Feminism: history, theory, and contemporary applications

Mythology- Islam

Women, Islam, and Human Rights

The area of Human Rights is critical for the progress of Muslim women in society for the same reason that the area of Human Rights is critical in every other arena; what defines a culture, especially to outsiders, is not how that culture treats its most respected members, but how it treats its least respected members. People have used religion and culture as a means to exert power and control over disadvantaged groups since the beginning of time. Even when the basics of the religious or cultural message support equality or area facially neutral, as soon as people with biased tendencies seize upon aspects of a culture to support their bias, and are not opposed by others in the culture, that bias becomes synonymous with the culture. There are two results: (1) the disenfranchised group becomes more marginalized within the culture, and (2) the culture becomes more marginalized among other cultures. The poor treatment of women in much of Muslim society has led to this result. Under extremist regimes, like the Taliban, women lost more and more of their basic freedoms and incredibly marginalized. Furthermore, as a result of learning about the treatment of women under extremist groups like the Taliban, the majority of the non-Muslim world began to associate Islam with the subjugation of women.

First, it is important to note that, in its purest form, Islam may be the least-sexist of the world's major religions. Even the hijab, which is seen by many Westerners as a sign of anti-female oppression, was not initially intended as a means of suppressing women. On the contrary, the hijab was seen as a temporary solution to an increase in anti-female violence, meant as a stop-gap measure until men gained the appropriate self-control. However, cultural norms interfered. Like all cultures, Muslim culture sprang from a background of sexism. Purist ideals that were meant to elevate women to the status of equal were twisted and perverted to be used as a means of suppressing women. In fact, women faced a serious problem; because the subjugation of women was so intertwined into daily practice and absorbed into the religion, to question the role of women in Muslim society was oftentimes seen as questioning the existence of Allah. Therefore, many women suffered silently, internalizing Islam's negative teachings about women. Even more alarming is that, because women were not encouraged to question cultural norms, many failed to speak up in time to prevent dramatic losses of civil rights. For example, prior to the time of the Taliban, women in Afghanistan had almost unprecedented freedom in the Muslim world. However, after the Taliban took over, women lost almost all of their basic human rights, and were not permitted to attain educations or work. (Karon, 2001).

However, such an extreme loss of rights has been somewhat inspirational for women under Islam: it taught women about the consequences of silent acceptance and the slippery slope of human rights abuses. In addition, the resulting wars have led to an increased exposure to Western ideals. Therefore, more and more Muslim women have begun advocating for human rights. In addition:

Based on their life experience, most Muslim women who become human rights advocates or activists, feel strongly that virtually all Muslim societies discriminate against women from cradle to grave. This leads many of them to become deeply alienated from Muslim culture in a number of ways. This bitter sense of alienation oftentimes leads to anger and bitterness toward the patriarchal systems of thought and social structures which dominate most Muslim societies. (Hassan, 2007).

The problem with this is that these women cannot necessarily effect a change within Muslim society because, when they recognize the civil rights abuses under many current Islamist regimes, they remove themselves from Muslim society, which makes them unable to affect other Muslims.

Therefore, it becomes clear that women who are practicing Muslims need to become interested in civil rights. Some people claim that the world's successful civil rights movements have occurred in the Western world and have been secularly driven, but such statements reveal a grossly ignorant view of these movements. For example, in the United States, the abolitionist movement and the 1960s Civil Rights Movement were very based in religion. Many of the leaders of both movements were members of the clergy, and churches were used as a means to spread the messages of equality. Likewise, Gandhi's movement for India's freedom from Britain was a largely religious movement, which relied upon religious principles and talked about the equality of man. Therefore, it is clear that human rights are not an exclusively Western concern and that they are not issues that should be approached in a purely secular manner. Therefore, women in Islam need to work for human rights, before there are no Muslim women left who believe in human rights.