Women and Islam the Western

Women and Islam

The Western perception of Islam is of a religion that is especially restrictive of women. Christianity has had its own more restrictive policies toward women in the past, but the West believes it has evolved to a more equitable view of the rights of women and of equality of the sexes. Islam is seen as living in the past and as failing to modernize, while Islam sees its restrictions as socially constructive and as elevating women rather than keeping them down. Such differences in perception are based on historical differences and also on the way the West has changed and now expects others to do the same without necessarily making the case in a way that appeals to Islam. There are some distinctions to be made among different Islamic countries, however, though too often the West sees Islam as a monolithic and more unified social order than is actually the case. Many of the Arab states and the states turning to fundamentalism manifest the harshest restrictions on women, while some of the more liberal Islamic states show more Western influences. The place of women in Islamic society derives largely from the historical structure of Islam and from the degree to which outside influences have been allowed.

Gender Roles

Masculinity-femininity is a dimension that is reflected in social attitudes toward men and women and in expectations placed on each. Islamic society is more traditional than American society today, though full equality of the sexes has not been achieved in America as yet, either. Once again, the roles of men and women in Islamic society are determined by Islamic law and the Quran. There has been a religious element in shaping the way men and women are viewed in American society as well, but as America has become more secularized, that influence has lessened. Definitions of masculine and feminine have come under increasing question and challenge, and the roles of men and women in business and society have become more equal and less related to gender. In Islam, Muhammad is meant to represent perfection, and the faithful are meant to follow his teachings and to be as much like him as possible. Those who achieve the perfection of Muhammad are highly revered as saints or holy men, and people give any living holy man great respect:

Their blessing and touch has almost magical power. They are appealed to in time of war as arbitrators. They are akin to the members of religious orders which have convents here teaching is given and hospitality is available. (Parrinder 18-19)

The primary beliefs of Islam are found in the pillars of faith, and these are supported by the followers by conforming to the laws of God as found in the Quran. Prayer is an essential duty, to be undertaken with a specific method, time, and place. Almsgiving is a duty of all Muslims as a mark of piety. Fasting is called for as well, demanded at different times of the year. Pilgrimage to Mecca is a duty to be undertaken at least once in a lifetime, and more for the truly pious. The fifth pillar of faith is the profession of faith in Allah and his Apostle, Muhammad (Parrinder 15-16).

The Quran embodies the chief doctrine of Islam. This work is the highest authority on doctrine, ethics, and customs. The Five Pillars of Faith make up the practical duties of the Muslim, and a secondary set of tenets involves the doctrines to be believed, of which there are also five -- that of God, that of the angels as servants of God, that of the books (the Quran, the Pentateuch, the Zabur, and the Injil), that of the prophets, and that of the resurrection on the last day (Soper 215-216).

The centrality of such tenets suggests that the individual is to be subsumed by the social order, that the society is more collective than individualistic. Consider Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia has a long cultural history based on tribalism, and tribal membership remains a pervasive aspect of social relations today. In the Eastern Province, which has a large Shia population, there is thus a different social identity that plays a role comparable to tribal membership. Tribes have both sedentary and nomadic branches, city dwellers and villagers, agriculturalists and merchants, and people engaged in every conceivable modern occupation. Tribal affiliation influences hiring and employment even among foreign companies, which have become acclimated to the system (Nyrop 77). Tribalism also suggests a society more collective than individualistic.

The role of women in Islam has been a subject of debate in both the Islamic world and the West, though the West may have a distorted view of the elements of this debate. Leila Ahmed writes of the subject as a problem with historical roots and shows how the role of women has developed through time, over the history of the rise of Islam. The position of women in the Arab world at the time of Muhammad is discussed, though Muhammad made changes in the way women were to relate to society and were to be treated by society. The autonomy and monogamy that had existed before was exchanged for male guardians and the male prerogative of polygamy thereafter, and these elements can be seen as embodying a general view of women that has been reproduced in laws and religious practices ever since. In essence, Ahmed shows that the position of women in society is closely bound with the prevailing marriage practices in that society. The practices existing before Muhammad and those existing after were related, but in both cases these practices involved attitudes toward the role and responsibilities of women. The essential attitudes set forth in marriage practices in Islam are carried over into every aspect of women's lives.

