Part 10: Women and Feminism in Islam and the Middle East

This is the final post for now on political ideas and their recent history in Islam. For this post I will to some extent follow the thread from the very beginning of Islam and see where it has led (up to today).

The Qur’an was a document that arguably improved the lot of 7^th Century women who became Muslims marginally without providing full equality with men. A significant innovation was, perhaps, Qur’anic support for the rights of the family unit as against those of the larger clan and tribe groups. Before Islam, the Arabian societies were by no means homogeneous with regard to their treatment of women. There usually was, however, a division of labour responsibilities between men and women with subordination of the female roles to the roles of males varying according to class. This was no more than marginally affected by Islamic dictates. The generally novel rights for women guaranteed by the Qur’an included the right to hold property, fair treatment within their marriages and in financial arrangements, and fairer treatment in inheritance matters. The spirits of the Qur’an and of the example of the Prophet were generally pro-equality, or at least progressive towards equality as he faced Medinan male opposition, as between men and women and also between husbands and wives. Some Muslims suggest that these progressive spirits thus lend themselves toward a continuation of the progress to full equality. In defence of men, some that argued in turn (probably somewhat anachronistically) that the role of men in war continues to merit a certain degree of inequality. Due respect is naturally paid by Muslims, however, to the somewhat different roles that do appear to have been prescribed in the Qur’an for men and women.

Veiling and segregation/seclusion was at first only enforced for Muhammad’s wives and segregation was not, in fact, practiced at all widely until the late 11^th Century.

There is evidence from early Islam onwards that suggests women were allowed a major public role regardless of their apparently unique covering requirement. Men are also, of course, required to dress modestly in Islam. While there has never been a female Caliph and there is one oft-quoted Hadith which suggests that women should not be leaders, as Fatima Mernissi has shown in her the Forgotten Queens of Islam, there have nevertheless been a significant number of female rulers throughout Islamic history. Incidentally the Arabic word for Caliph, khalifa, is a feminine word in Arabic which means successor and/or deputy and no Caliph has been unwilling to use the title because it is feminine and though Imam is a masculine word note that Muhammad himself appointed at least one female one (perhaps using a different title for her, however). Arguments often persist concerning the validity of Hadiths. It has been suggested that the Hadith just mentioned may have been concocted by a male rival for power to thwart the particular leadership aspirations of Aisha, a young and popular widow of Muhammad’s. In addition, Mernissi showed there may be a traditional reason for disqualifying the Hadith: one of its transmitters before its collection in writing centuries later had at some time fallen foul of the law. Another transmitter had been present at the first ever fight between Muslims, the so-called “Battle of the Camel”, in which the losing general was Aisha and the winner was ‘Ali, who had recently become Caliph in the face of significant opposition led by Aisha. History, as they say, is written by the winners and the loser just happened to be a woman.

There is also evidence from the Qur’an and the Hadith and Siras (biographies) of Muhammad that he permitted some of his wives to divorce him – a public act. He also appointed at least one female Imam to lead Mosque prayers, as I've just mentioned. In addition, early Islamic women including Aisha fought in early battles, transmitted Hadiths, contributed to the canon of the Qur’an and were regarded as wise teachers of both men and women. One story has it that a woman was once able to correct ‘Umar, himself a notable authority, friend of the Prophet and Caliph, in a legal matter. Hence they contributed in major ways to the very fabric of early Islam. Even from a Salafi point-of-view this therefore represents a model to be followed by all Muslim societies.

Aisha transmitted several Hadith that shed light on Muhammad’s attitude to the equality of the sexes, women’s issues and the role of women. Fatima, Muhammad’s daughter and ‘Ali’s wife, was also a notable early Muslim woman as was Muhammad’s first wife, Khadija, who actually supported him financially for some time in his early years with her independent (pre-Islamic) wealth. Even ‘Umar, known as a fairly misogynist Caliph (he is said to have been the first to enforce some veiling, for example), is known to have appointed at least one female market commissioner. Women participated in various ways in public life. There is an example of a public petition from some female partisans of ‘Ali to the 5^th Caliph, Mu’awiya. Women continued to be teachers for some time after the earliest years of the Islamic era. A grand-daughter of ‘Ali, Nafisah, was one among several and Qatr an-Nada, the wife of a late 9^th/early 10^th Century Caliph by the name of Mu’tadid also participated in the rule of her husband.

