Muslim Women Are Fighting To Redefine Islam as a Religion of Equality

[cbayer]

http://time.com/3751243/muslim-women-redefine-islam-feminism/

Carla Power March 20, 2015



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Woman reading the Koran.

Carla Power is the author of If The Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran.

Tired of being told their religion dictates subservience to men, Muslim women are reclaiming Islam for themselves

Anyone learning about Islam from the headlines alone might think it was a faith powered by violence, inflexible laws, and sexism. In Nigeria, the extremists of Boko Haram kidnap schoolgirls to use as sex slaves and suicide bombers. A manifesto distributed by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) allows girls to marry at age nine and states that women should work outside the house only in “exceptional circumstances.” It’s not only extremist movements that treat women as second-class citizens, but also Western allies in the fight against them. Whether it’s Saudi Arabia, where women are banned from driving, or Egypt, where a husband can divorce his spouse without grounds or going to court, options denied to his wife, most Muslim countries run on the premise that men have a God-given authority over women.

But Muslim women are fighting back. While despotic governments and extremists battle for power, Islamic scholars, community activists, and ordinary Muslims are waging a peaceful jihad on male authority, demanding what they say are God- given rights to gender equality and justice.

From Cambridge to Cairo to Jakarta, women are going back to Islam’s classical texts and questioning the way men have read them for centuries. In the Middle East, activists are contesting outdated family laws based on Islamic jurisprudence, which give men the power in marriages, divorces, and custody issues. In Europe and the United States, women are chipping away at the customs that have had a chilling effect on women praying in mosques or holding leadership positions. This winter, the first women-only mosque opened in Los Angeles.

These efforts are localized and diverse. But all are part of the multi-faceted struggle in today’s Islamic world between fundamentalist rigidity and a pluralist, inclusive faith. “We represent hope, hope for the future, and for what it means to be Muslim today,” said Zainah Anwar, director of the global Muslim women’s organization Musawah—Arabic for ‘equality’—at a recent conference in London. “Do we want to choose ISIS? Or do we want to choose musawah?”

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[MellowDem]

1. Islam is not a religion of equality...

it is an explicitly bigoted, hateful dogma that requires the worship of a genocidal God. To pretend anyone could make that about equality is offensive. To attempt it is offensive.

Islam is explicitly bigoted in its texts. It would take a lot of intellectual dishonesty to ignore the horrid shit it prescribes. That bigotry present in its texts will be a factor as long as large numbers of people choose to follow Islam. You can't fix dogma by its nature.

There needs to be other options available, but in much of the Islamic world, apostasy can mean death. There needs to be the option to choose not so bigoted religions, or no religion at all.

Almost all women are indoctrinated into the faith, as religions do. If they hadn't been, I doubt few would seriously believe Islam is about equality.