Inside the Gender Jihad: Women's Reform in Islam (13 page)

This persistence of those who ignore this tremendous gap between the divine order and human juridical efforts to implement what they perceive as that order provides deceptive authority to conservative thinking. To object to rulings and selective implementation of
fiqh
by equating it with a divine

What’s in a Name?
49

mandate of
shari‘ah
,
especially when generally translated as Islamic law, is just another method of abusing the semantics of discourse in shaping its power and validity.

The next question, relative to the gender
jihad
, is whether or not Islamic law can be changed. “In theory, whatever means were used in the past to protect human dignity can undergo change, provided the new measures give

effect to justice and fairness, since the essence of
shari‘ah
is justice.”
77

In his groundbreaking work on reform,
78
An-Na’im made an important comprehensive effort in recent times to recommend the significance of this divine human nuance. It does seem, however, that his tendency to presume that readers would keep their relationship with
fiqh
, discussed as “historical
shari‘ah
,” made it more difficult to follow the detailed arguments he intended in his reform theory. I was grateful after reviewing his work, because my lack of training in the law was then opened up to envision the importance of including women’s perspectives in Qur’anic interpretation for more than mere theoretical reflections. As the Qur’an is one ultimate source of direct verbal access to Allah’s self-disclosure and of the order of cosmic justice, then clarity about its multiple meanings, as developed over time and human mental and moral capacity, points to the explicit need for including women’s experiences as essential to the work of human contribution and compulsory to the construction of how meanings affect ethical codes.

Occasions of inconsistent scholarly use of the word
shari‘ah
,
without distinguishing it as a human science, developed under certain times and in specific contexts, adds to the complexity of unraveling the correlation and distinction between the law of God, as the cosmic order of harmony, and the interpretations of God’s law and the cosmic order as implemented through codes and rules of law for human society. Women and men seeking changes in human codes for implementing social justice, and re-evaluating the methods used to construct those codes and the expansion of ethical understanding, must especially acknowledge the traditional gender incon- sistencies underlying the presumptions about what it means to be human. Many Muslim women continue to be passive recipients of social change. Meanwhile they live in countries forced by the changing global economy to enter the wage-earning public sector still defined along the lines of the privileged male. Women do not have equivalent participation in the policy- making of governance in the new nation-state, starting with the need for coherent, complete, and consistent analysis of how gender should figure prominently in the construction and standardization of new policies.

50 inside the gender jihad

The major question in modern discourse is: can the law be changed? Rauf also points here to al-Jawziyyah, since “legal interpretation should change in times, places, conditions, and customs,” to emphasize his opinion that “the majority of the jurist have accepted the principle of change in legal rules.” He still leaves the meaning of gender as a category of legal rules underestimated or ambiguous. He does point out, however, that some accepted the possibility of “change in the explanation or in the interpre- tation of the texts, because of a change in their causes or in the customs upon which they are based, or in answer to necessity and public interest.” Most telling, as historical precedent, Rauf quotes ‘Umar, the second ruler of

the Muslim empire after the death of the Prophet, as having said the “aim was always public interest what was evidently
sensible
”
79
(his emphasis).

More than platitudes are needed to completely embrace women’s compli- cated lives and near-exclusive responsibility for the moral upbringing of children and for sustaining peace and harmony in the domestic sphere. It requires extensive rethinking and reforms in public policy.

Rauf is adamant that to achieve such reforms, the nature and category of the problem must not always be identified in a purely jurisprudential domain. Rather, the circumstantial domains of economics, politics, medicine, and technology have to be taken into full consideration. Here I would add gender as a category of analysis. He suggests, quite simply, that one should not ask the
imam
(religious leader in the mosque) a question

requiring medical expertise. Correspondence between the

jurist

in the

juridical domain and experts in the other domains is essential. He insists: “contemporary opinions and technologies, are forcing us to think of the morality of the issues that were not posed to us before.”
80

As these bear on gender rights, the necessity for reform is all the more apparent. For one thing, according to Mir-Hosseini, “gender rights are neither fixed, given, nor absolute. They are on the contrary, cultural and legal constructs which are asserted, negotiated and subject to change.” Although she confesses that she herself does not “extract rules from sacred sources by adhering to . . . legal theories and methodology as developed,” she examines the validity of these in order to “expose the inherent gender

bias of
fiqh
rules and their inner contradictions.”
81

Today there is virtually no context of expert discussion between juris- prudence and certain new fields of thought, like psychology – the discipline

of human mental and emotional well-being –

or with the increasing

number of institutions to shelter abused women and children. Women have been voicing their experiences through this development of medical mental

What’s in a Name?
51

health but are also seeking resolutions in the shelters despite the disjunctive practices between social–psychological solutions and Islamic legal reform. Likewise, the experiences of the majority of Muslim women, with regard to their most intimate needs and concerns, remain silent and invisible in the process of the leading discourse of progressive Islamic transformation. The most basic and increasingly problematic example is domestic violence and abuse. International Islamic legal councils are not calling in the abused women themselves or referring to experts in women’s personal lives to help direct and guide their decisions toward the intent of the divine level of cosmic justice and the codes and rules that are persistently used to determine the outcome of domestic disputes in the courts. Here again the absence of women as fully human is accentuated, as is the persistent divide between the domestic and the public.