The existence of female earthly rulers such as Sultanas (fem. form of Sultans) has been legitimated in Islamic law by distinguishing earthly power (mulk) from religious authority. Mernissi discusses, among others, in particular two female rulers, the Sitt al-Mulk (the Lady of the Power) and Shajarat al-Durr (Tree of Pearls) in Egypt, and other female religious and military leaders of note. Ironically, the brother of Sitt al-Mulk, al-Hakim, who also believed he was God, incidentally (or perhaps not), was also the first ruler to enforce both veiling and segregation (before disappearing and being replaced by his sister). He was actually probably using women as scapegoats in a difficult period for Egypt. Ironically, movements for liberation continue to stall action on women’s rights issues arguing that they can’t walk (gain liberation from corrupt regimes, defeat Israel, etc.) and chew gum (i.e. give women rights) at the same time. This is, of course, not a religious but a political issue. Women in turn argue that a fairer society is likely to be a stronger one and consequently better able to overcome any external threats.

Reform to laws that concern the status of women occurred and continue to occur within the Islamic tradition probably despite rather than because of being prodded from outside. Islamic revival movements that may be less female friendly were in fact given the impetus to form in opposition to ‘modernist’ reforms precisely because they were promoted by the alien and then hegemonic West. As I've said, Islam itself came as somewhat of a positive reform to the status of women in a patriarchal society, and even many modern Islamist reformers continue to see the Islamic tradition as being to continue to improve the position of women. The (male) scholars of Islamic law have also not always produced good Islamic law to begin with from virtually the beginning, in their view.

Women are now generally treated equally with men as witnesses in the modern Islamic world with a few exceptions. Generally the laws of Islamic countries make polygyny (being married to more than one wife) difficult (especially when monogyny is contracted for) or don’t allow it at all as in the case of Tunisia. The interests of the child are generally considered the paramount consideration in custody disputes as in Australia, for example, and in the West, generally. The Islamic permission to have four wives in the context of early Arabia was, in fact, a limitation, a fact which reformers have used to justify these ongoing reforms in Islamic terms. It’s rather a case of speculating: what would Muhammad do (WWMD)?

Marriage contracts allowed in some Islamic schools of jurisprudence have been rather modern in appearance (as far as providing adequately for women) since the early Islamic period. The woman received a dowry as her personal property to use as she pleased on personal and not household items. Men could be contracted with to provide adequate servants and income for the wife as well as her sexual contentment and kindness more generally. The contracts also contemplated grounds for divorce and grounds could include polygyny. Remedies could include annulment of the subsequent marriages. The Islamic marriage has the air of a modern pre nuptial agreement. Islamic law always permitted divorce (it was the least preferred of Halal behaviour) in contrast to Roman Catholic law. Men’s rights were taken for granted to an extent (as one would expect in a patriarchal setting) but women’s rights were somewhat well protected.

Under the influence of Western Victorian values (often those of men who did not favour the giving of rights to their own Western women), some Islamic and Arab women began to seek both democracy of an Islamic kind and certain rights for Muslim women from the 19^th Century. One of the problems with the Western model of democracy for most Muslims including women is that Western democracies have supported brutal virtual dictatorships and dubious theocracies (such as the one in Saudi Arabia) in Muslim countries. Women have suffered more than men in these kinds of states so some form of Islamic democracy is favoured by many of them rather than what they perceive might become Western sponsored brutality in the name of Western democracies. The Qur’anic term Shura rather than democracy is most often invoked by Islamist women.

