The Battle for British Islam by Sara Khan

Author:Sara Khan
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780863561641
Publisher: Saqi

The gender jihad

Today many Muslim men and women true to their faith are engaging in a ‘gender jihad’,78 a struggle for reclaiming women’s rights guaranteed by Islam. Using the egalitarian teachings of Islam, a number of individuals and organisations across the world from as far and wide as Morocco to Indonesia, Egypt to Pakistan, as well as here in the UK, are working to reclaim Islam’s spirit of justice for all, regardless of gender.

Writers like the legal anthropologist Ziba Mir-Hosseini79 distinguish between the spirit and teachings of the Qur’an and the opinions of later jurists or fiqh. The true divine sharia, she argues, is in the former and not the latter and contains the basis for an egalitarian Muslim family law.80 Arguing this means of course crossing swords with those within Islamism who support patriarchy as God-given. Feminists, it would seem logically, should support writers like Mir-Hosseini. Or for that matter, organisations like Musawah – founded by women from Egypt, Turkey, Gambia and Pakistan – applying feminist and a rights-based approach to ‘search for equality and justice with Muslim legal traditions’.81

Feminists need to recalibrate their approach to Muslim women. Supporting gender equality within Islam is not about legitimising imperialism or western foreign policy – even if it has been used in that way. The idea that a Muslim woman should not speak out on oppressive behaviour or policies in Muslim majority countries or communities as it may feed ‘Islamophobia’ does little to resolve longstanding issues facing Muslim women. This has created a hierarchy of oppression in the minds of some within academia, and among liberal and Left-wing commentators, in which women’s rights (Muslim in particular) are placed on a lower rung to Islamophobia.

What is incredibly depressing about the debate around so-called imperialist feminism is that, while campaigners for gender equality are informed that they are tools of the western war machine, Muslim women and girls face a range of very real problems that urgently need to be addressed. These seem a million miles removed from the arcane discussions that some feminists are having in the ivory towers of academia.

In the UK, Muslim women continue to find difficulties getting jobs, with a markedly higher unemployment rate among these women than is the case with their Hindu and Christian counterparts.82 Abhorrent cultural practices continue to be experienced by Muslim women, including forced marriages, honour-based violence and FGM, though these are not restricted to Muslim societies alone. Many mosques continue to deny women access or provide poor facilities, access and representation.

There has also been a rise in recorded hate crime directed at British Muslim women where racists have pulled at their clothing or inflicted acts of horrific violence.83 In fact, women seem to have taken the brunt of the racist backlash resulting from terrorist action.

The answer to these issues is not to vex about whether these problems are just a front for western policy aims. It is not to accuse those who take up these issues of ‘gendered orientalism’. The real answer is to defend the universally applicable human right to equality of opportunity regardless of gender.

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