Beyond “Liberal” Female Piety or “Women Read the Qur’an Too” by Amy Levin
Originally published on the Feminism and Religion project
I’m a teacher’s assistant for an undergraduate course at New York University called, “What is Islam?” The other day in... more I’m a teacher’s assistant for an undergraduate course at New York University called, “What is Islam?” The other day in class, my professor asked the students whether or not the Qur’an is considered a “book”. Fraught with anxiety over inheriting such a problematic scholarly tradition of defining and delineating what “religion” is, I kept quiet. While my professor was aiming more for something sounding like, “a book is read, while the Qur’an is recited,” I kept thinking about the physicality and sacrality of the Qur’an (among other authoritative religious texts) and the way it is handled, revered, preserved, loved, an constantly under interpretation. It was about a week later when news broke out that U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan were guilty of burning several copies of the Qur’an on their military base, followed by an unfortunate slew of casualties including at least 30 Afghan deaths and five US soldiers.
Walking in the Footsteps of Mary by Najeeba Syeed Miller
Originally published on the Feminism and Religion project
As I walked into the “House of Mary”more
As I walked into the “House of Mary”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_the_Virgin_Mary
in Turkey, our guide said, “As many Muslims as Christians come to visit this last home of Sayyidah Maryam (form of respectful way to refer to Mary, Mother of Jesus). The veracity of the historical claims of whether this was her home continue to be debated, but the relevance of her role in Muslim narratives continues to inform my community, and is also cherished by those of us who are mothers.
A Mother’s Heart
The verses of Surah Maryam in the Qur’an are oft recited throughout the history of Muslims and at times had great significance. Some scholars point to the bridge that these verses helped to build between the Muslims who were fleeing persecution and the Christian Abyssinian Negus (king) who gave these early Muslims asylum and safety in his Christian country.Beyond the way that the Jesus (or Prophet Esa, upon him be peace is referred to in Arabic and by Muslims) figures into Muslim religious history, so too does his mother hold a place of significance.
Sayiddah Maryam and the Birth Process
For many of my friends who are Muslim and seeking ways to find our guidance in being mothers, we turn to the story of Maryam, Surah (xix) in the Qur’an time and again. For many who are first time mothers, I share with them these verses from the moment they concieve, to remind them of special relationship she had while alone and in the throes of childbirth. As any woman might, she yells in agony (Surah Maryam, Verse 23) of such great pain that that “would that I had been a thing forgotten,” before this moment that was of great psychological and physical trial.
FELIU, L. "Feminism, Gender Inequality and the Reform of the Mudawana in Morocco", The Scientific Journal of Humanistic Studies, Year 4, no. 6, March 2012, pp. 101-111.
During the last decades, Moroccan women have turned into important agents of change in front of a situation of... more During the last decades, Moroccan women have turned into important agents of change in front of a situation of discrimination and social injustice. The analysis of the struggle focused on the legislative reform of the Mudawana shows: First, the representatives of the Moroccan feminism choose to accept a series of traditional values and cultural identities as a legitimate frame of reference, specially the one referent to the Islamic frame. Second, the division between secular or Islamic feminism does not endure a rigid differentiation between an emancipatory program and a continuism in "tradition". Third, the question of the reform of the Mudawana has been highly politicized both by the State agents and by all kinds of political and social movements. And finally, the struggle for the emancipation of women cannot dissociate from the general struggle for democratization in politics and in the set of society.
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Seen by:TRADUCCIÓN AL CASTELLANO del texto “Islamic Feminismo on the move”, de Margot Badran
Traducido al castellano el capítulo “Islamic Feminismo on the move”, de la obra de Badran, Feminism in Islam. Secular and Religious Convergences, Oxford, Oneworld, 2009, pp. 323-338, para el dossier “Mujeres y religiones. Desafíos para el feminismo actual”, coordinado por Inmaculada Blasco y Marie P. McMahon en Clepsydra. Revista de Estudios de Género y Teoría Feminista, 2010, vol. 9, “Feminismo islámico en marcha”, pp. 69-84.
