There is not a single definition of “feminism” because the feminist movement comprises various articulations such as liberal, radical, Marxist, socialist, psychoanalytical, post-modernist and postcolonial. Feminist critique of patriarchal
52 Margot Badran, “Feminism,” in The Oxford Encyclopaedia of the Modern Islamic World, ed. John Esposito (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
53 Shaikh (2003: 157) states that Badran describes three types of feminist expression amongst Muslim women, namely feminist writing, everyday activism and movement activism which includes “political and even confrontational movements for women’s emancipation”.
54“An open space usually on the outskirts of the city where the Prophet preferred to perform the Eid Prayer” (Ismail 2002: 36).
values and interests in social theory displaces the normativeness of the experience and knowledge of the rational unitary male subject who sets the standard for all other knowledges and experiences (Gandhi 1998; Hesse-Biber 2013; Mama 2002; Weedon 1987). The focus on women’s experience in the process of knowledge production highlights the asymmetrical gender constructs within various locations in society.
(Appelrouth & Edles, 2010: 331).
In the late 20th century, the critique of feminists of colour and third world feminists showed the feminism of its time to be permeated by a “liberal individualism” which undermined its project (Hooks 1984: 8). Interrogating the interconnectedness of categories of difference amongst them, such as race, class, and nationality, they provided insights for women beyond the white middle class subject of Western feminism. They challenged the universalizing assumptions of a homogenous
“common oppression” which mystified and obscured working class and third world women’s struggles (Fourie 2001; Harding 1986; Hooks 1984; Mama 2002; Mohanty 1988; Mohanty 2003; Zine 2002).
In response to these critiques by third world women and through interactions with movements like post colonialism and post modernism, the diversity and plurality of women’s experiences was included by Western feminist theorists and feminist research took a turn towards “difference research” (Hesse-Biber 2013: 6). Despite attempts to record the experiences and realities of third world women, these endeavours were nevertheless regarded by third world feminists as lacking in rigour, meticulous research and nuance, instead homogenizing the plight of third world women and producing a ‘monolithic’ object; a woman whose cultural and religio- political contexts rendered her passive and without agency and voice.
Western feminists alone become the true ‘subjects’ of this counter history. Third world women on the other hand never rise above the debilitating generality of their
‘object’ status (Mohanty 1988: 80).
This insular approach of Western feminists to third world and black women has nowadays been re-inscribed to Muslim women against prevailing imperialist and neo- colonial reductive narratives of a misogynistic oppressive Islam, so that Muslim
women are similarly cast as a homogenized, monolithic subjugated entity in need of saving (Abu Lughod 2002; Hoel 2013; Shaikh 2003; Thobani 2005; Zine 2002).
There appears to be a lack of astute analysis and meticulous research of the experiences and perspectives of Muslim women by Western scholars who ordinarily regard themselves as cognisant of questions of diversity, so that distortions that entrench and support negative stereotypes of Muslim women are favoured.
This reductionism, says Shaikh, is connected to an increasing global presence of Islamophobia (2012: 287), providing the rationale for why even some third world feminists who contest Western essentialising tropes of themselves, produce an analogous treatment of Muslim women and Islam. As a case in point, Shirin Edwin (2007) argues that African feminists in shaping a place for African feminist thought, are guilty of bias against Islam and its role in the lives and experiences of many African women. Through an analysis of the work of Nigerian novelist Zaynab Alkali, Edwin (2007) notes how African feminists paradoxically discredit Islamic marriage practices while defending similar practices like polygyny and dower in traditional African societies.
In addition to the current cultivation of Islamophobia, racism and “Othering” of Muslims post-911, historically a “vexed” relationship between Islam and feminism has existed, borne out of the latter’s’ historical association with Empire (Mahmood 2011: 1). Discourses on Islam, feminism and gender rights are embedded in a history of Christian/Muslim conflict, “colonial and neo-colonial civilizing missions in Muslim territories, nationalist responses to colonialism and orientalist scholarship”
(Shaikh 2003: 149).
As Shaikh (2003:149) argues, the consequences to the reductive xenophobic and racist misrepresentations of Muslims has been a “reactive siege mentality” and
“defensive posturing towards the West” or alternative counter representations of the West as a monolithic immoral and greedy entity. Because feminism, due to its imperialist colonialist legacy has been discredited and heavily stereotyped within Muslim communities, women who don its label or use its tools are similarly maligned and discredited. Muslim women and men with feminist commitments thus find themselves in a minefield,
…having to navigate the terrain between being critical of sexist interpretations of Islam and patriarchy in their religious communities, while simultaneously criticizing neo-colonial feminist discourses on Islam. The fact that Muslim women resist both narratives while sometimes moving between their critiques is a consequence of the way in which they are situated within this larger minefield (Shaikh 2003: 155)
A complexity is thus created in how and where women are situated within both narratives. Particularly, Muslim women who do feminist work, like myself, are wary of these geo-political and communal landscapes in which our work is undertaken and how our communities perceive the use of theoretical lenses like feminism.