While with a degree of scepticism concerning Western motives in their region, women (and men) in the Middle East have considered the idea of reform of patriarchy for the last century or more. Thinkers have thus considered the relevance of Islamic and other traditions and laws (including those that impose segregation and seclusion of women) in the modern world in the context of the development of a feminist theory of patriarchy. Arab Muslim ‘feminists’, who considered women’s rights in socio-economic terms and in terms of dealing with imposed segregation and seclusion for the first time in a major way, were active in the 1920s. Qasim Amin was an early (19^th Century) promoter of unveiling and an end to seclusion in this movement in Egypt. He was followed in the early 20^th Century by several women such as Huda Shaarawi, also an Egyptian. Nazira Zein Ed-Din began the movement of referring specifically to the two sources of Islamic Law, the Qur’an and Hadith, for support of reform in Lebanon especially. She specifically asserted by that means that true Islam actually abhorred the veil as an insult to both men and women. Two major reform trends that concerned veiling and seclusion of women and that contributed to this movement were secularisation (favoured by non-Muslims) and re-interpretation of Islam (especially favoured by Muslims, as one might imagine).

The movement was generally an upper class one that never truly ‘caught on’ in the other classes, however, especially in rural areas, and today there has been a reclaiming of the veil even among the formerly reforming privileged class possibly intended to convey more than can easily be understood in the West. The new veiling movement may reflect a desire to reflect religious, political and socio-economic class awareness and identification. Saad Eddin Ibrahim and others have noted these changes and suggested the role of the veil in the new movement in Egypt especially has included being a socially necessary assertion of modesty of women in today’s environment nevertheless still claiming the right to come out of complete seclusion and into public life.

Women in much of the Islamic world have taken advantage of all of their educational and consequent employment opportunities now for many years so that they are now active in many areas of their societies. They have been active in the social programmes of movements such as Amal and Hezbollah during the Lebanese civil wars and in the periphery of the Muslim Brethren movements since the 1980s. There has been opposition from ‘fundamentalists’ to these roles. In part, that opposition stems from a suspicion that the West is using women to destabilise Islamic societies for their own ends. Reform to ‘Islamic’ dress is viewed with suspicion for the same reasons and correct dress in turn is seen as a symbol of resistance against further interference from the West.

With a rationale like this, Al-Mahdi banned ‘Western’ forms of dress especially for women in the area of Sudan he controlled after he helped resist the control of the West thus substituting his own form of control. Al-Banna also sought to restrict the dress of women for reasons of feelings of conservatism and patriarchy rather than strictly for the sake of Islam. The segregation of schools in Jordan was a major goal of the Muslim Brothers there, who were otherwise supportive of social programmes there in which women played a significant role. In Algeria, too, the major Islamic party, FIS, when led by ‘Abbas Madani, sought to blame the conduct of women for essentially all of the then problems of Algeria.

The wearing of the veil is controversial in the West today yet it must be born in mind that many traditions exist from veiling of virtually full face covering to not wearing any head or hair covering. The traditions are, of course, supposed to be Islamic. These variations should indicate clearly, however, the part played by things other than religion. The historian Eric Hobsbawm explores in some detail how traditions such as this are invented in his the Invention of Tradition. We must also remember that the West, too, has standards of dress that are considered mandatory and that women are also often expected by conservative people to dress especially modestly to prevent unwanted male attention in the West. Islam provided guidelines only for appropriate dress. Seclusion and veiling was arguably considered for the purpose of promoting a respect for women in a time when women were vastly under-respected. Therefore today we may feel justified in hoping that the veiling and seclusion of women would be seen by Muhammad and Allah today as unnecessary. Seclusion and veiling could also only ever be afforded to be practiced by upper class city women and their families. The wearing of the veil in Muslim societies was also regarded as to some extent a signifier for a Muslim woman as not all women in the Muslim world were Muslim. It's also worth noting that not all Middle Eastern women or men lobbying for reform were Muslim.

Modern reforms were necessary to ensure more than basic education was available to girls and young women as well as boys and young men. Much of the Islamic world had become part of the Third World in the Age of European Exploration and dominance. Education and even literacy had declined even for men, relative to the European experience. As in the West, women have been seen even in recent times as suited mainly for motherhood, housekeeping, teaching and nursing, for which the necessary education was considered relatively limited. A 2005 report of the UN has nevertheless noted progress for women in the areas of education, employment, politics and their rights as citizens. There have, of course, been wide variations depending on the location and over time.