DA PARADOSSO A REALTÀ: I PERCORSI DEL FEMMINISMO ISLAMICO IN UNA PROSPETTIVA STORICO-ANTROPOLOGICA
L’elaborato tratta del cosiddetto “femminismo islamico”, un fenomeno estremamente complesso, “globale” ed in continua... more
L’elaborato tratta del cosiddetto “femminismo islamico”, un fenomeno estremamente complesso, “globale” ed in continua trasformazione, che qui viene analizzato in un’ottica storico-antropologica. Il femminismo islamico può essere sinteticamente definito come “un discorso e una pratica femminista articolati all’interno del paradigma Islam” (Badran), il quale propone un approccio olistico al mondo e all’esperienza e che mira, così, a dissolvere le consuete dicotomie religioso/secolare, Oriente/Occidente, maschio/femmina, pubblico/privato. Esso, come altri movimenti riformisti islamici, quindi, può rappresentare una “terza via”, un’alternativa, intellettuale e politica, allo scontro tra fondamentalismi (islamico e occidentale), che propongono invece una visione dicotomica del reale, tipica di una dialettica amici-nemici (Noi/ Loro) molto diffusa nell’attuale clima politico da “scontro delle civiltà”. Esso tende dunque a scardinare la rigidità di tale pensiero “fondamentalista”, provando a creare un orizzonte comune di dialogo e ponendosi in uno spazio di confine, di margine, inteso come uno spazio creativo che, come auspica il filosofo riformista Tariq Ramadan, possa innescare un processo di meditazione e di riflessione nella comunità islamica, indispensabile per quelle esigenze di rinnovamento sempre più forti nella Umma.
Tenuto conto di tale premessa fondamentale, l’elaborato si articola, poi, in tre parti (capitoli) principali.
Nel primo capitolo si affronta il dibattito, intellettuale e politico, che si è sviluppato attorno alla legittimità, alla definizione e alla ricostruzione storiografica del femminismo islamico. Esso, infatti, ha dato luogo a posizioni diversificate e contrapposte a tal riguardo: per molte/i studiose/i e attiviste/i l’unione tra il paradigma islamico e quello femminista costituisce un paradosso, un ossimoro in termini di pratiche e di discorsi. Ultimamente, comunque, nonostante tali critiche, la tendenza generale è quella di accettare l’orizzonte di pensiero del femminismo islamico, inteso come un progetto innovativo e creativo che si inserisce del più ampio discorso riformista, il quale mira a modernizzare l’Islam dall’interno e che ha acquisito, negli ultimi tempi, una sempre maggiore visibilità e legittimità.
Il secondo capitolo, invece, si focalizza sulle “dinamiche interne” e sul nucleo centrale del progetto femminista islamico: la rilettura del Corano e della letteratura religiosa islamica alla luce di un’ermeneutica femminista, ovvero di un approccio interpretativo, il quale metta in evidenza i numerosi passaggi del testo sacro che proclamano l’uguaglianza tra uomini e donne. La teologia musulmana femminista si fonda, infatti, sulla convinzione che il Corano affermi l’uguaglianza di tutti gli esseri umani (e, di conseguenza, anche l’uguaglianza di genere), ma che ciò sia stato messo in ombra dall’ideologia patriarcale del pensiero religioso ufficiale, il quale mistifica il messaggio originale del Profeta Maometto.
Il terzo capitolo affronta, infine, le dinamiche “esterne” del femminismo islamico, le quali sono profondamente legate all’incontro-scontro con l’Occidente, che sembra influenzare ogni discorso e ogni pratica all’interno delle comunità islamiche. Il femminismo islamico si configura, in tal direzione, come un progetto creativo che prova ad andare oltre la retorica neo-coloniale della modernizzazione, concepita esclusivamente come acquisizione di un modello di società occidentale. Esso rispecchia, infatti, la problematica congiuntura storica che il mondo arabo-musulmano si trova oggi ad affrontare: il confronto con la “modernità proibita” dell’Occidente e i conseguenti tentativi di opporvi resistenza attraverso la produzione di modernità alternative.
Human Rights Watch condemns Saudi restriction of women's sports
By James M. Dorsey
International human rights group Human Rights Watch has accused Saudi Arabia of... more
By James M. Dorsey
International human rights group Human Rights Watch has accused Saudi Arabia of kowtowing to assertions by the country's powerful conservative Muslim clerics that female sports constitute "steps of the devil" that will encourage immorality and reduce women's chances of meeting the requirements for marriage.
The Human Rights Watch charges contained in a new report entitled “’Steps of the Devil’ comes on the heels of the kingdom backtracking on a plan to build its first stadium especially designed to allow women who are currently barred from attending soccer matches because of the kingdom’s strict public gender segregation to watch games. The planned stadium was supposed to open in 2014.