Jasmin Zine suggests that by revealing and challenging some of the oppressive power dynamics in our societies, rupturing and interrogating patriarchal and hierarchical gender constructs, we risk being co-opted by the imperialist agenda and understood as further entrenching and supporting the current political climate of rampant Islamophobia and racism on the one hand, while simultaneously within our communities, accused of being agents of Western imperialism (2006: 11-15). Zine quotes Khan (2001) and states:
As researchers we must be not only responsible for what we write, but also ‘examine how our work might be read given that racism and imperialism influence out lives’
(Zine 2006: 15).
Therefore the convergence of Islam and feminism is cautious and fraught and there is no single set of principles that can be defined as an essential monolithic Islamic feminism.
Amongst Muslim women who do gender work, some operate from outside a faith paradigm rejecting Islam altogether as a means for reform, while others whose gender affirmative work arises out of a faith imperative have varying and conflicting positions amongst themselves. Amongst these, some adopt the label, others eschew it but make use of feminist tools, others internalize paternalist discourses and defend them using the apologetic neo traditional rhetoric of complementary roles, and others easily adopt the “feminist” label without the “Islam” qualifier (Abu-Lughod 2002;
Badran 2005; Hoel 2013; Seedat 2013a; Seedat 2103b; Shaikh 2003; Zine 2002; Zine 2006: 11).
In accommodating these various positions, Fatima Seedat (2013a; 2013b) in her recent scholarship on the convergence of Islam and feminism, argues for a tentative productive space between the two paradigms. This avoids “easy conflations or inflations of the space between them”, and maintains instead “a critical view of how and why they may or may not converge”. The conundrum that Muslim women face, says Seedat, is not their “inability to articulate their position”, or what to call their equality work, but rather how to “locate this work given the pre-existing discursive frameworks that insist on claiming all struggles for sex equality within the framework of feminism” (Seedat 2013b: 43). Seedat's assertion resonates, as does her view that Islamic feminism is most valid when it is self-critical, aligns against empire, and is embedded in a broader critique of inequality and injustice. Taking into cognisance my geographical, ideological and spiritual positioning as earlier outlined, Islamic feminism is thus relevantly described for me by Shaikh as, “one of the most engaged contemporary responses to the core Quranic injunction for social justice of our time”
(2003: 159).
Shaikh insists that the term “feminist” is valuable to retain because it “situates women’s praxis in a global political landscape”, provides for collaboration and alliances for shared strategies between feminists in varying locations, and it creates a shared vocabulary for “critical consciousness surrounding gender politics”. By not embracing the term and rejecting it as a Western concept, we are conceding that gender rights discourses belong to the West and this marginalises the “indigenous histories of protest and resistance to patriarchy by non-Western women” (2003: 155).
Shaikh’s argument for retaining the term is augmented by recent positive trends that are beginning to contribute to the further transformation of the contours of feminism.
Generally, the inclusion of women’s religiosity within dominant feminist discourses (Hoel 2013: 75) has not adequately integrated “women’s faith commitments and participation in non-liberal traditions” like Islam (75). Saba Mahmood’s (2011) work on women’s agency and freedom within the pietistic movement in Egypt is a case in point. Mahmood illustrated how the secular liberal framework of feminism could not
embrace the agency of pious believing women. But as Hoel argues, critiques by 3rd world women and believing women particularly those in non-liberal traditions, is beginning to result in a multiplicity of articulations of feminism. In this way the contours of feminism continue to be reconstituted and become increasingly varied, versatile and nuanced, incorporating “broader questions of diversity, location, and the fluidity of multiple subjectivities”, through the introduction of new “productive conceptual and analytical methodologies” as well as incorporating the “liberatory potential” of non-liberal faith traditions, thereby extricating “feminist theorising from ethno-epistemological assertions and homogenous master narratives” (Hoel 2013: 80- 81).55
It is in this vein that I turn to feminist post-structural theory as an appropriate theory for my study of women’s sexual agency in online fatwas. It provides space to engage in gender affirmative work from within a non-liberal faith paradigm and allows me to both expose oppressive gender power dynamics and to uncover potential liberating and transformative impulses that arise from within this paradigm.