A social
project is persuading many Islamic women in the UK that religion is no bar to
joining the debate on women's rights
The Guardian, The Observer, Tracy McVeigh, Saturday 15 March 2014
 |
| Islamic feminist voices: from left, Myriam François-Cerrah, Hannah Habibi Hopkin, Kübra Gümüsay. |
For many
feminists the headscarf is a glaring symbol of male oppression and the
patriarchal power of religion. But now there is a small but growing number of
Muslim women looking to take their places in Britain's rapidly expanding
women's movement.
A new project
to connect Islam to feminism has been launched to tackle long-standing concerns
that religious women are excluded from the women's rights debate. In what is a
deeply controversial area for many in Islamic communities and for many
mainstream feminists, the linkup between a Muslim charity and the UK Feminista
group is seen as a pioneering step in bringing women from different cultural
backgrounds together in the battle for sexual equality.
The social enterprise Maslaha, established by the Young Foundation to work on improving
social conditions in Muslim and minority communities, said the programme had
attracted a huge response in the past few days.
"An
awful lot of Muslim women have felt excluded from the debate about women's
rights and this project really focuses on bringing ordinary women into a debate
about Islamic feminism that has so far only really been heard in academic
circles," said Latifah Akay of Maslaha.
She said
the online resource islamandfeminism.org was bringing out some extraordinary
responses from British Muslims who reported feeling previously isolated.
"This
is really taking off. Islamic feminism is not a new thing, which will probably
surprise most people, but Muslim women have the same core concerns as white,
secular, British women: the workplace, discrimination, childcare. And also they
have different layers of struggles and different layers of oppression, just as
a black lesbian will have different struggles to white disabled women, and none
of them should be excluded just because they are diverse.
"There
has been a dire lack of spaces for women within Islam to have these kinds of
conversations and they have felt very much that their religious beliefs exclude
them because religion is seen as patriarchal."
Islamic
feminism has been on the rise over the past few years in various countries
around the world, including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran, but it remains a
taboo in many more traditional communities who fear that it will lead women
away from religion.
"The
internet will help Muslim women find each other, just as it has for young
secular women in Britain, and start a real conversation," said Akay.
While a
number of new books on Islam and feminism have been appearing around the world
in recent years, the UK has been slow to catch up. Last year when a University
of Derby lecturer, Dr Sariya Cheruvallil-Contractor, published Muslim Women in
Britain: De-mystifying the Muslimah, she said she believed that many of the
misconceptions around Islam were directly linked to how people believed the
faith treated its women.
"The
media portray Muslim women as oppressed and subjugated and Islam is often
presented as misogynist and patriarchal," she said, and her book was
intended as an antidote to that.
The term
Islamic feminism first made its appearance in the 1990s. In 1992, Shahla
Sherkat, an Iranian who took part in the revolution of 1979, published the
first issue of an Islamic feminist magazine, Zanan, which was later banned.
Feminism
from an Islamic perspective
Consultant
in innovation at the University of Oxford
"At
first I was not very interested in feminism because I felt excluded. I thought
mainstream feminism in the west did not include a woman like me and that me
being feminist would mean I would have to not be religious.
" But
now feminism to me is about making conscious decisions yourself. It doesn't
mean I have to give up my cultural background or religious beliefs. Feminism is
about standing up not just for my right to dress the way I dress but also standing
up for the rights of other women so they can also dress the way they want to
dress."
Former
actress and now author
"Unfortunately
people assume it's an oxymoron if you say you are both a Muslim and a feminist,
but I find that a little patronising. There is still a fair bit of resistance
to the idea that people of faith have anything to contribute to feminist
ideals, particularly because religion is still viewed through a prism of it
perpetuating patriarchial practices. And to some extent, undeniably it does.
"For
Islamic feminists, the framework is Islam, the references are the core texts of
Islam. My frame of reference as a Muslim is the texts, but truth is truth
wherever it's coming from – and something I hear from any feminist, Gloria
Steinem or Germaine Greer, that reflects truth then becomes part of my Islamic
lexicon."
London pop
artist
"It's
very important to introduce other ways of looking at feminism and bring in
other voices who may have felt ostracised from the movement in the past. I've
met some really go-getting, exciting young women who have not called themselves
feminists and that's because it's been practised in a very Eurocentric, white,
Wasp-ish kind of way.
"It's
been too easy to dismiss Muslims as being anti-feminist. I wore a hijab for six
years. Just because a woman chooses to wear a hijab doesnt mean she can't be
feminist, and to think that is a bit naive."
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