The role of women in public may appear to be generally quite limited, however. For example, in many parts of the Islamic world including Lebanon, women are generally relatively unwelcome at Mosques. Even when they are allowed they tend to be segregated from and often behind the men’s space so as not to distract the men. Ironically one Hadith notes that Muhammad approved of the pious women who arrived at the Mosque before the men, sitting in front of the late-coming men at the Mosque as they did for purely logistical reasons. While Hadiths are regularly questioned, one may and probably must therefore question the true Islamic credentials of recent practices. Notably, there is no evidence of sex segregation in the earliest Islam. It’s most important also to note the differences as well as the similarities and the controversies that rage within Islam and the Arab world if we are to understand the reality of women’s roles in Islam as it is lived. There are strands that assert that Islam itself authorises poor treatment of women, others that suggest that only men’s interpretations of Islam have authorised poor treatment, still others that don’t accept the traditions treat women poorly at all and finally a traditional strand that asserts a reduced public role for women for reasons other than religion such as conservatism.

Hisham Sharabi, a Palestinian thinker, sociologist and politician, produced a critique of what he saw as ‘neo-patriarchal’ Arab societies, discounting the alleged religious underpinnings of their relative subjection of women in his Neopatriarchy. In this sociological work he argues that Arab society is characterised by heads of extended families living in close proximity being dominating males and fathers. He suggests that the modern nuclear family ideal is beginning to impinge upon this but that more needs to be done for women in the Arab world. Women need especially to be better educated and to be given the capacity to be more economically independent, he suggests, before the progress he considers necessary can be made.

While restricted in so many ways, it must also be noted, however, that women are also given some benefits by Islam. They are not compelled by their religious authorities (in regions where they do go to Mosques), as men are, to appear at prayers at a Mosque for each Friday’s sermon, for instance. This is arguably a freedom for women in Islam that doesn’t exist, for example, in Roman Catholicism. Islam certainly also limits the public role of women of child bearing age at least at prayer during their alleged ‘unclean’ time of each month, however.

Variations in veiling practices are especially noticeable from the full burka or niqab with gloved hands to not covering hair at all. We need to go beneath the surface when we attempt to describe how veiling contributes to the role of women in public rather than assume veiling limits the role. In fact, in many parts of the Arab world and in Iran, the recent return to veiling by many women (though it is not always especially voluntary) has also coincided with an increase in the role played by women in public.

There have thus been at least three strands of ‘feminist’ discourse in the Arab world including by men: conservative, reformist and radical. Besides veiling and seclusion they also address politics and aspects of the traditional personal status law that concern marriage, divorce (including child welfare) and inheritance. Women are also sometimes still treated differentially in the most conservative jurisdictions as witnesses in courts and of contracts. Calls for reforms in Lebanon have met with similar responses from all of the 17 or 18 ethno-religious groups, which suggests that Islam is not the only conservative social force preventing reforms there. Morocco’s new young king has proved to be in the reformist camp since 2003. He made polygamy virtually impossible in that country and among other things equal divorce rights were instituted.

As Egypt is a major opinion forming country of the Arab world, the progress of ‘feminist’ thought there is also somewhat instructive. The pattern is similar with Islamist ‘feminists’ who would reject that label for historical reasons relating to Western cultural imperialism but who do aim at reform of ‘Islamic’ norms, feminists who are Muslims and secularist feminists of whatever religious persuasion. The Islamist strand of thinker generally rejects any Western notion of equality for women as un-Islamic and fallacious, holding that Islam (and only Islam) provides both justice and true equality. The secularist thinkers tend to prefer to concern themselves with the values brought out in UN documents and treaties without any consideration of religion. Finally, the Muslim feminist thinkers will consider norms developed by the UN provided they are consistent with Islamic norms that can properly be read into the founding principles of Islam. Their views are thus a ‘middle way’ between those of the Islamists and of the secularists.

With regard to voting, women, after having undergone a rocky path to enfranchisement, are now generally allowed to vote in Islamic countries where men are allowed to vote. Mernissi has written extensively on this subject. Women involved in independence struggles have demanded equal recompense based on their national contributions. Kuwait has been a prime example where the ruler, Amir Shaykh Jabir al-Ahmad as-Sabah, explicitly recognised the contribution of women to the resistance during the 1991 occupation by Iraq by enfranchisement (in a May 1999 address).

