Islamic feminism is a Koran-centred reform movement by Muslim women with the linguistic and theological knowledge to challenge patriarchal interpretations and offer alternative readings in pursuit of women’s advancement and in refutation of Western stereotypes and Islamist orthodoxy alike. Islamic feminists are critical of women’s legal status and social positions and agree that women are placed in subordinate positions –by law and by custom– in the family, the economy, and the polity. In particular, they are critical of the content of Muslim family laws and the ways that these laws restrict women’s human rights and privilege men. And yet they vigorously disagree that Islam is implicated in this state of affairs. Their alternative argument is that Islam has been interpreted in patriarchal and often misogynistic ways over the centuries (and especially in recent decades), that Sharia law has been misunderstood and misapplied, and that both the spirit and the letter of the Koran have been distorted. Their insistence that what appears as God’s law is in fact human interpretation is an audacious challenge to contemporary orthodoxy. (…) Islamic feminism is part of what has been variously called Islamic modernism, liberalism, and reformism –a transnational effort to marginalize patriarchal, orthodox, and aggressive forms of Islamic observance and emphasize the norms of justice, peace, and equality.
Valentine M. Moghadam
Chief of Section Gender Equality and Development Section. UNESCO
TOWARDS GENDER EQUALITY IN THE ARAB/MIDDLE EAST REGION: ISLAM, CULTURE, AND FEMINIST ACTIVISM
Human Development Report Office 2004
Presidential Advisor for Political and Information Affairs, with the rank of a Minister in Syria, and writer and professor at Damascus University since 1985. Before assuming her current ministerial position, Dr. Shaaban was Director of the Press Office at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Syria. She received her Ph.D. in English Literature from Warwick University in England in 1982, and joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as an advisor in 1988. Since then, she has represented Syria as a spokeswoman on an international level. In 2005 Dr. Shaaban was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and in the same year, was presented with “the Most Distinguished Woman in a Governmental Position” award by the Arab League.
She has published four books: Arab Women In The 20th Century; 100 Years Of Arab Women Novelists; Poetry And Politics: Shelly And The Chartist Poets; Both Right And Left Handed: Arab Women Talk About Their Lives; and several articles in both Arabic and English.
LINKS:
www.bouthainashaaban.com
Personal web
http://www.hamzehmystiquefilms.com/woman/shaaban.htm
Article
http://www.charlierose.com/guests/buthaina-shaaban
Video
A strident advocate for social justice, human rights and equality over the last two decades, Baroness Uddin of Bethnal Green was elevated to the peerage by Prime Minister Tony Blair in 1998, becoming the first Muslim woman to enter the House of Lords. Born in Bangladesh, she grew up in the London Borough of Newham, becoming active in a number of community-based initiatives in East London including the Jagonari Centre, the UK’s first purpose built Asian Women’s education and training centre. She became a member of the Labour Party in her teens, and was subsequently elected Deputy leader of Tower Hamlets Council in 1992.
Baroness Uddin is a patron of several organisations including Orbis International, Student Partnership Worldwide, Bethnal Green and Victoria Park Housing Association, Women’s Housing Forum, Women’s Aid Social Action for Health, The Attlee Foundation, Brit-Bangla, The Dame Vera Lynn Trust and was awarded an honorary doctorate from Exeter University in 2004.
Web personal: www.baronessuddin.com
Associate Professor of Islamic Studies, Dr. Wadud joined the Religious Studies Program at Virginia Commonwealth University in 1992, directly from the International Islamic University in Malaysia. She made the adjustment to teaching general religious studies classes with one or two opportunities to teach directly in her own area of specialty: Islamic Studies. Dr. Wadud’s particular sub-disciplines are Gender and Qur’anic Studies. Since then more opportunities to develop Islamic Studies courses have presented themselves, and within the School of World Studies, she was asked to create an Islamic Studies minor due to start in the Fall 2005. Her involvement with Islamic studies started with her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan which included an opportunity for intensive advanced Arabic studies component at American University in Cairo, where she also took classes at Cairo University and Al-Azhar University.
