Valuable scholarship

Feminism in Islam: Secular and Religious Convergences by Margot Badran; Oneworld Publications, Oxford; Price: Rs.1,500; 349 pp

Even as almost everyone recalls a horror story about the misery and isolation of women in almost all countries of the Muslim world — and barbarous punishment claimed to be mandated by shariat law — there’s no shortage of books, volumes, treatises and essays written on the status of women in Islam by Muslims as well as others, with the vast majority of works on this furiously debated subject having been penned by men.

For most male Muslim writers, the status of Muslim women is central to interpreting the purity and differentiation of Islam. For non-Muslim scholars of Islam, it is a central trope in their critique of the religion. Caught in the cross-fire, diverse voices of Muslim women themselves have received scant attention in scholarly literature.

Margot Badran, senior fellow at the Centre for Muslim-Christian Understanding of Georgetown University, USA, is one of the foremost chroniclers of Muslim women’s struggle for gender justice. Feminism in Islam, her latest offering, broadly explores two types of struggles for equality waged in different parts of the Muslim world.

The first, which she traces to the colonial period, is what she labels ‘Muslim secular feminism’, through which women in several Islamic countries sought to assert their rights to education, employment and political participation as a means for the empowerment and advancement of the ‘nation’ and ‘community’. At the same time, these women were cautious to present their demands in accordance with the tenets of Islam. The second form of feminism is what Badran terms ‘Islamic feminism’, which emerged in a major way just a few decades ago. Much of this book sheds a revealing light on the forms, arguments and practical achievements of Islamic feminism.

Far from being an oxymoron, Badran asserts that ‘Islamic feminism’ is more radical and forceful than Muslim secular feminism. Islamic feminism, she states, is based on the firm conviction about the fundamental equality of men and women as creatures of God, as stated in the Quran. On the basis of this belief and their re-reading of the Islamic tradition, Islamic feminists argue that Islam mandates equality of women and men in all spheres of life, personal as well as public. This demand for equality, Badran says, extends even to the religious sphere, as regards religious professions and mosque rituals. Badran backs her case by citing certain Muslim women scholars — Aminah Wadud, Asma Barlas, Riffat Hasan, the better-known among them — who argue on these lines.

Yet the question needs to be posed and answered. Can elite women — many based in Western universities — represent a reform movement, within the conservative ijtihad tradition in the true sense of the term? This is an issue that Badran sidesteps. An assessment of the actual impact of Islamic feminists in terms of policy or legal changes, or women’s mobilisation at the ‘grassroots’, is missing in this otherwise engaging narrative.

Absent, also, is any substantial discussion about internal Muslim critiques of their essays, mainly, though not only, by conservative ulema and Islamist ideologues on their interpretations of the Quran and shariat law. This is an issue of immense practical import because on it hinges the possibility of popular acceptance of the Islamic feminists’ interpretations of the faith.

Besides elite Muslim women, some of who may insist on being called Islamic feminists, there is a much larger number of others who, working within a broadly defined Islamic framework, shun the label ‘feminist’ as being tainted by its association with the West. They frame their struggle in terms of a reversion to the teaching of ‘authentic Islam’, and not, as the title of the book suggests, ‘feminism in Islam’. They don’t go out on a limb as elite women-scholars, who Badran says are on the cutting-edge of ‘Islamic feminism’. Their demands are more modest, advocating women-led prayers for joint congregations. Yet, Badran seems to lump them together with Islamic academics inadvertently homogenising a very diverse set of voices. She chooses to regard even moderate and gradualist reformist women as representatives of ‘Islamic feminism’.

Despite these reservations, Feminism in Islam is an impressive work of scholarship and research, and will definitely serve the cause of Muslim women around the world, struggling for emancipation and equality in unjust patriarchal societies.

Yoginder Sikand