The report urged the International Olympic Committee to require Saudi Arabia to legalize women's sports as a condition for its participation in Olympic games.
"The glaring absence of a Saudi female athlete at the Olympics cannot go on much longer," Human Rights Watch researcher Christoph Wilcke, the report's principle author, said in a presentation of the report. ''We have listened to Saudi promises for decades. This is not good enough."
IOC spokesman Mark Adams in an emailed response to the call said that persuasion had proven to be "more effective. We've already seen them send a woman athlete to the Youth Olympic games so we are confident that we will make progress.”
The Human Rights call follows a warning last year by Anita DeFrantz, the chair of the International Olympic Committee's Women and Sports Commission, that Saudi Arabia alongside Qatar and Brunei could be barred if they did not send for the first time at least one female athlete to the London Olympic games.
Qatar, the only other country whose indigenous population are largely Wahhabis, adherents of the puritan interpretation of Islam predominant in Saudi Arabia, has agreed to field a women's team in London has increased the pressure on the kingdom to follow suit.
Saudi women despite official discouragement have in recent years increasingly been pushing the .envelope at times with the support of more liberal members of the ruling Al Saud family, The kingdom's toothless Shura or Advisory Council has issued regulations for women's sports clubs, but conservative religious forces often have the final say in whether they are implemented or not.
In a sign that efforts to allow and encourage women's sports are at best haphazard and supported only by more liberal elements in the government, the kingdom last year hired a consultant to develop its first national sports plan - for men only. There is no
legal ban in on women’s sports in Saudi Arabia where the barriers for women are rooted in tradition and the kingdom’s puritan interpretation of Islamic law.
"Nobody is saying completely 'no' to us," Associated Press quoted Reem Abdullah, the 33-year old founder, coach and striker of private women’s soccer team Jeddah King's United who is a leader in the campaign to allow women to participate in sports and compete internationally as saying. “As long as there are no men around and our clothes are properly Islamic, there should be no problem," she said.
The pushing of the envelope comes as women are increasingly challenging other aspects of the kingdom's gender apartheid against the backdrop of simmering discontent in Saudi society over a host of issues.
Manal al-Sharif was detained in May of last year for nine days after she videotaped herself flouting the ban on women driving by getting behind a steering wheel and driving. She was released only after signing a statement promising that she would stop agitating for women's rights.
A group of women launched earlier this year a legal challenge to the ban asserting that it had no base in Islamic law.
For his part, Saudi King Abdullah has made moves to enhance women’s rights. Last September, women were granted the right to vote, stand for election in local elections and join the advisory Shura council.
Women responded to the closing of private gyms for women in 2009 with a protest campaign under the slogan 'Let her get fat.' The government has since allowed the re-opening of health clubs for women but these are often too expensive for many women and don't offer a full range of sports activities.
Opposition to women's sports is reinforced by the fact that physical education classes are banned in state-run Saudi girl’s schools. Public sports facilities are exclusively for men and sports associations offer competitions and support for athletes in international competitions only to men.
The issue of women's sport has at time sparked sharp debate with conservative clerics condemning it as corrupting and satanic and charging that it spreads decadence. Conservative clerics have warned that running and jumping can damage a woman's hymen and ruin her chances of getting married.
One group of religious scholars argued that swimming, soccer and basketball were too likely to reveal “private parts,” which includes large areas of the body. Another religious scholar said it could lead to “mingling with men.”
To be fair, less conservative clerics have come out in favor of women's sports as well as less restrictions on women. In addition, the newly appointed head of the kingdom's religious vigilantes is reported to favor relaxation of the ban on the mixing of the sexes.
In defiance of the obstacles to their right to engage in sports, women have in recent years quietly been establishing soccer and other sports teams using extensions of hospitals and health clubs as their base.
The clerics "say it’s too masculine or too aggressive or not really feminine,” Lina Almaeena, a Saudi woman who plays on a private basketball team called Jeddah United told the Los Angeles Times.
"We will watch the London Olympics and we will cheer for our men competing there, hoping that someday we can root for our women as well," Ms. Abdullah said. “When Saudi women get a chance to compete for their country, they will raise the flag so high. Women can achieve a lot, because we are very talented and we are crazy about sports."
Ms. Abdullah established King’s United as the kingdom’s first female soccer team in 2006. Her example has since been followed in other cities, including Riyadh and Dammam. Two years later seven female teams played in the first ever national tournament as part a clandestine and segregated women's league.
