A seminar at IslamExpo
This is an article in the Guardian from a Muslim woman about a seminar at IslamExpo over the weekend on the subject Do Muslim women need liberating?
I attended a session at IslamExpo at the weekend on a topic that keeps coming up: "Do Muslim women need liberating?" I expected that there would be the usual preoccupation with defending the faith and restating that Islam does not oppress women. But I was pleasantly surprised to listen to open criticism of indigenous culture in the Muslim world and a more profound examination of the role Muslim women themselves play in their own oppression.
Yvonne Ridley defended Islam using her own Western experience as a departure point, declaring herself a lifelong feminist and stating that women do not need liberating from Islam but from ubiquitous male chauvinist fear. Her argument smacked of the stereotypical zeal with which converts to Islam take to the religion. As a cultural defector, she re-examined the liberal tradition of her Western Christian upbringing and saw its paucity in relation to the rights granted to women by Islam 1400 years ago. Her assertion that the conservatism from which women suffer in the Muslim world is a direct result of colonial times which spawned a male backlash in fear of cultural erosion, may have some truth but is used as a perennial excuse; a type of absolution that does the liberation movement no favours and contradicts her feminist, "men fear women, period" strain of absolution.
I resent being told by non-Muslims or ex-Muslims like Ayaan Hirsi Ali that I am oppressed, but I also resent being told that I am not oppressed at all by those who urge me to go back to the roots of my faith and find liberation by shedding my Orientalist views and being more understanding of the colonial hangover from which Muslim men suffer.
The difficult question is, if Islamic scripture and heritage provide a healthy paradigm within which to enshrine women's rights, why isn't it happening?
We women need freedom to question aspects of our faith without necessarily being accused of rejecting it.
What definitely does not help is trivialising the real and sustained pressure exerted upon young Muslim women by their families. When Yvonne Ridley was asked by a member of the audience whether she viewed the enforcement of the hijab on young girls as justified, she unhelpfully replied "All I can say is that if I had listened to my mother when I was younger, I wouldn't have made half the mistakes that I had made in my lifetime”.
Interesting that, as Ridley’s mother is on record as having told her to remove the hijab. That both her Mother and her daughter warned Ridley not to go into Afghanistan. Her Mother brought her up, and is bringing her daughter up while Ridley travels the world for Islam as Christian. It is not too late for Ridley to listen to her Mother.
Posted on 3:18 AM by Esmerelda Weatherwax