Her first book ‘Qur’an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman’s Perspective’ became a world-wide phenomenon. By matching her scholarship with the most recent advances in Modern Islamic studies and movements, Dr. Wadud’s approach is both interactive and active. Consequently, she has been an invited speaker, teacher and consultant within the United States, including Hawaii, as well as in Jordan, South and Southern Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Pakistan, Indonesia, Canada, Norway, Netherlands, Sarajevo, and Malaysia. Amina Wadud has been an Islamic scholar and a gender activist for more than 25 years. Her focus on justice issues in reform Islam is motivated by the basic premise of her first book: the Divine spirit created all humankind as equal, despite exclusive interpretations and authoritative practices to the contrary. Recently she received world-wide attention for leading the first-ever public mixed-gender Juma’ah (Friday) prayer. Dr. Wadud, mother of five children, is completing a new book entitled Inside the Gender Jihad: Women’s Reform in Islam, to be published in 2006.
Personal web: School of World Studies
LINKS:
A’ishah’s Legacy
By Amina Wadud
Amina Wadud on Reform in Islam (video clip)
Baker Institute, Rice University
Rice Webcast Archive Amina Wadud on Reform in Islam, March 31, 2003
Beyond Interpretation
By Amina Wadud
A Response to ‘The Place of Tolerance in Islam’, of Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl
INTERVIEWS:
Spiritual equals, Please Stand Up
Interview with Amina Wadud (Mar 15, 2003)
Interview with Amina Wadud
PBS, March 2002
‘I am a Nigger, and you will just have to put up with my blackness,’
Professor Amina Wadud Confronts Her Hecklers in Toronto
By Tarek Fatah in Muslim Wakeup!
PMU Prayer Initiative
Progressive Muslim Union of North America
MWU! Articles Related to Jum’ah Scrapbook
Muslim WakeUp!
Women as imams
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
What Would the Prophet Do?
The Islamic Basis for Female-Led Prayer
By Nevin Reda
Muslim Wakeup!
About the Friday Prayer led by Amina Wadud
By Abdennur Prado
Women Living Under Muslims Laws
A Prayer Toward Equality
By Mona Eltahawy
Muslim Wakeup!
Daud Sharifa Khanam heads the Pudukkottai-based STEPS Women’s Development Organisation. She is an activist and first recipient of the Durgabai Deshmukh Award, instituted by the Central Social Welfare Board in 1999. She began the monthly Jamaat (congregation) for Muslim women in 2003, to provide Muslim women a space to express themselves.
The Muslim Women’s Jamaat is an attempt to challenge the authority of the traditional jamaat system which, to a large extent, controls the social life of Muslims. Besides managing the affairs of the mosque, the Jamaat encourages a liberal interpretation of Shariat law, freeing women from patriarchal bias. The all-male jamaat also arbitrates in community affairs, acting as caste panchayats in hearing and settling disputes and ruling on matrimonial matters including divorce, custody and maintenance.
In a challenge to the patriarchy of the all-male jamaats, the women thought of building their own mosque. A local family agreed to donate the land for the mosque.
Articles:
http://www.countercurrents.org/gender-anand020904.htm
http://www.flonnet.com/fl2508/stories/20080425250811300.htm
Video:
http://video.aol.com/video-detail/india-steps-ngo-for-muslim-womens-development-avi-file/3526873420
Subhasini Ali is the President of the All India Democratic Women’s Association, one of the biggest women’s organizations in the world. She is also an Indian politician, trade unionist and a prominent member of the Communist Party of India. She was once very influential in the politics of Kanpur and represented the city in the 1991 Lok Sabha.
LINKS:
“A life in Service”, an article by Subhashini Ali on her family history and her mother
Dr. Siti Musdah Mulia is the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in Islamic thought from the Islamic University of Syarif Hidayatullah, Jakarta (1997), and the first woman appointed a research professor by the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (1999). A prominent Muslim feminist, Dr. Mulia has used her extensive knowledge of the Quran and Hadiths to advocate for women’s rights.
