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Do Muslim women need liberating?
We certainly need more freedom to
question our faith without being accused of rejecting it
I attended a session at IslamExpo at the weekend on a topic that
keeps coming up: "Do Muslim women need liberating?" I expected that
there would be the usual preoccupation with defending the faith and restating
that Islam does not oppress women. But I was pleasantly surprised to listen to
open criticism of indigenous culture in the Muslim world and a more profound
examination of the role Muslim women themselves play in their own oppression. Merve Kavakçı
- the former Turkish politician - claimed the modern evaluation of the
situation of Muslim women was inherently biased. She believes there is a
Western assumption that Muslim women are subjugated, which is attributed to
Islam - a non sequiteur in her view, since while Muslim women do need to be
liberated, it is not from the religion but from their indigenous culture. This
is a crucial point: it's worth noting, for example, that female circumcision -
the biggest stain on Islam's reputation - is predominant in Egypt, a secular
country, and virtually non-existent in Saudi Arabia. The distinguishing factor
is the different cultures in both countries. She should have been more mindful
of the reasons why Islam is seen as Ironically, Yvonne Ridley defended
Islam using her own Western experience as a departure point, declaring herself
a lifelong feminist and stating that women do not need liberating from Islam
but from ubiquitous male chauvinist fear. Her argument smacked of the
stereotypical zeal with which converts to Islam take to the religion. As a
cultural defector, she re-examined the liberal tradition of her Western
Christian upbringing and saw its paucity in relation to the rights granted to
women by Islam 1400 years ago. Her assertion that the conservatism from which
women suffer in the Muslim world is a direct result of colonial times which
spawned a male backlash in fear of cultural erosion, may have some truth but is
used as a perennial excuse; a type of absolution that does the liberation
movement no favours and contradicts her feminist, "men fear women,
period" strain of absolution. More could have been said about
the political motivations of the campaign to pigeonhole Muslim women as
victims. Maleiha
Malik questioned why Muslim communities were not delivering for Muslim
women. In her view, Muslim women not only need liberating from other Muslim
women who peddle a utopion view of Islam, but from themselves and the
internalised ways of living they have adopted. This applies to Muslim women who
are told there is only one correct form of Islam and that the hijab is an
enforceable obligation rather than a choice. Malik hit the right balance for
me: I resent being told by non-Muslims or ex-Muslims like Ayaan Hirsi Ali that I
am oppressed, but I also resent being told that I am not oppressed at all by
those who urge me to go back to the roots of my faith and find liberation by
shedding my Orientalist views and being more understanding of the colonial
hangover from which Muslim men suffer. The difficult question is, if
Islamic scripture and heritage provide a healthy paradigm within which to
enshrine women's rights, why isn't it happening? I think it's because too few
Muslim women probe issues that stem immediately from the Qur'an and the hadith,
and fail to ask the more searching and disconcerting questions. We women need
freedom to question aspects of our faith without necessarily being accused of
rejecting it. What definitely does not help is
trivialising the real and sustained pressure exerted upon young Muslim women by
their families. When Yvonne Ridley was asked by a member of the audience
whether she viewed the enforcement of the hijab on young girls as justified,
she unhelpfully replied "All I can say is that if I had listened to my
mother when I was younger, I wouldn't have made half the mistakes that I had
made in my lifetime". About this article
Close This article was
first published on guardian.co.uk
on Monday July 14 2008. It was last updated at 16:51 on July 14 2008. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/14/women.islam |
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