social rights.[1]

The second part of studies involves the actual application of the perspective and the concept of Islamic feminism with the purpose of producing religious knowledge from a modern feminist point of view requesting divine justice; examples of this approach include Asma Barlas, Kecia Ali, and Amina Wadud. Islamic feminism in fact has a social and a religious reform agenda. Valentine Moghadam, asserts on the Qur’an being the core source for the Islamic feminists’ epistemology. Moreover, Islamic feminism for Moghadam introduces a feminist re-reading of sacred texts and Sharia. The practice of equality between women and men is subverted by patriarchal ideas and practice.[2] Islamic feminism stems from the knowledge of the Qur’an, Hadith, and Sunnah; the reinterpretation or hermeneutics by Islamic feminists places women in their legitimate position as interpreters of the sacred texts. As an example Amina Wadud who reread the Qur’an in her landmark book The Qur’an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective (1992). She reinterprets the Qur’an from a woman’s perspective to find meaning in the traditional interpretations which is relevant to modern Muslim women. She states that: "By ‘reading’ I mean the process of reviewing the words and their context in order to derive an understanding of the text, as well as the ‘prior text’ of the one who makes the ‘reading’".[3] Wadud relies exclusively on the Qur’an to establish definitive criteria for evaluating the differences between “text” and “context”; between what is intended in the Qur’an and what is actually practiced in Muslim societies. Wadud shows that a hermeneutical approach to interpreting woman in the Qur’an must include women as active agents in both the intellectual and physical creation of a just social order.

 Keywords: Islamic feminism1, feminism2, Afsaneh Najmabadi3, Omaima Abou-Bakr4, Margot Badran5 and Amina Wadud 6.



[1]  .[1]??? ???, ?????. ??????? ????????? ???????. ????? ?????? ????? ????? 2. ????? ?????? ????? ??? ???. ????? ???? ??? ???. ???????: ????? ?????? ????????, 2012. ? 26

 

2.  Moghadam, Valentine. M. “Islamic Feminism and Its Discontents: Toward a Resolution of the Debate.”  Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 27. 4 (summer, 2002): 1135-1171.

 

3. Wadud, Amina. The Qur’an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective. New York: Oxford U P, 1992. P.1                                                                                              

 

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