Women's Rights in the Islamist Movements
Of all the really dumb formalist propositions I've heard, perhaps the dumbest always concerns the subject of Islam and women. Somehow everyone has it in their head that "Islam" with its infinite manifestations, permutations and varieties, has a position on the subject of "women" that is somehow clear, coherent, and may be unambiguously derived from Muslim text and tradition. This is true from the most pathetic apologist, where Islam's view on women is unquestionably the same as that which happens to prevail in the society where the apologist lives, to the most hardened Islamophobe, where Islam's position on women is precisely what would be most distasteful in the society where that Islamophobe resides.
The truth is that if any area is rife for Realism, this is it. Women have occupied so many different roles in so many different periods and societies in the polyglot Muslim polity, and there is so much varying tradition in foundational sacred text and Muslim tradition that the notion that something coherent can be found in this thicket to apply in modern times is barely a pipe dream. If you take the rules of the scholarly tradition, the medieval jurists, then sure it's not going to be very progressive. The Sufis might have another view. There are hadith that progressives will cling to, and those that misogynists cling to. There is no view on "women" when it comes to "Islam" in any clean, direct sense. Fatima Mernissi as a Muslim female progressive and Mullah Omar of the Taliban both spring from the Muslim tradition and are inherent parts of it.
So to make sense of this, we have to narrow the kaleidoscope a bit, and look to particular social and cultural conditions to shed some light on pieces of this area. I focus herein on Islamist movements, by which I mean those movements that seek to make sharia a more important part of the legal and social order. Not all Muslims, not all religious Muslims, but Islamist movements in general with awareness that exceptions exist everywhere, even here, is a useful perspective to at least glance at for this post.
Generally, the Islamist view on women is sort of a negotiation between two poles, one of which I will describe as traditional sexist, and the other as unambiguous misogyny. The traditionalist sexist is sort of how you might imagine the West in the 1930's. Women aren't to be hated or feared in this paradigm, indeed they are to be revered and honored, but in particular, restricted roles. "Paradise lies at the feet of the mothers" said the Prophet. Just about all Muslims like this phrase, I have it in my home too, it is a form of filial respect and honor. But the Islamist while exalting the role of the woman as mother, and the woman as wife, seeks to restrict the role of the woman beyond this to the extent that it might conflict seriously with these roles. That does not mean no women on the street necessarily (wives and mothers buy food) or even no female demonstrations for the regime (everyone can deal without a home maker for an afternoon), but it does mean they aren't exactly fans of women working, though there is some grudging tolerance towards this in some circles, and certainly there is opposition to women taking major leadership positions that require extensive time and effort. To help fortify this, the notion of a woman as lacking in intelligence, as in need of special care and attention, as incapable of brass knuckle hard edged toughness in the manner required in the dog eat dog working world, comes into play. Sacred text excusing women from the prayer and the fast during menstruation are employed--if women are so helpless for some number of days each month, then they are too soft for the real world. Imam Ali's statement concerning women's potential lack of intelligence, or so it is (mis?)read, is used. Quranic verse making men the protectors of women. (Yes the verses and statements can be understood differently, and are by progressives, and sure there is early Islamic contrary history--as noted above, I would never say Islam MANDATES this or any other position, only that it is common and this is what is used to get there.) So the woman who is a wife, and a mother, and loves her family, is extolled and loved, she is to be revered and honored. But that is her role, and she needs to be so limited.
The other pole, or current if you will, is darker and more misogynist. In it, the woman is dangerous, a highly sexualized being who is capable of spreading corruption far and wide in the social order. Her sexual power is irresistible and voracious (here there is an abrupt disruption with traditional Western notions--in the Islamic tradition a woman's sexual appetite is far more than a man's--God took sexual desire, Imam Ali said, and split it into ten pieces, and gave nine of them to women), and must be feared. She is a potential source of enmity, and everything must be done to limit her. Here the verses take on a different meaning. Mernissi's attack is on one verse relating precisely to this sort of tradition--that the woman, along with the dog and the ass, break the prayer when between the prostrating man and Mecca. Scholarly tradition talking of the necessary seclusion of women comes into this, as does the veil (to some, the Islamist movements, let me emphasize). Scholarly tradition making women's lives potentially worth less in murder cases, and those allowing a husband to beat his recalcitrant wife, play into this tradition. The famous Arab saying that a woman leaves her home twice, once to leave her father's home to enter her husband's, and then in a coffin to the graveyard may be outdated by now in most places, but it's part and parcel of the same phenomenon. As is the idea of letting girls in a burning building die rather than leave the building when uncovered, as the religious fascist Salafist fanatics did (the so called "volunteers") in Saudi. The danger from the sexually voracious uncovered girl on television escaping a building outweighs the harm of her burning to death.