Eickelman considers the same issue and states that the place of women in Islam ic society has a dual nature. It is first of all based on Islamic practices and Islamic teachings which themselves may be ambiguous (as Ahmed has noted). In addition, the role and status of women is influenced by the specific country in which that status is measured. Eickelman finds one set of practices in fully Islamic countries and another set in what he calls revolutionary situations, such as with the large Muslim population in the Soviet Union, where women have enjoyed equal legal rights and educational opportunities since the 1920s. Of course, the Soviet Union as a whole was not an Islamic nation, and Islamic nations are more closely bound to Islamic law.

The writings of both Ahmed and Eickelman only hint at the status of women. Admittedly, the subject is complicated by the fact that there is no single Islamic mode to identify how women are to be treated. That is, the Quran itself is ambiguous on the issue, as Ahmed notes, and Islam has developed in somewhat different ways according to the different societies in which it is found. There are clear differences between Islam in Arab countries and Muslim countries and Islam in non-Muslim countries, as might be expected, but there is also great variety between different Muslim countries in terms of this dimension and many others.

One measure of the social order refers to the degree of uncertainty one will accept. Islamic societies would be classed as low uncertainty social orders. In such a society, time is viewed as something that passes but that is not hurried. People in such a society take each day as it comes and live more in terms of present actions. People find security in their history, which ties in with a society such as Islam that lives by the rules of the Quran and celebrates the past of Muhammad above all else. For this reason, these societies also tend to be more conservative and to cling much longer to traditional cultural practices.

Islamic Social Order

Esposito notes the fact that modern Islamic reform is often seen as simply a reaction and response to Western imperialism, but he notes that in truth the roots of modern reform lie in both Islamic and Western sources and that an understanding of these issues requires a study of premodern Islamic revivalism and Islamic modernism. Islamic modernism is built on the structure of the premodern revivalist legacy, which by the middle of the nineteenth century showed great concern for the weakness of the Islamic community being compounded by the threat of subjugation to the Christian West.

For many Muslims, European colonial domination was the end of a long period of decline, and the political and religiocultural threat of Western imperialism brought forth several different types of response, from jihad movements to modernist reform movements. Esposito notes that "Islamic modernism represented an Islamically rooted response to unite and strengthen a demoralized community. Its method was a reinterpretation of Islam that not only drew on Islamic tradition but also attempted to assimilate the best of modern science, thought, and institutions" (Esposito 33).

Islamic revivalist movements of the time sought to transform both the religious and the political and social life of the community, with the goal of a moral reconstruction of Muslim society to restore its Islamic center (Esposito 35). Esposito finds that the premodernist revival movements of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries contributed to the pattern of Islamic politics that developed and left a legacy for the twentieth century. These movements were motivated primarily in response to internal decay rather than external, colonial threat (Esposito 40-41).

At the same time, many areas of the Islamic world experienced the impact of the economic and military challenge of an emerging and modernizing West beginning in the eighteenth century. Declining Muslim fortunes also reversed the relationship of the Islamic world to the West, from that of an expanding offensive movement to a defensive posture. Muslim responses to these changes ranged from rejection to adaptation, from Islamic withdrawal to acculturation and reform. Some responded by secular reform, and by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Islamic modernist movements had also developed in an attempt to bridge the gap between tradition and modernity by offering an Islamic rationale for modern political, legal, and social change (Esposito 42-43).

Esposito finds that the modern Muslim response to modernization saw the emergence of Islamic modernist movements in the Arab world and the Indian subcontinent. Islamic conservatives wanted to revive Islam, but so did Islamic modernists. They merely had a different approach, seeing the need to revive the Muslim community through a process of reinterpretation or reformulation of their Islamic heritage in light of the contemporary world. Islamic modernists were not trying merely to restore the past but instead wanted to show the compatibility of Islam with modern ideas and institutions.

