Contemporary Feminist Discourse in Islam Some Leading Muslim Voice

INTRODUCTION What's in a name? What's behind a name? What is Islamic Feminism?...it is a feminist discourse and practice articulated within an Islamic paradigm.i Why do I use the word feminism when many object to its Western, activist, and even separatist associations? I do so because I believe that feminism is much more than an ideology driving organized political movements. It is above all an attitude, a frame of mind that highlights the role of gender in understanding the organization of society. Feminism provides the analytical tools for assessing how expectations for men's and women's behaviour have led to unjust situations, particularly but not necessarily only for women. Feminism provides a cross cultural prism through which to identify moments of awareness that something is wrong in the expectations for women's treatment or behavior, of rejection of such expectations, and of activism to effect some kind of change.ii One of the major realizations for any researcher studying Islam and women is the sheer abundance of discourses on Muslim women. The "thrownness" of the researcher in the midst of these discourses means that they engage with these questions about women's identity and being sometimes questioning and at other times assenting the implicit assumptions about the subject of their study that these discourses share. The "status" of woman in Islam has been hotly debated since at least the colonial period, always a politically charged and contentious topiciii. At times it seems that major discourses about Muslim women are not about women at all. These discourses are almost always accompanied by a comparison between the two apparently monolithic and exclusive, "Western" and "Islamic" civilizations, aimed at establishing the superiority of one over the other. The argument goes something like this: the civilization 'X' is better than 'Y' because the civilization 'X' treats "their women" better than 'Y' treats "theirs"'. This line of reasoning automatically equates civilization with men and renders women their possession and objects rather than active and autonomous subjects. It also leads to over-generalisation and reductionism by forming certain lump assumptions about all those who are identified as Muslim women, Arab Women or third world women. Yet the Muslim female researchers and activists themselves are not considered the "authority" on the subject. Feminist scholars writing within an Islamic paradigm have talked at length about this tendency to ignore the copious amount of work produced by feminist exegetes and women scholars in academia as well as in Muslim discourses about womeniv. The 'experts' on the subject of "Muslim women" are,