Not a hijab one: How Islam gets along with feminism
Islamic feminist, PhD, The American Amina Wadud has been conducting religious ceremonies in the mosque as an imam since 2005, and in 1994 she did it in Cape Town (South Africa), explaining: "My understanding of equality proceeds from the idea of the fundamental Islamic principle of unity - tawhid. In this paradigm God has no gender therefore, both sexes have a symmetrical relationship with him. "
Talking about the rights of Muslim women often boils down to wearing the hijab. It seems that this is the agenda of the Muslim movement for women's rights. In fact, everything is much more complicated, and Islamic feminism is older and larger than we used to think.
Reclaim quran
Supporters of Islamic feminism (it is customary to count it from the 90s, when the term first appeared in the Iranian magazine Zanan) are sure that only sacred texts can be the source for Muslim activists. According to them, the prophet Mohammed defended women, and the Koran almost a thousand three hundred years ago gave them all the rights, which suffragists began to talk about only at the end of the 19th century. Moreover, Mohammed declared an equal right to marriage, divorce, education, and other social and political activities.
Activists associate problems with women's rights in Islam with the era of the male interpretation of the Koran. In the Middle East, they say, even before Islam, ideas of seclusion, spiritual purity and modesty were popular - for this reason, for example, women were forced to dress there closed. With the advent of Islam, which, among other things, preached modesty, the requirement to cover the face of foreign men was justified by religion, although there are no such strict rules about clothes in Islam.
The right to discuss, reflect and assert norms belonged to one group that did not agree to change. Having isolated a large number of people from knowledge, she was able to lay down important traditions for herself in Islamic norms and ignore what she disagreed with. One example is domestic violence. In Islam, it is forbidden, but now justified by many Muslims - a legacy of the tradition of "male power" and "male superiority," Muslim feminists say when violence from a husband, father, or brother is justified, as a woman is allegedly not independent and needs supervision.
The theorists of Islamic feminism (among them, Amina Wadud) note that the translators of the Koran had no choice: interpretations are related to the general historical context, which was then patriarchal. "So it is important for Islamic feminists to be striving to regain the right to discuss and interpret the Holy Scripture," says historian Maxim Ilyin.
Hadith for women
"If we are all equal in the eyes of God, for what reason are we not equal in the eyes of men?" - Ala Murabit asked the audience during her speech at the TED conference. At the age of fifteen, Ala moved from Canada to her native Libya. In Canada, she was an active, educated and independent young woman, and all this, as she thought, was consistent with the norms of Islam. In Libya, the same Islam justified the complete change of its status - from an independent intelligent woman to a man who could not think without the control of men. She saw how cultural norms were superimposed on religion, and the notions “haram” (forbidden by religion) and “aib” (uncultured, that is, disapproving in a particular society) were interchanged, as if they were one and the same.
When Ala studied at the fifth year of medical school, the Libyan revolution happened. According to her, the first time they listened to the women and put them at the negotiating table. But when it was all over, strong women returned to domestic duties and received nothing from the revolution. In support of his words, politicians who sent women home, quoted the Holy Scriptures, reminds the activist.
In response, Ala founded The Voice of Libyan Women, an organization that deals with social programs for women. In 2012-2013, its volunteers conducted an educational campaign in Libya: they went to their homes, schools, universities, mosques, and talked to fifty thousand people. When domestic violence was discussed, Ala Murabi used hadith (the legend about the words and actions of the Prophet Mohammed. - Approx. Ed.): "The best of you are those who best treat their families"; "Do not allow one of you to oppress the other." According to her, for the first time Friday's services conducted by local imams were entirely devoted to the protection of women's rights.
Such projects are arranged by women around the world. An activist, Hadi, from a small town in Africa who has survived genital mutilation, now attracts imams to fight this practice and says that crippling circumcision did not come from Islam - as evidence using Hadith.
The organization Musawah, created by activists from Egypt, the Gambia, Turkey and Pakistan, explains to local women that the rules can be interpreted differently, and in some cases the current interpretation is simply not confirmed in the sacred books. For example, Musawah activists talked to the wives of HIV-positive men who are aware of their status, but refuse to protect themselves. Women believed that they had no right to refuse sex and to protect themselves, with the help of female condoms, since this allegedly contradicts the norms of Islam.
To convince women that avoiding a dangerous marriage is not a violation of God's will, Mahathir, one of the activists and daughter of the former Prime Minister of Malaysia, found a justification for refusing such a marriage and sex in the Koran. Good reasons for a divorce in a Muslim book are dissatisfaction with a joint life, the appearance of a spouse or hostility towards him. And you can refuse sex because of illness, menstruation, postpartum hemorrhage and fasting.
Veil and salvation
Western feminists are often accused of perceiving religious women as an object of salvation — they believe that a believer is a priori dominated by patriarchal norms, cannot voluntarily decide on his religiousness and consciously abide by practices.
