Valuable scholarship

Feminism in Islam: Secular and Religious Convergences by Margot Badran; Oneworld Publications, Oxford; Price: Rs.1,500; 349 pp Even as almost everyone recalls a horror story about the misery and isolation of women in almost all countries of the Muslim world — and barbarous punishment claimed to be mandated by shariat law — there’s no shortage of books, volumes, treatises and essays written on the status of women in Islam by Muslims as well as others, with the vast majority of works on this furiously debated subject having been penned by men. For most male Muslim writers, the status of Muslim women is central to interpreting the purity and differentiation of Islam. For non-Muslim scholars of Islam, it is a central trope in their critique of the religion. Caught in the cross-fire, diverse voices of Muslim women themselves have received scant attention in scholarly literature. Margot Badran, senior fellow at the Centre for Muslim-Christian Understanding of Georgetown University, USA, is one of the foremost chroniclers of Muslim women’s struggle for gender justice. Feminism in Islam, her latest offering, broadly explores two types of struggles for equality waged in different parts of the Muslim world. The first, which she traces to the colonial period, is what she labels ‘Muslim secular feminism’, through which women in several Islamic countries sought to assert their rights to education, employment and political participation as a means for the empowerment and advancement of the ‘nation’ and ‘community’. At the same time, these women were cautious to present their demands in accordance with the tenets of Islam. The second form of feminism is what Badran terms ‘Islamic feminism’, which emerged in a major way just a few decades ago. Much of this book sheds a revealing light on the forms, arguments and practical achievements of Islamic feminism. Far from being an oxymoron, Badran asserts that ‘Islamic feminism’ is more radical and forceful than Muslim secular feminism. Islamic feminism, she states, is based on the firm conviction about the fundamental equality of men and women as creatures of God, as stated in the Quran. On the basis of this belief and their re-reading of the Islamic tradition, Islamic feminists argue that Islam mandates equality of women and men in all spheres of life, personal as well as public. This demand for equality, Badran says, extends even to the religious sphere, as regards religious professions and mosque rituals. Badran backs her case by citing certain Muslim women scholars — Aminah Wadud, Asma Barlas, Riffat Hasan, the better-known among them — who argue on these lines. Yet the question needs to be posed and answered. Can elite women — many based in Western universities — represent a reform movement, within the conservative ijtihad tradition in the true sense of the term? This is an issue that Badran sidesteps. An assessment of the actual impact of Islamic feminists in terms of policy or legal changes, or women’s mobilisation at the ‘grassroots’, is missing in this otherwise engaging narrative. Absent, also, is any substantial…