To be clear, nobody falls clearly into one camp or the other, it's a mix of the two currents. Some Islamists are genuinely horrified at what happened in the Saudi school, and actually probably most Saudis do too, certainly the ones I know.There's the old joke of the Saudi woman who needs her son to grant her permission to travel to visit her daughter in the US. (Yes, this part is true, if her husband has died, she needs a man's permission, sometimes that is the son.) So the guard makes her bring her son, saying he won't issue the visa without it, and the son shows up and says he won't give his mother permission to travel, and the guard, after making the mother go get the son to obtain his permssion, then starts beating the son for refusing to give it, shouting "how dare you disobey your mother!" It's a mix of the two currents---the woman to be revered as mother (the son must obey her) and the requirement that a woman not travel alone, to prevent the spread of licentiousness and social corruption by the sexual power of woman (the mother needs the permission of a male "guardian.") And all Islamists tend to treat scantily clad (or sometimes just unveiled) single women with some level of harshness and ferocity, as dangers to the order, no matter how much they might extol the wonders of their own daughters, wives and mothers.
But while everyone has a bit of both, the real place to find the divide, to figure out the relative strength of each trend, is in the area of education. Those Islamists that tend to put more emphasis on the former trend, woman revered in her role as wife and mother, don't really object to educating girls. It doesn't interfere with those roles (in the modern world in many societies, where few marry before 20) and in fact in some ways is becoming a sign of status, kind of like marrying a Seven Sisters girl might have been in 1925 or something. They're well bred. But then the idea is they go take care of the home and raise children after the bachelor's degree. Nothing wrong with being able to quote Thomas Mann (or Muhammad Baqir al Sadr in our paradigm) in fact that's great, the Prophet said seek knowledge even in the furthest East, but that's where it ends for the Islamist for the most part. The rest he starts to become uncomfortable. It's not universally true, some women who are Islamists work and are prominent, but they certainly earn their salaries based on the fire they take (not necessarily from husbands, some are sympathetic, but certainly from the broader movement).
Those who gravitate more towards the mysognist pole are strongly opposed to female education. When they toss acid on girls, as the Taliban do, it's not for showing too much of their legs (quite a few do that across lots of groups) but for going to school. The woman is a threat, a smart woman is obviously even more of one. Now that's not obvious from text, nothing in there prevents schooling, but it is spillover from the woman as sexual threat into something else. There's an irony to it, in that as noted above part of the reason women are supposed to be wives and mothers first is because they are too emotionally and intellectually fragile to stand the working world, and their periods supposedly get in the way, and here the woman learns to read, and it's a threat, which how can that be if they are dumber no matter what they do under the theory. I suppose it's the notion though that once the woman is a danger to the social order, and that is emphasized and repeated enough, then to some groups, like the Taliban, it starts to take over nearly all realms.
Anyway, that's simplistic and reductive, it has to be in a blog post, but I think nonetheless a decent encapsulated description of how Islamist movements, through their own reading of Muslim text and tradition, tend to approach as a broad matter (I admit there are exceptions) the general subject of Islam and women.
HAH
The truth is that if any area is rife for Realism, this is it. Women have occupied so many different roles in so many different periods and societies in the polyglot Muslim polity, and there is so much varying tradition in foundational sacred text and Muslim tradition that the notion that something coherent can be found in this thicket to apply in modern times is barely a pipe dream. If you take the rules of the scholarly tradition, the medieval jurists, then sure it's not going to be very progressive. The Sufis might have another view. There are hadith that progressives will cling to, and those that misogynists cling to. There is no view on "women" when it comes to "Islam" in any clean, direct sense. Fatima Mernissi as a Muslim female progressive and Mullah Omar of the Taliban both spring from the Muslim tradition and are inherent parts of it.
So to make sense of this, we have to narrow the kaleidoscope a bit, and look to particular social and cultural conditions to shed some light on pieces of this area. I focus herein on Islamist movements, by which I mean those movements that seek to make sharia a more important part of the legal and social order. Not all Muslims, not all religious Muslims, but Islamist movements in general with awareness that exceptions exist everywhere, even here, is a useful perspective to at least glance at for this post.
Generally, the Islamist view on women is sort of a negotiation between two poles, one of which I will describe as traditional sexist, and the other as unambiguous misogyny. The traditionalist sexist is sort of how you might imagine the West in the 1930's. Women aren't to be hated or feared in this paradigm, indeed they are to be revered and honored, but in particular, restricted roles. "Paradise lies at the feet of the mothers" said the Prophet. Just about all Muslims like this phrase, I have it in my home too, it is a form of filial respect and honor. But the Islamist while exalting the role of the woman as mother, and the woman as wife, seeks to restrict the role of the woman beyond this to the extent that it might conflict seriously with these roles. That does not mean no women on the street necessarily (wives and mothers buy food) or even no female demonstrations for the regime (everyone can deal without a home maker for an afternoon), but it does mean they aren't exactly fans of women working, though there is some grudging tolerance towards this in some circles, and certainly there is opposition to women taking major leadership positions that require extensive time and effort. To help fortify this, the notion of a woman as lacking in intelligence, as in need of special care and attention, as incapable of brass knuckle hard edged toughness in the manner required in the dog eat dog working world, comes into play. Sacred text excusing women from the prayer and the fast during menstruation are employed--if women are so helpless for some number of days each month, then they are too soft for the real world. Imam Ali's statement concerning women's potential lack of intelligence, or so it is (mis?)read, is used. Quranic verse making men the protectors of women. (Yes the verses and statements can be understood differently, and are by progressives, and sure there is early Islamic contrary history--as noted above, I would never say Islam MANDATES this or any other position, only that it is common and this is what is used to get there.) So the woman who is a wife, and a mother, and loves her family, is extolled and loved, she is to be revered and honored. But that is her role, and she needs to be so limited.