In 2004, Mulia and a team of 11 experts completed a groundbreaking project – the Counter Legal Draft (CLD) – which is aimed at revising Indonesia’s Islamic legal code. Mulia proposed that the CLD revisions immediately be considered and ratified by the Indonesian parliament. Recommendations included prohibiting child marriage, and allowing interfaith marriage. In the face of violent protests, the Minister of Religious Affairs canceled the project.
In Indonesia, Mulia reaches out to women by having her publications translated into the 300-plus local languages, and she appears on Indonesian talk shows and before women’s organizations. A respected scholar, Mulia is the chairwoman of Muslimat Nahdlatul Ullama (Muslimat NU), which, with more than 40 million members, is the largest Islamic social organization in Indonesia.
Article:
http://alphaamirrachman.blogspot.com/2007/03/siti-musdah-mulia-stands-up-for-her.html
Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh is a well-known journalist, writer, publisher, civil society activist and women’s rights defender. She became the editor of the Farzaneh women’s studies journal in 1993. She founded the Association of Women Writers and later the NGO Training Centre, which works to strengthen women’s civil society organizations, which was closed down in 2007. In 2004, she helped to organize the “Beijing + 10″ conference in Bangkok and attended the European Social Forum. In 2005 she was among a group of women who defied a ban on women attending football matches in Iran, and suffered a broken leg when guards tried to push her and the hundred or so other women out.
Fatou Sow is Professor of Sociology, and a member of the Groupe de Recherche sur les Femmes et les Lois au Sénégal (GREFELS), affiliated with the solidarity network WomenLiving Under Muslim Laws.
Doctorate III° Cycle in Sociology, University of Paris-Sorbonne. Research Director in Sociology, University Paris 7 Denis Diderot, France: Chair of the Department of Social Sciences of Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire,University Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar.
Collaboration with several organisations, such as the French Institute of Public Opinion, UNESCO, UNDP, USAID, URTNA, BCEOM, ILO, World Bank, Ivorian Institute of Public Opinion, etc. Member of several international scientific committees: She extensively published on gender issues; social sciences; reproductive and sexual health and rights and women and Islam
Articles:
Fundamentalisms, globalisation and women’s human rights in Senegal
Les femmes, le sexe de l’État et les enjeux du politique: l’exemple de la régionalisation au Sénégal
CLIO, revue francophone d’histoire des femmes
Dr. Penda Mbow is an associate professor of history at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, where she has published widely on African political and social issues, often focusing on the role of Islam in Africa. She has previously served as Senegal’s minister of culture and as cultural advisor to the Senegalese department of ethnography and historical heritage. Dr. Mbow has received numerous academic awards, including a Fulbright grant to study at Michigan State University and a Rockefeller Foundation award for research at the Bellagio Center in Italy.
In recognition of her achievements as a scholar, thinker, and political activist, she was named Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur Francaise in 2003 and Commandeur de l’Ordre National du Mérite in 1999. Among her many areas of expertise are African intellectual history and Islamic gender studies. She is currently working on a report for the United Nations Development Program entitled, “History, Multiculturalism, and Democracy in Africa.” Dr. Mbow spent her fellowship researching the evolution of Islam’s relationship with democracy in Senegal, as well as the interplay between women, human rights, and religion in Islamic societies.
Ms. Rafiah Al-Talei is a news writer for the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, a non-profit corporation that operates the Arabic-language Alhurra TV and Radio Sawa networks. She has served as editor-in-chief of Al Mar’ah, Oman’s only Arabic and English-language women’s magazine, as well as a frequent contributor to the online magazine Gulf in the Media. An experienced journalist specializing in media and women’s rights, she has served as an editor and weekly columnist for Oman’s leading daily newspaper, Oman, and was the contributing editor for the Oman section of Freedom House’s 2005 report on “Women’s Rights in the Arab World.” As a candidate in 2003 for a seat on Oman’s Consultative Council, which she lost by 102 votes, she educated people in her local district regarding the democratic process. Drawing on her experiences as a journalist and political candidate, Ms. Al-Talei’s fellowship project examined the political challenges confronting Omani women today and identified ways to increase their involvement in the political process. In 2007, Ms. Al-Talei co-founded an NGO called the Gulf Forum for Citizenship, based in Woodbridge, Virginia.
