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At a meal, a reporter asked him what he was doing. She replied that she was finishing her Ph.D. In what ?, Said the man, and she answered that in sociology and politics. It was an intentionally vague answer because Susan Carland knew what would happen if she was more specific. She is an Australian academic, converted to Islam and feminist. Yes, feminist. She is the author of the book "Fighting His Islam: Women, Faith and Sexism", in which she recounts the meeting with the journalist, who ended as she was expecting, after the Man asked him what was the specific subject of his investigation. Here's the dialogue:
"I'm studying the different ways that Muslim women fight badism in Muslim communities," Carland said.
– These are dangerous waters!
-Not really. It's something that happened hundreds of years ago, and I was overwhelmed by the number of women who wanted to participate in my research.
– They wanted to know what they were doing? Or did they have to keep the secret?
– Many of them were happy to be identified in my research. In addition, some got angry when I suggested giving them a pseudonym, and insisted that they wanted to be recognized for their work.
-But … but did their husbands know their apostasy?
-In fact, many of the women mentioned their husbands or other Muslim men, like their father or imam, as their biggest supporters.
-…
Phantoms repressed
Probably many in the West would have the same reaction as the Australian journalist: surprise and silence. Some of them must be on the covers that have won the fact that women can now drive cars in Saudi Arabia, one of the most restrictive Islamic regimes with women, to say the least (why talk about the Taliban or recently Isis). From the West, the vision on the Islamic world is one of a unique patriarchal culture, where women, because they are, are still subject to various restrictions, apparently based on the Qur'an, among which the most visible and the most controversial is, perhaps, the use of the Islamic veil: for some, a symbol of the repression of women; for others, mark of identity against the colonialist culture of the West. Whatever the case may be, there is no reason to have this image: besides the veil, in its different versions, there are other customs when it 's safe. is to try Islam, for example the ban on studying, marriage with girls or mutilation Leaving aside the racism and Islamophobia that are invading Europe and the United States, even from the left, a philosopher like Slovenian Slavoj Zizek raises – in his book "Islam and modernity" – that women are "women". A repressed event that gives vitality to Islam ", that she is the" ghost "behind her, especially from her terrorist drift, so the woman is hidden behind a veil, she says. On the other hand, in "Thinking of Islam", the French philosopher Michel Onfray – also on the left – simply rejects Islam as a badist, phallocratic and misogynist religion.
But, as we We have seen in Susan Carland, there is also Islamic feminism, and it is far from the first and the only one: according to the "Oxford Dictionary of Islam", already in the middle of In the nineteenth century, women and men from the Islamic world began to question the legal and social restrictions that affected women, "especially that relating to education and isolation the strict use of the veil, polygyny, slavery and concubinage. "Already in the twentieth century, after the second World War, with modernist and nationalist movements, gender issues were considered "crucial for social development". And from the late 1970s, along with fundamentalist Islamism, appeared groups such as the Revolutionary Association of Afghan Women or Sisters of Islam of Mali, which fight for women's rights.
that Islamic feminism has criticisms: of the Algerian lawyer and feminist Wbadyla Tamzali, for whom "talking about Islamic feminism is an absolute contradiction", up to the Spanish Sirin Adlibi Silbai, author of "The Prison of Feminism", who said that "Islamic feminism is a redundancy, so Islam is egalitarian."
The fault is Aristotle
The entry "Women and Islam "From the Oxford Dictionary, begins:" In Islam, women and men are morally equal in the eyes of God and they are supposed to fulfill the same duties of worship, prayer, faith, alms and of pilgrimage to Mecca. "He then adds that the appearance of Islam, in the seventh century, meant an improvement for women of early Arab cultures, among others, because the infanticide of girls was prohibited and because Islamic law "emphasized the contractual nature of marriage". 19659002] As often happens with texts, especially religious ones, that want to find a foundation in the Koran and other books to support women's submission, you will find them; just like those who want to defend equality between men and women. It may well be worth paying attention to women who have had leadership in the history of Islam: Aishah, one of the wives of Muhammad, recognized in his time for his academic authority, to both in medicine, history and rhetoric, to the women who have governed countries of the Islamic world, like Benazir Bhutto, Prime Minister of Pakistan. In addition, according to the British academic Mohammad Akram, author of "Women Scholars in Islam", throughout its history, Islam has had "thousands" of women researchers and interpreters of the Qur'an, and therefore trainers, according to what is read in an article published in the English newspaper The Telegraph.
According to Akram, Islamic scholars turned against women "when they began to study philosophy". That is, in the Middle Ages, when the intellectuals who fashioned the fiqh (Islamic law) read Aristotle, who argued that the subjugation of women was "natural" and a "social need". Add to this the prevalence of patriarchal cultures in peoples who converted to Islam in pre-modern times, beginning with the Arabs, and therefore we have the female submission that many still defend.
So: Is Islam a patriarchal, badist and misogynistic religion? Where are some interpretations and practices?
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