Islamic Feminism - Defining "islamic Feminism", The Modern Era, Interpreting The Role Of Women In Islam, Bibliography
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The term Islamic feminism was first used in the 1990s. It is not certain who coined the term. Nor is it evident that those who first used it were aware of the explosive impact that the juxtaposition of these two words was to have. Rather than imagining and promoting a revolution in the heart of Islam, these women in Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and some Asian Muslim communities were merely describing what they and others like them were doing. They were challenging the misogyny that they saw to be essential to the projection of a newly politicized Islam.
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To understand Islamic feminism, both words have to be examined separately and then together. The epithet "Islamic" situates a person somewhere on the continuum between a cultural identity that is Muslim and coexists easily with secularism and occasional expressions of religious observance on the one hand, and Islamist, which describes a way of life committed to fighting for the estab…
Muslim women activists at the turn of the twentieth century were careful to distinguish their behavior, language, and appearance from those of their Western sisters. Always speaking within an observant Muslim context, they demanded education, employment opportunities, control over their lives (for example, marriage choice) and over their bodies (to veil or not to veil). They insisted that their de…
By the mid-1980s women were realizing that they were going to have to assume responsibility for interpreting foundational texts if they were to hold on to rights for which their mothers had fought and that they were seeing erode under their very eyes. If they did not stop the advance of an Islamic movement that systematically targeted women's established rights and liberties, then no one wo…
Abu-Lughod, Lila, ed. Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998. Afkhami, Mahnaz, ed. Faith and Freedom: Women's Human Rights in the Muslim World. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1995. Ahmed, Leila. Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992. Badra…
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