Asma Barlas is professor of Politics and director of the Center for the Study of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity at Ithaca College, New York. She has a Ph.D. in International Studies (University of Denver), an M.A. in Journalism (University of the Punjab, Pakistan) and a B.A. in English Literature and Philosophy (Kinnaird College for Women, Pakistan).
For some years now, Asma Barlas has been studying Islam, in particular, how Muslims interpret and live it. She proposes a Qur’anic hermeneutics that allows Muslims to argue on behalf of sexual equality and against patriarchy from within an Islamic framework. Actually, she is studying Christian- Muslim encounters from a theological and a historical perspective with a view to analyzing their approach to religious differences, to propose a theology of mutual recognition based in the Qur’an’s teachings.
Asma Barlas publications include three books: Islam, Muslims, and the U.S.: Essays on Religion and Politics (India: Global Media, 2004), “Believing Women” in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur’an (University of Texas Press, 2002), and Democracy, Nationalism, and Communalism: The Colonial Legacy in South Asia (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995). She has also written several book chapters, journal articles and informal papers and talks.
Personal Web: www.asmabarlas.com
Ph.D in Development Planning, University of London. She have worked for 15 years for Unicef as chief of Gender and Development Program and for Unifem as Regional Advisor. Established and headed the office of the Ombudsperson for Gender Equality at the National Council for Women in Egypt. Works now as a consultant for the United Nations and other donor agencies such as the European Commission and the Dutch Aid. Have several publications on women’s rights and on Arab Women. Voluntary work : Board member of the Alliance for Arab Women registered in Egypt and Executive secretary of Moslem Women for Democracy and Human Rights registered in Finland.
Norani Othman is a founding member of Sisters in Islam and Senior Research Fellow and Professor of Sociology at Universiti Kebangsaan, Malaysia. She is an Associate Professor and Senior Fellow at the Institut Kajian Malaysia dan Antarabangsa (IKMAS), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) [or National University of Malaysia]. She is also an affiliate Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin (Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin), where she was an Academic Fellow from 1998 to 1999.
Norani Othman was a Vice-President of the Malaysian Social Science Association and a Director of the SIS Forum Malaysia, a Muslim woman’s organization popularly known as Sisters in Islam.
LINKS:
http://www.cceia.org/resources/publications/dialogue/1_09/articles/567.html
Sabin Malik is a Community Cohesion Specialist with substantial community and local authority experience leading local and national Government initiatives focused on Community Cohesion, Community Development and Extremism.
Sabin is the Principal Community Cohesion Officer for the London Borough of Hounslow and is leading multi-skilled teams on highly sensitive, critical and strategic projects. Sabin is currently leading on a major study on far right extremism and religious fundamentalism.
Sabin manages the West London Community Cohesion Partnership. The Partnership’s expertise and work on Community Cohesion has been cited as good practice and Sabin has been asked to advise a number of local authorities and organisations nationwide.
Sabin works with national government agencies on the development of policy on Community Cohesion and Extremism. Sabin is a member of the Local Government Association National Advisory Group on Community Cohesion, Extremism, Migration and Equalities. Sabin is also a member of the Department of Communities and Local Government Working Group on Preventing Violent Extremism.
Sabin is passionate about community issues and has been actively involved in voluntary work with youth and women’s organisations for 17 years. Sabin has held numerous Executive positions, and has managed national and local projects on leadership training for women.
Margot Badran, a historian of the Middle East and Islamic societies and specialist in gender studies, is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Muslim Christian Understanding, Georgetown University. She is currently Edith Kreeger Wolf Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of Religion and Preceptor at the Institute for the Study of Islamic Thought at Northwestern University. She has a diploma in Arabic and Islamic religious studies at Al Azhar University in Cairo in addition to M.A. in Middle East Studies from Harvard University and a D. Phil. in Middle East history from Oxford University. She calls both the United States and Egypt home.
