A Smarter way to fight for Muslim women

By Waleed Aly

The push for change must come from within the Muslim world.

On occasions such as International Women's Day, which was marked around the world yesterday, the Muslim world never escapes negative attention. Nor should it. As a Muslim who is deeply troubled by the kinds of abuses that women infamously endure in some parts of the Muslim world, i think it would be profoundly immoral to ignore such injustice. It should be unapologetically confronted. Reform is badly needed.

To this end, it is vital that any discourse seeking to initiate change in the Muslim world has some traction among mainstream Muslims. It is otherwise doomed to irrelevance.

This is where Western discussions in general, and Western secular feminist discourses in particular, hit a mighty roadblock. Even among Muslims seriously committed to gender reform, Western feminism has often presented more of a hindrance than a help.

In simple terms this is because, to the Muslim ear, feminist discourse smacks of colonial imperialism. It echoes a broader historical polemic between the Muslim world and the West in which Western prescriptions for Muslim reform were often egocentric and hypocritical. Here one would site Lord Cromer, the 19th century British consul-general in Egypt who advocated women's unveiling while simultaneously being president of the men's league for opposing women's suffrage in England.

Alternatively, there was the International Alliance of Women, which left many Eastern feminists disillusioned in 1939 when it appealed for the release of a Czech member held by the Nazis, but refused to do the same for a Palestinian member imprisoned by the British.

Feminism and imperialism seemed to have some kind of undisclosed memorandum of understanding.

This perceived link with cultural hegemony continues to the present day. Many Muslims agreed with the Western feminist criticisms of the Taliban forcing Afghan women to wear the burqa. Such denial of choice is indeed oppressive, and deserves opposition. But nary a squawk was heard from those same Western voices in opposition to laws in Turkey that denied women the choice o wear head-scares in educational and political institutions.

This leaves many Muslim women wondering whether their feminist sisters only defend a woman’s right to choose when she chooses to renounce Islamic norms, but not when she chooses to adopt them. Being forced to abandon Islamic behaviour does not seem to matter.

The belligerent attitude towards Islam exhibited in particularly by second-wave Western feminists didn’t help. Arguments seeking gender equality by prising Islam’s fingers off social norms and constructing a society on secular foundations were profoundly offensive to many in the Muslim world, where religion is still so central to identity. To attack Islam was not to attack the tool of patriarchal oppressors; it was also to attack the identity of the oppressed.

Third-wave feminism has changed this approach radically, but the damage has already been done. Feminism has already become the f-word. Only a few Muslims would dare use it.

Unsurprisingly then that any Western attempt at gender reform in the Muslim world meets tremendous suspicion. Feminism – often appallingly stereotyped and misunderstood – is imagined as the West’s Trojan horse, intended for Islam’s destruction. Its mere mention creates a kind of invisible paranoia that captures the resonance of colonialism and imperialism in the collective Muslim mind.

Accordingly, the more Western feminism speaks didactically about Muslim gender reform, the more damage it does to the plight of Muslim women. It becomes easier to dismiss any women’s right discourse as the Western corruption of Muslim societies. I have seen this time and again, where valid objections are derided on this basis and avoided, rather than engaged.

So what is one concerned by gender injustice in the Muslim world do?

The solution must be indigenous to the societies seeking change. Perhaps in cognisance of this, Western feminists often support local groups agitating for change. The problem is that the Western activists tend to be enamoured of their own reflection, and often support groups that are hostile to Islam as they are. Such attitudes will always be viewed as foreign and become irrelevant.

The only effective path to reform will locate itself within the dominant cultural paradigm. In the case of the Muslim world, this means collectives that fight for gender justice from within the Islamic framework will stand the best chance of success. Such movements certainly exist throughout the Muslim world, and are sometimes maligned, but because they speak the language of Islam, they cannot be ignored.

We should not ignore them either.

Originally appeared in The Age Newspaper March 9, 2005. Waleed Aly is an executive member of the Islamic Council of Victoria.