Proceedings of The 6th Global Conference on Women’s Studies
Year: 2024
DOI:
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Constructing the Way to Islamist Feminism: Exploring the Rebuke of Islamic Feminism
Dr. Sabah Uddin
ABSTRACT:
Consider the following two seemingly unrelated narrations: First, a quote posted on the muslimgirl Instagram account reads:
me: oh wow a Muslim characte-
book/show/movie: Samira hates her hijab and her family, her aunt wants her to marry a cousin, her dad is in isis, her mom never speaks and wears a hijab at home, all she wants to do is to be free
Following, muslimgirl captions the quote: “But hey at least we can tick off the box for ‘diversity’ right 🤔”
Second, in a New York Times video posted on October 24, 2019, journalists encounter wives and children of ISIS fighters in Al-Hol, a refugee camp guarded led by Kurdish forces. In the video, the viewer see women, clad head to toe in burqas, as either professing their innocence because of being misled by a male relative or apoplectic in their desire for the return of the Caliphate. Both narratives continue to present Muslim women as one-dimensional – she is represented only in relation to other members of her family and/or community. Whether these women are acquiescent or defiant, the public discursive terrain continues to construct “truths” about Muslim women. This was and continues to be a similar charge against feminists who paint Muslim women in reductive strokes. For example, in an effort to provide Muslim women their own space to unread patriarchy in Islam, feminists have unwittingly equivocated Islamic feminists as “successful Muslim women” who are “positive embodiments of Islam” (Hussein). This paper addresses this indictment and instead, looks at a different script. Specifically, I will give attention to those Muslim women whose voices do not fit neatly into a mainstream feminist narrative. What if the “truths” about Muslim women do not align with feminist ideals? Where do we place the spectacle of the “jihadi bride” who is comfortable with patriarchy on the spectrum of agency? Is this a signal of what author Jamal calls a “vanguard of a new modernity?” Most recently, it is reported that a number of Muslim women will skip the Women’s March this year (2020) because the “feminism and human rights of the Women’s March remain very selective and tone-deaf to Muslim issues.” Despite the inroads that transnational feminists have made to be inclusive, they face accusations as sympathizing with only those women who “are striking correctives” to “political Islamists who are rooted within the patriarchy of their culture.” This paper takes up this point confronting the idea that normative feminism is the only legitimate political expression of feminism for Muslim women. Instead it looks at the Muslim women who refuse rescue and reject normative understandings of liberation. I will explore the notion of female Islamism and further ask what agency and feminism look like under the conditions of political and religious conservativism.
keywords: Feminism, Islam