The other pole, or current if you will, is darker and more misogynist. In it, the woman is dangerous, a highly sexualized being who is capable of spreading corruption far and wide in the social order. Her sexual power is irresistible and voracious (here there is an abrupt disruption with traditional Western notions--in the Islamic tradition a woman's sexual appetite is far more than a man's--God took sexual desire, Imam Ali said, and split it into ten pieces, and gave nine of them to women), and must be feared. She is a potential source of enmity, and everything must be done to limit her. Here the verses take on a different meaning. Mernissi's attack is on one verse relating precisely to this sort of tradition--that the woman, along with the dog and the ass, break the prayer when between the prostrating man and Mecca. Scholarly tradition talking of the necessary seclusion of women comes into this, as does the veil (to some, the Islamist movements, let me emphasize). Scholarly tradition making women's lives potentially worth less in murder cases, and those allowing a husband to beat his recalcitrant wife, play into this tradition. The famous Arab saying that a woman leaves her home twice, once to leave her father's home to enter her husband's, and then in a coffin to the graveyard may be outdated by now in most places, but it's part and parcel of the same phenomenon. As is the idea of letting girls in a burning building die rather than leave the building when uncovered, as the religious fascist Salafist fanatics did (the so called "volunteers") in Saudi. The danger from the sexually voracious uncovered girl on television escaping a building outweighs the harm of her burning to death.
To be clear, nobody falls clearly into one camp or the other, it's a mix of the two currents. Some Islamists are genuinely horrified at what happened in the Saudi school, and actually probably most Saudis do too, certainly the ones I know.There's the old joke of the Saudi woman who needs her son to grant her permission to travel to visit her daughter in the US. (Yes, this part is true, if her husband has died, she needs a man's permission, sometimes that is the son.) So the guard makes her bring her son, saying he won't issue the visa without it, and the son shows up and says he won't give his mother permission to travel, and the guard, after making the mother go get the son to obtain his permssion, then starts beating the son for refusing to give it, shouting "how dare you disobey your mother!" It's a mix of the two currents---the woman to be revered as mother (the son must obey her) and the requirement that a woman not travel alone, to prevent the spread of licentiousness and social corruption by the sexual power of woman (the mother needs the permission of a male "guardian.") And all Islamists tend to treat scantily clad (or sometimes just unveiled) single women with some level of harshness and ferocity, as dangers to the order, no matter how much they might extol the wonders of their own daughters, wives and mothers.
But while everyone has a bit of both, the real place to find the divide, to figure out the relative strength of each trend, is in the area of education. Those Islamists that tend to put more emphasis on the former trend, woman revered in her role as wife and mother, don't really object to educating girls. It doesn't interfere with those roles (in the modern world in many societies, where few marry before 20) and in fact in some ways is becoming a sign of status, kind of like marrying a Seven Sisters girl might have been in 1925 or something. They're well bred. But then the idea is they go take care of the home and raise children after the bachelor's degree. Nothing wrong with being able to quote Thomas Mann (or Muhammad Baqir al Sadr in our paradigm) in fact that's great, the Prophet said seek knowledge even in the furthest East, but that's where it ends for the Islamist for the most part. The rest he starts to become uncomfortable. It's not universally true, some women who are Islamists work and are prominent, but they certainly earn their salaries based on the fire they take (not necessarily from husbands, some are sympathetic, but certainly from the broader movement).
Those who gravitate more towards the mysognist pole are strongly opposed to female education. When they toss acid on girls, as the Taliban do, it's not for showing too much of their legs (quite a few do that across lots of groups) but for going to school. The woman is a threat, a smart woman is obviously even more of one. Now that's not obvious from text, nothing in there prevents schooling, but it is spillover from the woman as sexual threat into something else. There's an irony to it, in that as noted above part of the reason women are supposed to be wives and mothers first is because they are too emotionally and intellectually fragile to stand the working world, and their periods supposedly get in the way, and here the woman learns to read, and it's a threat, which how can that be if they are dumber no matter what they do under the theory. I suppose it's the notion though that once the woman is a danger to the social order, and that is emphasized and repeated enough, then to some groups, like the Taliban, it starts to take over nearly all realms.
Anyway, that's simplistic and reductive, it has to be in a blog post, but I think nonetheless a decent encapsulated description of how Islamist movements, through their own reading of Muslim text and tradition, tend to approach as a broad matter (I admit there are exceptions) the general subject of Islam and women.
HAH
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