Despite a proliferation of agencies in all parts of the Muslim world, where women address these domestic issues, the agencies operate primarily outside of or without support from both religious authorities and represen- tatives and the leaders of progressive Islamic discourse. A massive renovation would result from combining juridical abstractions with women’s real-life experiences. Admittedly, there has been an increase in legal and sometimes religious women experts referred to as representatives of the agencies that directly encounter the source of women’s domestic burdens. Having mastered the patriarchal methods of discursive and public debate privileges the majority of the women whose voices are heard, whether or not they have sufficient knowledge as experts on the basic realities for the majority poor and uneducated female experiences. Thus many grassroots concerns are still inadequately integrated into discussions over legal or public policy reform. Then when religious experts are invited to assist the women engaged in the formations and sustenance of such organizations, they simply repeat double-talk and take refuge in the irrel- evant repeating of the word “Islam” or haphazard quotations from the Qur’an or
ahadith
used in a way that actually continues the disadvantage of what circumstance demands. There is grotesque contradiction reflected in women being stoned to death, falling victim to honor killers, and the increasing levels of domestic abuse even as more and more women are increasingly better educated and play larger roles in certain organizations focused on women’s issues. The policies remain unfair in terms of protect- ing the rights of the overwhelmingly poor and institutionally unsupported grassroots Muslim woman. Still the Islamists’ calling for implementing
shari‘ah
in its traditional patriarchal form sounds like an innocent and

52 inside the gender jihad

pious cry for protecting and maintaining “Islam,” even though its existing historical formulas are patriarchal and simultaneously justify violent abuses against women.

CONCLUSION: POWER

Looking carefully at key terms is related to the relationship between theory and practice of Islamic gender justice, sustaining the full human dignity of all Muslim women and advocating for a social–political structure that encourages the fulfillment of their purpose as full agents. I have drawn ideas about theory from female-inclusive reflections upon Islamic theo- logical discourses, past and present, and on the basis of a hermeneutics of care that nurtures both the inner and the outer human well-being yet requires a political structure to ensure that it is justly and comprehensively activated. These comments simply expose the ways that the gender
jihad
is integral to all other aspects in discussion about social justice, public policy in government, democracy, and economics in today’s reformist discourse. I will conclude with the observation that women’s full human dignity, in terms relative to the real-life experiences of the majority of women in the Muslim world, is still marginalized, not only in terms of actual practice, but also in the power imbalance of women’s multiple circumstances which still privileges men in the new reformist discourse.

Richard Valantasis
82
alerted me to the conceptual nuances of the term

“power.” The power paradigm wedded with the moral bankruptcy of gross individualism in the form of greed and desire that results from the madness of consumerism is a term that is most often used to reflect “power over,” the will and action to exert control over others as utilities to achieve one’s aims.Valantasis juxtaposed that understanding to consideration of the“pow- er to.” When gender activists and theorists assert the need for women’s empowerment, those most accustomed to the term “power” in its “power over” dimension do not wish to have women’s power asserted over them, reducing them to a utility for the benefits of others and dismissing their moral agency. Oddly enough, this is exactly what has been done with women’s agency, the utilization of them and their empowerment or agency only as a utility to fulfill human care without recognition and more than mere lip service to the virtues of such an application. These discussions do disempower men, although they, as a class, have exerted their power over and dominated and destroyed the ecological environment and global

economics for their own selfish

utility, in the name of “civilization.” To

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53

empower women, or rather to fully acknowledge women’s empowerment,

whether in

care

work, public

service, political authority, or spiritual

leadership, as well as any number of acts of agency, is to acknowledge not only their “power to,” but also how it is integral to a third level of power discourse emphasized in feminist ethics, that of “power
with
.” There is a reciprocal relationship between acknowledging women’s power and the enhancement of the social–cultural roles they have contributed to benefit humanity. A lesson that can be learned by any who seek to fully apply the Qur’anic mandate of agency would result from accepting that women’s power has made an essential contribution to human well-being which is not limited to biology. As such, power
with
others is a universal goal certainly commensurate with the dominion Allah has given to humans over the rest of creation (22:65) and to fulfilling the ontology of agency Allah has assigned as intrinsic to all humankind.

54 inside the gender jihad

2

Answers to the questions that naturally arise about gender relationships cannot be found by posing them to those who are unfamiliar with the principles and roots of Islamic thought.
1

Islam is a tradition with an intellectual legacy that has developed sometimes coherently and systematically over the past fourteen hundred years, and sometimes in contradictory directions not only from previous generations, but also within a single generation. I have been engaged in research into and teaching about that legacy for more than three decades now. This engagement is especially difficult in the current generation, which happens to be characterized by great contradictions in development, articulation, and practical implementation. This generation is also faced with a particular politicization of Islam in general, exacerbated by diversity, and under heavy pressure from Western ideas of globalization, militarism, and the global economy. The major result is the demonization of Islam to such an extent as to defer deep learning and understanding to sensationalist verification. Although plurality and diversity is accepted and expected at this point in modern history, and the contradictions within the Muslim world are no surprise, the rise in extremism, exclusivism, intolerance, and violence in the name of Islam has helped to create a challenge in critical learning of gigantic proportions.

In the context of Islamic history and Muslims today, the rise in exclusivism frustrates total Muslim consensus over plurality. Indeed the