The controversy between Western and Islamic feminists is still mostly about appearance. The first are outraged by the “veil” (the literal translation of the word “hijab”) - this is the name given to Muslim religious clothes, which cover their bodies from the rest of the world. But Danis Garayev, a historian and researcher at the University of Amsterdam, cites his research data: in Kazan from 1990–2000, many girls raised in secular urban families, who studied in secular schools and universities, make a choice in favor of Muslim clothing and lifestyle that meets the requirements of Islam. At the same time, the fact that girls in a secular environment can voluntarily choose a Muslim dress code seems to many as defiant, reminds the researcher.
Sociologist and coordinator of the program "Gender Democracy" Fund them. Heinrich Böll Irina Kosterina notes that there are cases when women "consciously decide to wear the hijab". “There are my acquaintances, colleagues, girlfriends who wear the hijab of their own accord and say that this is very important for them, that is, they do not want to impose anything on anyone, to propagate,” she said. “[For them] is to assert their identity its principles and values. "
The question is put bluntly: can the decision to wear religious clothes in principle be conscious or do women not notice how much stereotypes influence them? Danis Garayev is confident that talking about someone's lack of awareness is discriminatory in itself: "The number of strategies between which people choose [in matters of physicality] is limited. At the same time, situations where a person is forced to wear something, be it a scarf or short skirts are a completely different matter; Islamic feminists and Westerners are against it. "
In fact, a situation arose in which a Muslim woman, in order to become a feminist, is required to give up her faith, supporters of Islamic feminism say. After the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, many feminists fled the country, because they believed that the religion imposed on Iran, oppresses women, that is, with feminism is incompatible. “Feminism is a secular concept, and Islam does not accept secular interpretations,” historian Maxim Ilyin explains the position of Western feminism. According to him, this makes a Muslim woman, who calls herself a feminist in the Western sense, practically a traitor to her religion, apostate.
"I cover the hair, not the brain"
Nuria Gibadullina, editor of Islamosphere, a specialized Muslim news publication on culture, said that the struggle for the right to be Muslim within the secular community is what unites women in Russia. According to her passport, she is Svetlana, she took the name Nuria after adopting Islam.
Nuria says that it was difficult for her to wear a handkerchief for the first time: "It seemed to me that everyone was looking at me strangely. And I was afraid that I would have to explain the discrepancy between the name and the appearance." The fact is that she was Muslim, she and her husband already had nikah (Muslim marriage), but according to the documents she remained Svetlana for a while: "I knew that such consequences awaited me, so I pulled with a handkerchief, I was afraid. In the end, I decided on my birthday, on my nineteenth birthday. "
Odnogruppnitsy, who also wore a headscarf, congratulated her on this decision, but in general, everything did not go as smoothly as we would like. For example, the commandant at the hostel said she did not like those who change religion, and a university teacher who knew Nuria perfectly, on her first day in a headscarf, said that they deal with Tatar journalism in a different audience and she should leave.
Already in 2017, one of the Kazan basins refused to accept girls in burkini, and the deputy director explained it this way: "We do not have doctors who would examine the skin of visitors, and we don’t need help to visit." Nuria says Muslim women resent such an attitude. According to her, the burkini meet all the hygienic requirements of the pool, and "where to go and what is my business."
But these are trifles, the journalist says, compared to what Muslim women are going through in the capital. Nuria lived in Moscow for a year and says that it is very difficult for Muslim women to work in secular schools, kindergartens and other similar institutions, as parents openly say that they will not give their children there. It happens that a Muslim woman in a headscarf is restricted to move around the city, the opportunity to work and send children to secular institutions - for example, if there is no separate meal, they are not allowed to give the child halal food with them or forbid to go to school in "religious clothes". The request to take off the handkerchief so that they would let you in somewhere, Nuria perceives as a request to stay on the street in his underpants. In social networks, she has a quote: "I cover my hair, not the brain."
Riot against tradition
In modern Russia, practices of mutilating operations, early marriages, domestic violence and honor killings that are justified by religious traditions flourish. Nevertheless, some researchers believe that Islam in the North Caucasus is becoming a more modernization scenario - with its help, the new generation is rebelling against tradition. Irina Kosterina says that the Islamic identity in modern Caucasian youth is stronger than the national one: the elders "hold on to the rituals more: how far away from a woman to sit, how to play a wedding, blood feud again. And the younger generation does not always agree with this, especially if Islamic identity takes over. "
Individual activists in the North Caucasus regularly call on religious leaders to explain to the population that violence is not about Islam. Women's Muslim organizations in the region often do not identify themselves as feminist, but try to solve issues of this particular agenda - for example, to deal with the problem of domestic violence. And sometimes they say directly that their mission is “to form a more perfect society in which men and women have equal rights and opportunities.” Irina Kosterina says that modern North Caucasian Muslim women are characterized by pride (local norms and traditions protect them from the attention of men on the street, harassment and attitudes) and they are dissatisfied with what is happening in their families. By resisting the unsuccessful parent model, young Muslim women can later marry or give up marriage completely, if they understand that violence and control cannot be avoided. And this is a form of protest available to them to existing norms.
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