She has researched and written on women and feminist thought and organizing, and everyday activisms, in the Middle East and Muslim societies for over three decades. Her books include: Feminists, Islam, and Nation: Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt, Harem Years: The Memoirs of An Egyptian Feminist Huda Shaarawi (which she translated, edited, and introduced) and Opening the Gates: A Century of Arab Feminist Writing (which she co-edited) and has just come out in a new and expanded edition titled Opening the Gates: An Arab Feminist Anthology.
Her writings on secular and Islamic feminisms have been translated into Arabic and several other languages. She is now finalizing a book on comparative Islamic feminisms. She also writes on feminism and gender for Al Ahram Weekly in Cairo.
She is currently completing a book on comparative Islamic feminisms in Egypt, Yemen, Turkey, and South Africa.
LINKS:
Islamic Feminism: what’s in a name?
Islamic feminism is on the whole more radical than Muslims’ secular feminisms, argues Margot Badran
Al-Ahram Weekly Online. 17 – 23 January 2002. Issue No.569
Mood Swings: Who’s afraid of Islamic Feminism?
By Margot Badran
Al-Ahram Weekly Online. 24 – 30 October 2002.Issue No. 609
Islamic feminism revisited
Surveying the most recent developments in Islamic feminism, Margot Badran finds an increasingly dynamic global phenomenon that is as varied as it is …
Al-Ahram Weekly Online. 9 – 15 February 2006. Issue No. 781
The gender of Islam
Could progressive readings of Islam enhance women’s rights? In India, Margot Badran talks to Muslims who see religion as a way to emancipation.
Interview with Margot Badran on Islamic feminism
29/05/2005: Margot Badran is a historian & a specialist of gender studies focused on the Middle East & Islamic world
‘Islamic feminism means justice to women’
Interview with Prof. Margot Badran
The Milli Gazatte
Exploring Islamic Feminism
Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Georgetown University, November 30, 2000
Liberties of the faithful
Back from the north and middle belt of Nigeria, Margot Badran writes on current religious-political debates six years after the emergence of “Sharia states”
Al-Ahram Weekly Online. 19 – 25 May 2005. Issue No. 743
In no need of protection
Nationalist militants and determined feminists: Margot Badran and Lucia Sorbera examine the grafting of agendas
Al-Ahram Weekly – 24 – 30 July 2003. Issue No. 648
Re-opening the gates
Opening the Gates: An Anthology of Arab Feminist Writing, 2nd Edition, Margot Badran & Miriam Cooke, eds., Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press
Al-Ahram Weekly – 22 – 28 December 2005. Issue No. 774
Finding Islam
What is going on in the Muslim community in post-independence Bulgaria? While participating in the Intercultural Studies Dialogue at Sofia University Margot Badran set out to discover answers
Al-Ahram Weekly Online. 20 – 26 September 2001. Issue No.552
Two heads are better then one
Margot Badran writes from Turkey on the implications of the recent reform of the 1926 Civil Code on women’s rights in marriage and divorce
Al-Ahram Weekly Online – 7 – 13 March 2002. Issue No.576
Arab women going public
Margot Badran, in her study of the Egyptian feminist movement, notes that the nationalist movement led women in Egypt to assume new roles as political …
Feminism in a Nationalist Century
Al-Ahram Weekly – 30 Dec. 1999 – 5 Jan. 2000. Issue No. 462
Professor at the Iben Tofail University in Kenitra, Maroc. Doctored for the Mohammed V University, Rabat, with a thesis about Women, Gender and the State: Contradictions, Constraints, Prospects. She has made various lectures and writings on Islamic feminism, women’s organizations and the situation of women in the Maghreb: “Gender, Public Islam and the Idea of Common Good in Morocco” (Nueva York), “Between Islam and Feminism: Muslim Feminists Challenging Borders” (Stockholm) o “Implementing Islamic Feminism: The Case of the Moroccan Family Code” (Berlin), among others. She has been co-editor and translator for online journal Third Space
Anouar Majid is, according to Cornel West, one of a few “towering Islamic intellectuals,” a leading figure in examining the place of religion and Islam in postcolonial theory and the culture of globalization. His essay “Can the Postcolonial Critic Speak? Orientalism and the Rushdie Affair,” published in Cultural Critique as its lead article, has become required reading on Salman Rushdie and is taught at universities across the English-speaking world. It is listed as one of the major articles of 1995 in Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory 5; it has also been cited in works on Edward Said.
