Islamic feminism

[lydamorehouse]

Islamic feminism exists. Here is its symbol:



The Holy Qu'ran does have some antiquated things to say about women and their status, (but then so does the Holy Bible.) Here's a lovely article about what the Qu'ran says about women from the Kuwait Times.

Comments

[upstart-crow.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link! As a Catholic who is sympathetic to feminism (I can't quite call myself a feminist because of the way the movement has thrown lesbians and bi women under the bus and how it ignores women with mental illnesses and other disabilities today), I am always pleased to learn about feminist women from other faiths.

[supergee.livejournal.com]

Great! Stealing the article and the icon.

[lydamorehouse]

Do!

Secretly, I'm hoping the icon will show up on buttons at this year's WisCON. :-)

[supergee.livejournal.com]

It would certainly be appropriate.

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

In my weak "oh please don't read this as me agreeing with the woman's horrible arguments" defense of Elizabeth Moon (and honestly, I didn't start to consider defending her until EVERYONE was against her), I did say that feminism and Islam represent many philosophical viewpoints but two general ones that don't necessarily agree with each other.

So she's not COMPLETELY off base by noting that Islam presents a challenge to Feminism. By that same token Feminism presents a challenge to Islam.

Of course, I'm more interested in the Feminist challenges to Orthodox Judaism but I think my main problem with the anti-Moon discourse (beyond the fact that it was vitriolic) was that many seemed to be ignoring that there IS tension between feminism and traditional religions including Islam.

[lydamorehouse]

There is tension, for sure. I don't think any religion based on ideas/words written thousands of years ago isn't going to have some kind of tension with modern society, you know?

But one of the things I like about the article I linked to is that it points out that the BIGGER problems aren't so much with what is _actually_ written in the Qur'an, but how political entities percieve those verses and have put them into practice in their countries/societies/cultures.

One of the problems I had with what I read in Moon's post is that I felt as though she (like a lot of Americans) painted "Islam" with a brush so wide that it makes no real sense.

Blaming "Islam" for the 9/11 attacks is like blaming Christianity for IRA bombings.

Also, Islam is as big and diverse as Christianity: a Christian Unitarian is not the same as an Opus Dei Catholic -- and a militant Shi'ite is nothing like a Sufi, though both are Muslims.

But I've stayed away from a lot of this discussion because I want to only talk about what she actually said... and as you so rightly point out, it's spiraled WAY out from there.

I still think WisCON made the right choice. As my friend Eleanor is fond of pointing out, if you replace "Jew" (or gay or African-American) for "Muslim" in her post... well, I can't imagine people defendig her quite to quickly.