The man who was a major catalyst for reform was Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, who in the nineteenth century was the Father of Muslim nationalism. He called on Muslims to unite in order to regenerate their community and culture. He appealed to Islamic faith and pride and reminded the people of Islam's divinely revealed mandate and mission and stressed its past Islamic historical and cultural accomplishments, such as the conquests and expansion of Islam, the establishment of the Islamic Empire, and the flourishing of Islamic civilization. He did not advocate the rejectionist position of many conservative religious leaders, but his call for a return to Islam and for Muslim unity made him acceptable to them. He appealed to the younger generation with his call for acceptance of modern science and for Muslim unity, solidarity, and political action, and he made his appeal at a critical juncture in Muslim history. He identified the major concerns and issues facing the Islamic world, the causes of its growing weakness, and the major challenge to its survival. He saw the internal weakness of the Muslim community along with the external political and cultural threat of European imperialism posed a serious threat to the Islamic community. He saw the weakness of Muslim society as deriving from its stagnation and tendency to follow blindly and cling to past authority. Afghani emphasizes the dynamic, creative, and progressive character of Islam and the fact that Islam was more than a religion in the Western sense -- it was a religion and a civilization. It was the reason for being for the Muslim people both as individuals and as a socio-political community. He also saw Muslim renewal as having the political purpose of liberation from colonial rule. He said that Islam provided the common, more fundamental bond and basis for Muslim solidarity (Esposito 48-49).

Another important leader was Muhammad Abduh, a religious scholar who rejected the blind following of tradition and who called for a new interpretation of Islam that would demonstrate its relevance to contemporary thought and life in the modern world. He saw no inherent conflict between religion and scientific reason: "The renewal of Islam and Muslim society should be based not simply on Western secular modernization. Abduh sought to provide the rationale for the selective integration of Islam with modern ideas and institutions" (Esposito 50).

Esposito concludes that Islamic modernists were pioneers who did not simply seek to return to the straight path of Islam but to chart its future direction: "They were pioneers who planted the seeds for the acceptance of change, a struggle that has continued" (Esposito 56). The movement toward fundamentalism and a return to the past has also continued. Binder says that Islamic fundamentalism is a relatively modern movement with doctrinal roots in the earliest period of Muslim history: "It shares with many historical Islamic movements the recurring impulse to renew the faith, to return to pristine origins, to shed the accretions of time and clime, and to recapture the vigor and simplicity of prophetic times" (Binder 170). Binder points out that modern fundamentalism owes much to Islamic modernism as well as to earlier fundamentalist and religious impulses.

Binder finds that in this century, the younger generation was offered a choice between Western cultural ideals and an even more rigid reaffirmation of a tarnished tradition. The appeal of modernism in the form of a synthesis of reason and tradition, science and faith, was strong, particularly in Egypt and pre-independence India and Pakistan. The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna as a reaction to the growing influence of Western cultural and religious influence, and it and the Jama'at-i-Islami in Pakistan constituted the two most successful and influential fundamentalist movements of modern times. The latter organization was founded by Abu'l-'Ala al-Mawdudi who was highly influential in Egypt. Al-Banna was eloquent and had organizational skill, but his influence was not as great in his writings when compared to the charismatic appeal of his personality (Binder 171).

Binder describes the different levels of fundamentalist belief, from moderate to extreme. While many in the West may believe otherwise from their too-distant observation point, fanatic fundamentalism is not a necessary consequence of Islam, and Islam, says Binder, is only the ground upon which some special theory has been constructed, one that touches on the personality characteristics of a small group of believers: "The expansion of this small group of true believers into a movement of political significance depends upon many and varied factors, possibly including some kind of exemplary individual action demonstrating a devotion that goes beyond life itself" (Binder 173). Acts of terror and martyrdom are therefore not merely aimed at terrorizing or demoralizing the enemy but also at proving that the impossible is possible.

Binder notes that the more moderate wing of the Muslim Brotherhood was highly successful though it failed to win certification as a legalized political party in the elections of 1984 and won seats in 1987 still without achieving legalization: "The more moderate wing has gained wide respect among the Egyptian middle classes, as it has emphasized its preference for peaceful political methods, even if it has not ruled out all use of violence" (Binder 173).