Mr. Wilcke said that despite the apparent lack of real political will to encourage women's sports it “is very achievable. Government clerics are saying, ‘We should do this.’ Even if they take small steps, that still has the potential to alter lives of women who get out of the house, meet other women -- every bit helps.”
Mr. Wilcke said attitudes were likely to change because of the kingdom's young population which is likely to favour more liberal approaches.
Expectations that 18-year old equestrienne Dalma Rushdi Malhas who won a bronze medal in the 2010 Singapore Youth Olympics, the sports event IOC spokesman Adams was referring to, would be the first Saudi athlete to compete at an Olympic games were dashed recently when the all-men Saudi team recently qualified for this year's London Olympics jumping competition.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
The impact of inter-generational change on the attitudes of working-class South Asian Muslim parents on the education of their daughters
by Tahir Abbas
co-authored with Aisha Ijaz
This paper presents the findings of ethnographic research into inter-generational attitudinal change of parents... more This paper presents the findings of ethnographic research into inter-generational attitudinal change of parents towards the education of young British Muslim women. Based on in-depth interviews with parents of different generations, given social class and ethnicity, there is a universal belief in the importance of education for young Muslim women per se, with economic and cultural factors significant in shaping this sentiment. A range of important differences in attitudes towards Islamic schooling and mainstream education, and questions relating to marriage, however, were found. There are complex issues of identity and religion among Muslims in relation to educational issues, but there has been a move towards Islamisation among both generations; the first generations through a form of cultural traditionalism and the second generations through Islamic conservatism. Although this finding is based on a study of a relatively small and isolated working-class Muslim community in a declining post-industrial town in the West Midlands, it is argued that this Islamisation places both particular risks and opportunities in relation to young Muslim women in education in such isolated and disaffected communities which have a wider conceptual, theoretical and policy impact.
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Seen by:French women groups protest FIFA decision to endorse hijab
By James M. Dorsey
Three French women’s organizations have expressed concern and disappointment with world... more
By James M. Dorsey
Three French women’s organizations have expressed concern and disappointment with world soccer body FIFA’s endorsement of a proposal to lift the ban on women players wearing a hijab, an Islamic hair dress, on the pitch.
“To accept a special dress code for women athletes not only introduces discrimination among athletes but is contrary to the rules governing sport movement, setting a same dress code for all athletes without regard to origin or belief,” the three organizations said in an open letter to FIFA president Sepp Blatter.
Anne Sugier, president of the League of International Women’s Rights (LDIF) founded by Simone de Beauvoire, said in an email that she had sent the letter together with the heads of FEMIX’SPORTS and the French Coordination for the European Women’s Lobby, following publication on December 19 of the FIFA executive committee decision in The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
FIFA endorsed at its December 16-17 executive committee meeting in Tokyo the proposal to lift a controversial ban on women wearing a hijab in a move that brings closer a resolution to demands by religious female Islamic soccer players that they be allowed to wear a headdress in line with their interpretation of their faith.
FIFA said it would submit the proposal put forward by Asian Football Confederation (AFC) vice president Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein, a half-brother of Jordanian King Abdullah, to the International Football Association Board (IFAB), which governs the rules of association soccer.
IFAB is expected to discuss the proposal that calls for the sanctioning of a safe, velcro-opening headscarf for players and officials at its next scheduled meeting on March 3. England alongside FIFA, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland form the secretive IFAB.
The FIFA endorsement follows an earlier approval of the AFC proposal that resulted from a workshop convened in October in Amman by Prince Ali that was attended by prominent soccer executives, women players and coaches, including head of FIFA’s medical committee Michel D’Hooghe, AFC vice president Moya Dodd, members of FIFA’s women committee and representatives of the soccer bodies of Jordan, Bahrain, Iran and England.
The dispute over observant Muslim women player's headdress led in June to the disqualification of the Iranian women’s national team after they appeared on the pitch in the Jordanian capital Amman for a 2012 London Olympics qualifier against Jordan wearing the hijab. Three Jordanian players who wear the hijab were also barred.
The three women’s organizations said FIFA’s acquiesce in the AFC’s assertion that the hijab, a headdress that complies with Islamic law that obliges women to cover their hair, ears and neck, as a “cultural rather than a religious symbol” and therefore did not violate IFAB rules was unacceptable.
