Rise of Muslim feminism to oppose patriarchy

Saad S. Khan, Washington DC

Friday, March 18, 2005, shall be remembered as a watershed in the Islamic discourse on the role of woman in religious life, as the first-ever Friday congregation was led by a Muslim woman scholar that day.

The woman prayer leader, Amina Wadud, professor of Islamic Studies at the Virginia Commonwealth University, was considered a heretic by many, as she challenged the halo of sanctity around the male-centric, and in some cases, misogynic constructions of Muslim religious teachings.

Right or wrong, Wadud went ahead with leading a Friday congregation of around 100 faithful, evenly divided into men and women, in Manhattan, New York. The venue of the prayers had been changed over and over again, as three mosques refused to host the event and the administration of an art gallery backed out for fear of a bomb blast.

Wadud did not budge and finally the congregation was held in an Anglican church hall, under heavy security. Some 15 demonstrators protested outside, calling the congregation a mockery of Islam.

There are many issues of jurisprudence involved in this issue: Can a woman lead the men in prayers? Can she deliver a sermon? Can she recite the azan (prayer call), and if so, can she do it without wearing the hijab (Muslim headscarf), as was the case in this event? Can men and women pray together, intermingled, instead of standing in separate rows for the two sexes?

Wadud's answer to all these questions is a clear affirmative. And the presence of scores of Muslims standing behind her in Manhattan alone shows that there is a significant minority opinion among Muslims in the West who share her understanding of the Koran.

As expected, swift was the criticism from a vast cross-section of the Muslim world. From the president of Libya to the shopkeeper in England, voices were raised in blasting the event. Many religious scholars also joined the chorus of disapproval. The Islamic Fiqh (jurisprudence) Academy, or the IFA, an affiliate of the Jeddah-based Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), came out of its slumber and strongly condemned the congregation as "religious heresy".

Many Islamic scholars have opined that special mosques for women can be built in which only women can lead prayers provided the azan is recited by a male Muslim. Others, such as prominent Pakistani cleric Israr Ahmad, believe that at an all-women mosque, there should be a woman muezzin.

Sheikh Mohammed Al Tantawi of Al Azhar, the Islamic world's leading institution of religious study in Egypt, wrote in Cairo's Al Ahram newspaper that Islam permits women to lead other women in prayers, but not a congregation with men in it, because "when she leads men in prayer ... it's not proper for them to look at the woman whose body is in front of them".

It appears that for Sheikh Tantawi the issue is more of men being able to look at a woman's body than woman being religiously or spiritually incompetent to be a prayer leader.

Feminism in Islam is not an altogether new phenomenon. Tahira Qurat-ul-Ain of Iran, Fatima Aalia Hanim of Turkey and Zainab Al Fawwaz and Aisha Taimuria of Egypt all rose to prominence in the late nineteenth century.

The 20th century saw the rise of Zainab Al Ghazali Al Jubaili of Egypt, the only female scholar in history who has written a tafseer (exegesis) of the holy Koran and Nazira Zain Al Abideen of Lebanon. But not all twentieth-century Muslim feminists invoked Islam. Actually, the views of such female writers as Tasleema Nasreen of Bangladesh, Nawal Saadawi of Egypt and Fatimah Mernissi of Morocco have often been so outrageous toward Islam that religious edicts have been issued calling for their deaths.

It is also a fact that most contemporary Muslim scholars who espoused traditional conservative views about women, such as Hassan Al Banna, Sayyid Qutb, Maulana Muwdoudi, Hassan Al Turabi, Imam Khomeini and Rachid Ghannouchi, were either Western-educated or had close exposure to Western societies. They considered Western society too permissive and decadent and felt that the future stability of Islamic societies depended largely on the preservation of Islam's traditional views on marriage, home and family.

Many Muslim feminists in the West now claim that they are not against traditional family views, but want to oppose patriarchal notions of shame and honor that have nothing to do with Islam. They also register their protests against forced marriages, restrictions on education and careers and female genital mutilation (FMG), as practiced in many Muslim communities.

There are also women who argue that the veil is not necessarily a means to protect women, being instead a cause of sexual excitement for male eyes.

Muslim feminists can no longer be written away as morally corrupt women who have no knowledge of Islam. This had been the modus operandi of some Muslim scholars to discredit women rights activists within the Islamist framework. This approach can hardly be expected to work any longer. After all, many of the women are making their case on the basis of arguments from the Koran and Sunnah.

Islamic feminism is now a reality, as is feminism in other religions, Christianity included, where the ordainment of female clerics has taken place in the recent past. The late Pope John Paul II was staunchly opposed to the ordainment of women priests as is the present Pope Benedict the XVIth. But the fact is that the women worldwide are now questioning the status that had been accorded to them by religion and culture throughout history.

Saad S. Khan is an Oxford-published author and a widely read analyst on Islam, politics and governance in the Muslim world. This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service - Partners in Humanity.