Inside the Gender Jihad: Women's Reform in Islam Read Online Free Page A

recent historical manifestations. In short, Islam, which is nothing unless lived by the people, must be lived by its people today, people who are no longer isolated from the pluralistic chaos and consequences of modernity and the after-effects of colonialism.
    My life experiences as a believing Muslim woman, and Islamic studies professor, have been intimately connected with Islamic reforms. As a parti- cipant in these reforms, I struggle to knit together intellectual discourse, strategic activism, and holistic spirituality. I did not enter Islam with my eyes closed against structures and personal experiences of injustice that
    continue to exist. In my “personal transition,” 2 most often called con-
    version, however, I focused with hope and idealism to find greater access to Allah as al-Wadud , the Loving God of Justice. For many years and in many ways I have worked to keep that hope confirmed. While my experiences of verification form the core motivation for this book, many aspects of the

    2 inside the gender jihad

    Muslim world seem to be continually spiraling away from the ideals that have inspired me and I must look thoroughly at the work needed toward arriving at renewed hope. This book negotiates between the center and the margins shared with Muslim women working, hoping, and attempting to have meaningful lives despite experiences of utter dismay and humiliation in the name of Islam. I have experienced first hand the despair and anguish, joy and exhilarations of being a Muslim woman. This work has been achieved in my own U.S. context, in the Middle East, both Northern and Southern Africa, East and Western Europe, but especially in Southeast Asia. This is a look at issues of gender justice in Islam as written from an insider perspective.
    I entered Islam with a heart and mind trusting that divine justice could be achieved on the planet and throughout the universe. Not two years after I entered Islam I moved to Libya, a North African Arab country, for two years. There I found myself in the middle of a struggle for more gender- egalitarian concepts of Islamic identity and practice. I began to seek out recent ideas and behaviors that address women’s marginalization in the historical development of the Islamic intellectual legacy and to Islamically empower women’s consciousness about the reality of our full human dignity as a divine right. My initial theoretical focus was soon entwined with Muslim women’s networks in the context of existing Muslim organi- zations, whether male and female, or whether exclusively female. Later I worked with government and non-government organizations, in academic circles, with non-Muslim national and international human rights and interfaith institutions, as well as with other women’s groups. Coincidentally,
    I entered Islam during the important second-wave feminist movement in the West. 3 Muslim women’s engagement with issues of concern to women’s well-being in Muslim societies continues to increase. Now there is a greater
    percentage of participants than at any other time in human history, even though still a minority against the male hegemony and privilege in Islamic reform discourse, a new critique that runs throughout this book as well as being addressed directly in chapter 7. The increased participation of women in these activities indicates a movement toward a critical mass building a variegated movement of gender empowerment, mainstreaming, and reform, including consciousness-raising, increased levels of education, promotion and protection of the rights of girls and women, movements to protect and eradicate violence against women, affirmations of women’s bodily integrity, policy reforms, political empowerment and representation, religious authority, and personal spiritual wholeness.

    Introduction 3

    I present some ideas about Islam and about social justice in Islamic thought and praxis with a few references to Muslim women’s experiences, including my own.