WHY DO WE NEED

Gender equality is a modern ideal, which has only recently, with the expansion of human rights and feminist discourses, become inherent to generally accepted conceptions of justice. But what presents Muslims today with a distinct problem is that family law and gender norms are still based on classical fiqh rulings that uphold a patriarchal model of family, treat women as second-class citizens, and place them under male authority.

The religious legitimation of patriarchy has been the subject of heated debate among Muslims since the early twentieth century. Feminist participants in this debate form two broad camps. The first are those who consider religion to be inherently patriarchal and see engagement with it to be a futile and incorrect strategy. The second group comprises those who see such an engagement as essential for a viable challenge to the hegemony of patriarchal interpretations of the Shari‘a. This second group (among which I include myself) by the 1990s had acquired the label of ‘Islamic feminists.’ They argue for the necessity of a brand of feminism that takes Islam as a source of legitimacy and confronts patriarchy from within the tradition.

One of the central challenges that Muslim women face in their struggle for equality is how to address in a systematic way the gap between modern notions of justice, in which equality is inherent, and ideas of justice that underpin established understandings of the Shari‘a, in which individuals are accorded rights on basis of their faith, status – and gender – as defined in classical fiqh. To bridge this gap, we need scholars and activists who can work together to bring fresh perspectives on Islamic teachings, and to explore common ground with advocates of human rights and feminism. We need constructive dialogue to overcome two blind spots in approaches to gender issues in Islam and human rights.

On the one hand, scholars of Islam are largely unaware of the importance of gender as a category of social analysis; they oppose both feminism, which they understand to mean women’s dominance of men, and human rights, which they see as alien to Islamic tradition. On the other hand, some feminists and human rights advocates have little knowledge or appreciation of religious modes of thought and religion-based laws, rejecting them as antithetical to their project. However, most women whose rights they champion are believers and live according to the teachings of Islam, thus effective change can come only through engagement with those teachings.

In other words, to achieve sustainable and deep-rooted change, we need dialogue and consensus. We should demonstrate the injustices that arise from patriarchal customs and laws based on the pre-modern interpretations of the Shari‘a, and offer defensible and coherent alternatives within a framework that recognizes equality and justice. But is this possible? Can we ground our claim to equality and arguments for reform simultaneously in Islamic and human rights frameworks? Can there be an egalitarian interpretation of Shari‘a?

Feminist voices and scholarship in Islam are part of the new wave of reformist thinkers that contend that the human understanding of Islam is flexible, that Islam allows change in the face of time, place and experience, and that Islam’s tenets can be interpreted to encourage both pluralism and democracy. But instead of searching (like earlier reformers) for an Islamic genealogy for modern concepts like gender equality, human rights, and democracy, they place the emphasis on how religion is understood and how religious knowledge is produced.

They do not reject an idea simply because it is Western, nor do they see Islam’s textual sources as providing a blueprint, a built-in programme of action for the social, economic, and  political problems of the Muslim world. What they give us is ethical guidance and principles for the creation of just laws. The Qur’an upholds justice and exhorts Muslims to stand for justice; but it does not define it. Rather, it indicates the path to follow, which is always time-bound and context-specific.

These thinkers have developed theories and strategies for reform. Chief among them are the distinctions between religion and religious knowledge and between the changeable and the unchangeable (mutable and immutable, accidentals and essentials, descriptive and prescriptive) in the texts; they seek to discern the aims (maqasid) of the Shari‘a, and to locate in their historical and political contexts both the sacred texts and the rulings that classical jurists derived from them.

Islamic feminists are re-inserting women’s concerns and voices – which were silenced by the time that the fiqh schools emerged – into the processes of production of religious knowledge and law making. In this sense, they must be seen as part of the larger struggle for the democratization of production of knowledge in Islam and for the authority to interpret its sacred texts.

In modern times, when nation-states have created uniform legal systems and selectively reformed and codified elements of classical Islamic law, and when new forms of political Islam have emerged that use Islamic law as an ideology, one of the main distinctions in the Islamic tradition has been distorted and elided. This is the distinction between Shari‘a and fiqh. In Muslim belief, Shari‘a is God’s will as revealed to the Prophet Muhammad. Fiqh, or jurisprudence, denotes the process of human endeavour to discern and extract legal rulings from the sacred sources, the Qur’an and the Sunnah. This distinction, which underlies the emergence of the various jurisprudential schools in the tradition, and, within them, a multiplicity of positions, has immense epistemological and political ramifications.

It allows contestation and change; it enables us to separate the legal from the sacred, and to ask basic questions such as, how do we know what the Shari‘a is? How do we know what we know about gender rights in Islam? Who decides what ‘Islam’ mandates? The distinction is therefore crucial to the arguments of committed feminists who choose to locate their feminism within Islamic tradition.

Let me end by saying that the close link between theology and politics can be a double-edged sword. It has been one of the main obstacles that Muslim women face; but it has also the potential to be an effective means for challenging patriarchal laws and unjust structures. The rise of political Islam in the second part of the twentieth century, and the politics of the ‘War on Terror’ in the present century, have shed new light on how ideological dichotomies such as ‘secular’ versus ‘religious’ feminism, or ‘Islam’ versus ‘human rights’ have masked the real site of the battle – the conflict between, on the one side, patriarchal and authoritarian structures, and, on the other, egalitarian and democratic ideologies and forces. If we recognize this, then we can aspire to real and meaningful change, and begin to transform the deep structures that have shaped our religious, cultural and political realities.

This is an abridged version of an article first published in Al-Raida Journal, Vol 44, Issue 2, 2020, pp. 85-91