The letter suggests that FIFA and AFC efforts to reach a compromise between world soccer rules and Islamic law followed by conservative female Muslim players was, likely to meet resistance from non-Muslim women’s and feminist groups. It is a battle between value systems in which conservative female Muslim players demand a right and non-Muslim women activists seek to impose what they see as a universal value.
Ironically, the two opposing groups may find common ground when it comes to Iran, which welcomed world soccer’s efforts to seek a compromise, but is likely to remain in the firing line because of its imposition of the hijab on its players rather than allowing it to be an individual voluntary decision. Iran is further likely to run afoul of world soccer because of its insistence that visiting foreign women soccer teams dress in accordance with the Islamic republic’s interpretation of Islamic law.
The three women’s organizations charged that the FIFA decision constituted an effort to kowtow to the most conservative Islamic states, presumably a reference to Iran and Saudi Arabia, which effectively bans women’s sports.
“To pretend that hijab is a cultural and not a religious symbol is not only preposterous, but untrue… You neither can put aside the fact that the conflict that has opposed FIFA to the Iranian regime is linked to Tehran’s will to impose its own religious law to women’s sport,” the organizations said in their letter.
They charged that Iran rather than seeing the hijab as a cultural symbol was seeking “to impose a political religious outfit for women, that covers entirely their body… Sport must stay clear of political and religious interfering. Its aim also is to eliminate all forms of discrimination. FIFA ruling is about to abandon this noble aim and FIFA will be accountable for that,” the organizations said.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
Review of Margot Badran's "Feminism in Islam: Secular and Religious Convergences"
Published in International Journal of Middle East Studies, Volume 43, issue 04, pp. 754-755
Feminism and Islam are Compatible
Commissioned by Wajahat Ali for The Goatmilk Debates, 9 December 2011
Saudi Woman to Be Lashed for Driving, Despite Royal Pardon
by Nivien Saleh
Article about my student Shaima Jastaniah, written for The Atlantic on December 5, 2011.
Remember Shaima Jastaniah, the Saudi woman who made international headlines in September by being condemned to ten... more
Remember Shaima Jastaniah, the Saudi woman who made international headlines in September by being condemned to ten lashes for driving a car through the coastal city of Jeddah? King Abdallah pardoned her personally. But it now turns out that she may be lashed after all. ....
Revolutionary Eschatology: Islam and the End of Time in al-Tahir Wattar's al-Zilzal
Published in the Journal of Arabic Literature: 42.2-3 (2011): 120-147
This paper analyzes the use of Qur'anic rhetoric and imagery in al-Tahir Wattar's 1974 novel al-Zilzal (The... more This paper analyzes the use of Qur'anic rhetoric and imagery in al-Tahir Wattar's 1974 novel al-Zilzal (The Earthquake). More specifically, it emphasizes Watṭạ̄r’s employment of Qur'anic eschatology to blur the boundary between ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ forms of discourse in the construction of Algerian nationalist discourse. The paper investigates al-Zilzal’s critical engagement with the rhetoric of Arabism and Islamism in post-revolutionary state politics, highlighting the novel’s hybrid genre, its conscious manipulation of narrative time and space, as well as its incorporation of various registers of the Arabic language. Through the mobilization of eschatological notions of struggle, death and sacrifice, al-Zilzal unsettles a number of authorized narratives on Algerian national identity, language and literature.
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Seen by: and 21 moreMaking Islam relevant: Female Authority and Representation of Islam in Germany
in: Hillary Kalmbach and Masooda Bano (eds.). Women, Islam and Mosques: Changes in Contemporary Islamic Authority, Brill: Leiden. 2012, pp.437-455.
Making Islam relevant: Female Authority and Representation of Islam in Germany
in: Hillary Kalmbach and Masooda Bano (eds.). Women, Islam and Mosques: Changes in Contemporary Islamic Authority, Brill: Leiden. 2012, pp.437-455.
‘I am one of the People’: A Survey and Analysis of Legal Arguments on Woman-Led Prayer in Islam
Co-authored with Ahmed Elewa. Journal of Law and Religion XXVI, No.1 (2010-11)
This paper, written five years after the Wadud prayer, presents a survey and analysis of the various responses to... more This paper, written five years after the Wadud prayer, presents a survey and analysis of the various responses to Female-led mixed-gender prayers. The paper explores how social concerns inform Islamic legal thinking both methodologically and through the general social assumptions of the scholar’s day then and now. The paper also presents legal reasoning that deems female-led mixed prayers permissible by default.

