rachelwoodlock.com

A brief overview

Different types of feminism have arisen in the Muslim world, partly influenced by Western forms of feminism, and others taking inspiration from the religion of Islam. This is a brief overview of feminism in Islam.

What is feminism?

According to the Macquarie dictionary, feminism is “advocacy of equal rights and opportunities for women, especially the extension of their activities in social and political life.” The parallel word in Arabic that has been used by Arabic speaking feminists is nisa’iyyah.  In the Western world, feminism is often described as having occurred in ‘waves’.

First Wave Feminism
This refers to the modern Western world’s “first concerted movement working for the reform of women’s social and legal inequalities in the nineteenth century.”[1] First wave feminism was directed primarily at white middle-class women and dealt with reforms to education, employment and is particularly marked by the suffragette movement.

Second Wave Feminism
Second wave feminism refers to the feminist activity in the US and the Euro-centric world during the sixties onwards. Again it was primarily (though not solely) directed towards reforming the societal rights of middle-class, particularly white, women and second wave feminists worked visibly to counter discrimination against women. (more…)

Abstract

The Qur’an is the holy book of Muslims, for whom it is inerrant and inimitable. However, the Qur’an can appear as a veiled text to Western readers. This knol is a brief survey of the history and nature of the Muslim scripture. It looks at the nature of the Qur’an as an oral/aural experience; its history and context, particularly as it is believed to have been revealed to the Prophet Muhammad over the course of his ministry; the themes and content of the Qur’an as a source of guidance, rather than detailed legal text; the development of modern interpretations; and a comparison with the Jewish and Christian experiences of scripture.

Introduction

The Qur’an is the holy book of Muslims, composed of some 114 surahs (sometimes called chapters) that range in length from 3 to 286 ayahs (sometimes called verses). Muslims believe the Qur’an is literally the word of God, given to the Prophet Muhammad (d.632CE) over a period of twenty-three years, through the medium of the angel Gabriel. For them it is inerrant and inimitable. The Qur’an is:

The speech of Allah, sent down upon the last Prophet Muhammad, through the  Angel Gabriel, in its precise meaning and precise wording, transmitted to us by numerous persons (tawatur), both verbally and in writing. Inimitable and unique, protected by God from corruption.[1]

This is in contrast to the hadith “traditions”, which are the reported sayings and doings of the Prophet Muhammad. These are also considered to be divinely inspired where they can be ascertained to be genuine, but only in content, not in their literal texts. (more…)

The New York Times has an article on Dr Nadwi’s Muhaddithat women scholars project. That’s forty volumes worth of biographical information on Muslim women scholars through history, challenging the notion that Muslim women have been subjected to 1400 hundred years of invisibility and only becoming emancipated through Westernisation in the modern world. The article traces women’s declining involvement in formal religious education and scholarship to the sixteenth-century, partly due to the formalising of Islamic education.

This is similar to a compelling argument Prof. Amira Sonbol made in her 2003 article “Women in shari’ah courts: A historical and methodological discussion” published in Fordham International Law Journal vol. 27. Sonbol traces the increasing restrictions on women’s automony to crystalisation of the once-flexible system of shari’a as part of nineteenth- and twentieth-century reform; so that today’s restrictions on modern Muslim women, although seen as static and eternal prescriptions and proscriptions, are more reflective of patriarchal attitudes in circulation at the dawn of the modern era.

Rane, Nathie, Isakhan and Abdalla (2011) have analysed the social attitudes of 418 Muslims living in Queensland by distributing a self-administered questionnaire at a large ‘Id festival (Eidfest) held in Brisbane, 2009. They achieved a broad cross-section of respondents in age, education, migrant-status, employment-status, and with a 1:1.4 female to male ratio. Using five-item and seven-item Likert response scales, the topics covered in the questionnaire were identity and integration; trust in institutions; views on democracy; views on terrorism; views on gender equality and views on public policy issues. Rane et. al. found strong support for Islamic identity; Muslim integration in Australian society; trusting mosques and Muslim institutions; trusting the Australian health system; trusting the Australian education system; democracy; rejecting terrorism; affirming gender equality; affirming Islamic ethics of being “good, fair and kind” towards fellow human beings; and responsibility towards the environment. However, participants also displayed low levels of trust for the mass media and Australian political systems, and showed major concern with Israeli infringement on Palestinian human rights. In their conclusion, the authors note:

One of the major findings of this study is that Muslims in Australia are engaging in a process of redefining the priorities of their faith in the context of contemporary Western society. This study, while limited in scope, suggests that the direction of this process is towards the harmonization of Islam with the values and institutions of Australian society and its people.

Rane, H., Nathie, M., Isakhan, B., and Abdalla, M. (2011). ‘Towards understanding what Australia’s Muslims really think’. Journal of Sociology 47(1):1–21.