Mawdudi and Qutb (a native writer of Arabic) share the belief that Islam is engaged in a cultural war with the West, and they feel that the ultimate goal of modernization under whatever designation is to complete the material colonization of the Muslim world by means of a moral and cultural takeover. They thus see the reassertion of Islam as a rejection of Western dominance, of Western culture, and of the identity which the West is purportedly trying to impose on the Muslim world: "Hence the improvement of the material condition of Muslims is not conditioned on their becoming more westernized but rather less westernized, and there are important implications in this doctrine for the political relationships between technocrats, bureaucrats, and professionals (including the military) and cultural elites" (Binder 175).

The modernist and the fundamentalist movements both derive from the same two forces, the one internal and the other external. The internal includes both the strength of past traditions and the growing weaknesses of Islamic society, and the external involves Western influence and Western imperialism, which are not always the same thing. The responses are different, of course with modernism accepting certain ideas and accommodating them and fundamentalism rejecting Western concepts to the point of outright war against cultural imperialism in some instances. The form taken by each is different in different parts of the Muslim world, and each has its strong proponents and its strong enemies.

Women in Islam

The main source for laws concerning women is the Quran, believed by the faithful to have been revealed and dictated by Allah to Muhammad.

Islam changd the status of women, as Anwar Hekmat notes when he writes,

The women of the pre-Islamic era were much freer in their movements than they were subsequently allowed to be. They showed hospitality to their husband's friends. They were regarded as equals to their men and their companionship was sought by men of all ranks. Women attended public gatherings, took part in the armed campaigns against the enemy, nursed the wounded, encouraged the warriors by reciting verses of songs and lyric poems, and held high offices. (Hekmat 94)

The Quran changed this and made women secondary in most terms. This status for women lasted until around the time of World War II, at which time many Muslim nations sought modernization and development on the Western model:

Implicit were presuppositions that modernization would entail increased secularization -- separation of religion from public life. Western models of development (political, economic, educational, and social) were adopted or adapted -- nationalism and/or socialism, parliaments, legal codes, and modern educational curricula. Haddad and Esposito ix) these changes took place in a context of emerging forms of nationalism, but changing gender relations was more difficult than changing political elements. As the authors note,

In no area was the force of tradition felt more strongly and the clash of civilizations more apparent than that of the status and roles of women. Secular modernists were seen by religious leaders and more Islamically oriented Muslims as Westernizers whose reforms threatened religion and culture, family and society. The modernization paradigm, with its purported Western values of freedom, equality, and self-determination, seemed to be an indictment of Islam that threatened to undermine the Muslim community and Muslim family. It affected everything from dress, education, and employment to personal status or family laws (marriage, divorce, and inheritance). (Haddad and Esposito ix) at the time, many women replaced the veil with Western clothing, and more and more women participated in public life for the first time in centuries. Educational and employment reforms also meant more opportunities for women, but the new roles for women were seen as a threat by some. Changes in the family have taken place largely with pressure from below and not from above. More recently, though, moves toward modernization have been under attack because of a reassertion of Islamic traditions:

Muslim rulers, states, and elites have been threatened by those who speak of the failures of the state and cast their grievances and solutions in an Islamic idiom, often summarized in the slogan, "Islam is the solution." Integral and perhaps most visible has been the gender issue. For if, for some, Islamic revivalism or "fundamentalism" is symbolized by mullahs with kalashnikovs, it has equally been symbolized by the veil and calls for reimplementation of Islamic law. (Haddad and Esposito x) look at Iran shows how abruptly many of the old ways could be reestablished. The overthrow of the Shah was also an overthrow of the sort of Westernization he had represented, and as a counter to that sort of modernization, the religious rulers imposed shariah law and were especially insistent about putting women back into traditional roels and traditional dress. Interestingly, though, such efforts have not been as thorugh as the most pious might want, as recent observations show:

Almost two decades after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, against the deepest fears of many of the secular feminist activists of that revolution, not only have women not disappeared from public life, but they have an unmistakably active presence in practically every field of artistic creation, professional achievement, educational and industrial institutions, and even in sports activities. It would be tempting for a secular feminist to claim that Iranian women have achieved all this despite the Islamic Republic, against the Islamic Republic, and even against Islam as the dominant discourse in the country. (Haddad and Esposito 59)