Representation in parliaments still generally lags, however, as it also continues to do in the West. Women have actively pursued the vote privately while they also pursued independence from Britain in Egypt publicly in the so-called “Ladies’ Demonstration” in 1919. In one of the freest election systems, Jordan’s, twelve women sought election in the 1989 elections out of a much larger field of several hundred. One of them, Toujan al-Faysal, is noted for her relatively secular political views and was charged with the potentially capital crime of apostasy during her campaign. None of the women were elected that year although al-Faysal was later acquitted of apostasy and elected for a brief term (allegedly cut short by the government) as the first female MP there. Her subsequent career on the wrong side of the illiberal Jordanian law, and consequently an electoral law which now prevents her from standing for a further term, continues to interest the activists of Amnesty International and similar groups. In Algeria in 1997, four women were elected to the parliament. In Iran, women are gradually regaining rights lost in the immediate aftermath of the Islamic Revolution there. In Morocco and some other Islamic states certain seats are actually allocated especially for women and female parliamentary quotas have existed for some time. Dr Sima Samar’s reports on the situation of women in Afghanistan remain grim.

In Lebanon, women got voting rights as late as 1953 and the first women were elected to parliament in 1992. There have now been at least five (but they have generally been elected because of a family relationship with a male politician unable to continue in politics themselves for some reason – three of the males concerned had been assassinated while holding senior positions, one had died of more natural causes and one, a senior military man, had been imprisoned). None of the first five women elected have had any especially explicit feminist agenda. Indicative of this, although quotas of female members are widely discussed and have been used in the Arab world, none of these women expressed support for such quotas. They do arguably have a different focus from their male counterparts, however. In the meantime, in mainly Christian Lebanon as elsewhere in the Arab world, men in politics have more or less successfully used the dubious and socially limited argument that women’s rights must be of secondary importance in activist terms while human rights more generally are yet to be completely secured. I say dubious because it devalues and therefore fails to make full use of the potential resources that women possess, besides being inherently undemocratic.

The states of the Arabian Peninsula (the Gulf States) appear to be the most conservative in this field. In Oman few women have ever been elected. In Kuwait, women, who contributed significantly to resistance to the recent Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, subsequently demanded to be and were allowed to be elected for the first time in 2005. It was the last Arab country to give women the vote before Saudi Arabia, which only recently gave any opportunity for even men to vote, and opposition groups predicted voting and election rights for women would lead to moral corruption. Arabian Sunni Islamists also continue to suggest that Islamic source documents confirm that women have more limited powers of reasoning than men and assert, in coalition with tribal forces, that the duties of women are essentially predominantly limited by the Shariah to the home in order to prevent the evil of 'corruption'. Even the editor of the first local women’s magazine, Ghanima al-Fahd, opposed electoral changes.

The suffragists, on the other hand, see the vote for women as a potential instrument for the production of positive changes. Khadijah Mahmeed, for instance, has argued that voting must be regarded as a necessary Islamic duty for all Muslims including women. Thus, she argues that the absence of voting rights for women in particular, unreasonably inhibits them from being fully functioning Muslims. Even within the ‘feminist’ movement, however, the fear has been expressed that women might be more susceptible than men to the lures of Islamism thus making the enfranchisement of women a potentially retrograde step. The reality, now that women generally have the vote in the Arab world, appears to be that generally Islamists have benefited from the change (despite having themselves initially opposed the suffragists as a bourgeois minority).

Four females were elected to the assertive but relatively powerless 50-member Kuwaiti parliament in the recent 2009 elections. Also in 2005 in Saudi Arabia, but only in local elections, women were allowed to be elected. Opposition from Sunni Islamists in the Gulf has tended to be raised on the basis that voting rights for women would lead to 'moral corruption' without being very specific as to how this would occur. Even female Islamists such as Ghanima al-Fahd have expressed this view. So there are now at least four female MPs in the Gulf but as one is a member of the local Emir’s family there is arguably much progress still to be made.