Feminist of the Day: Fatima Mernissi?
 | "If women's rights are a problem for some modern Muslim men, it is neither because of the Koran nor the Prophet, nor the Islamic tradition, but simply because those rights conflict with the interests of a male elite." |
There's some awkwardness here. I'm a white feminist blogger who has never even visited a country where the majority of the population is muslim. A lot of what I know about Islam comes from someone I never met. After September 11, Women's rights in Afghanistan became a propaganda tool in the most disgusting and hypocritical way. New Zealad sent troops to that war. I don't write this in a vacuum.
But that's no excuse not to write at all. Men have long used religions as a tool to exert their control over women, and women fighting back isn't that new either. As feminists it is important that we actively support women like Fatima Mernissi, and her observation is so important I'm going to quote her twice: "If women's rights are a problem for some modern Muslim men, it is neither because of the Koran nor the Prophet, nor the Islamic tradition, but simply because those rights conflict with the interests of a male elite."
Now my position is a little bit stronger than that. I'm enough of a materialist girl to believe that a religion will only become institutionalised, if it serves the needs of power structures, and men's power over women is a pretty important power structure. Despite this I also believe that religion can become a site of resistance, and those who hold power in a religion will serve those power structures over whatever their religion professes to believe (see any of the Christian right and most of the New Testament). But ultimately she's right, the problem for women in Saudi Arabia, isn't actually the Koran, it's men's power over women.
I live in a Moslem country (Kuwait). I don't have any contact with Kuwaiti women, unsurprisingly, but because I post a lot of photos of Kuwait on Flickr, I've been invited into various Gulf region discussion groups where you do get to talk about things. For me it's depressing just how well the religious idea of female purity and male animal lust familiar to anyone who's talked to Christians meshes with the tribal thing of women being property. None of the women I've encountered this way would accept the idea that they're somebody's property, they're often professionals of some description (Flickr being a hobby for the well-off). But the business of maintaining their purity and reputation pretty much rules out any life independent of their family, and most of them seem to consider this a matter of doing what God wants for them, rather than suppression of their freedom. I can't see this changing until secularism gets more of a hold in the Middle East - assuming it can.
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