The themes of Islam and human rights explored in that article were further elaborated in “The Politics of Feminism in Islam,” published in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society (1998). The article was republished in a book titled Islam, Politics, Gender by the University of Chicago Press (2002).
Majid’s book Unveiling Traditions: Postcolonial Islam in a Polycentric World (Duke University Press, 2000), was recommended by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) as a book for understanding the context of 9/11. In 2004, Stanford University Press published Majid’s Freedom and Orthodoxy: Islam and Difference in the Post-Andalusian Age, a book that looks at half a millennium of history and cultural contact to trace the evolving roots of discord and extremism. Majid’s new book is A Call for Heresy: Why Dissent is Vital to Islam and America (University of Minnesota Press). In late 2003, he co-founded and started editing Tingis (www.tingismagazine.com), the first Moroccan-American magazine of ideas and culture.
LINKS:
http://www.wafin.com/articles.phtml?arttype=mom&mid=12
Interview
Secretary of Islamic Council of Spain since 2002, and founder of Catalan Islamic Council in 2005. Director of the International Congress of Islamic Feminism (October 2005 and November 2006). Member of ‘The Soul of Europe’, organization for the islamo-christian dialogue linked to the European Parliament. Promoter of the Interreligious organization “Tradició i Progrés” in Catalonia (2005). Editor of the magazine ‘Verde Islam’ since 2001. Director of organization of the ‘First International Congress of Speacking Spanish Muslims’ (Seville, 2003).
Writer and poet, during four years he was director of Webislam (2001-2004), the Islamic site more visited in the environment of spanish language, where he has published more than a hundred of articles about Islamic thought and topics of actuallity.
Author of the book ‘Islam en Democracia’ (ed. Fatiha, 2006), and co-author of ‘Haikus de vuelo mágico’ (ed. Azul, 2005), and several book chapters. He is autor of the module about Islamic Feminism, included in the course about ‘Expert on Islamic Civilization’, granted by the National University of Distance Education (UNED, 2006). He has published articles in many media as ‘El País’, ‘La Vanguardia’, ‘El Periódico’, the magazines ‘Verde Islam’, ‘Encuentro Islamo-cristiano’, ‘Debats’, ‘Encuentro’, ‘Revista Zero’, ‘Revista Lambda’, ‘Al-Mughib’ and ‘Masala’.
Lecturer (Barcelona, Bruselas, Cordue, Santa Coloma, Silleda, Tarragona, Sevilla, Valencia, Manresa), he participated in the ‘Seminar of experts on Islamofobia’ led by the commissioner of the UN against the racism, Doudou Diène (Barcelona 2004, and Sevilla 2005). He has participated in numerous debates and television interviews (TV1, TV2, TV3, Antena 3, Tele 5, Channel +, Canal Sur, Barcelona BTV, Popular Television, Qatar TV) and radio (Radio Nacional, Radio 3, Catalunya Radio, Radio Iran, Latin American BBC, Radio Hospitalet, Cadena Cope, etc.).
LINKS:
Presentation on Islamic Feminism (Word doc)
First International Congress on Islamic Feminism
About the Friday Prayer Led by Amina Wadud
Women Living Under Muslims Laws
The Qur’an in the Spanish courts
The Kamal Case and freedom of Islam in Spain (Word doc)
By Abdennur Prado
Gender Jihad (Word doc)
By Abdennur Prado
Living Islam in Democracy (Word doc)
By Abdennur Prado
