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

Primarily I reference subtle and not-so-subtle constructs of gender across a broad spectrum of epistemological possibilities and through formulations of fundamental ideas about the ontology of being in Islam. I look at recent historical perspectives and strategies in the struggle for gender equality, particularly during the latter part of the twentieth century and the early twenty-first century.
    Some stories have a single moment of origin. Subsequent moments build upon that origin or offer supplementary stories that continue to shape the original and to help formulate ways perhaps even more significant than that original moment. For me, the origin of three decades of work on Islam, justice, and gender was the awesome light of belief that I inherited from my father, a man of faith and a Methodist minister who was born and died poor, black, and oppressed in the context of racist America. Growing under the umbrella of his love, guidance, and faith, I was never taught and there- fore did not recognize any contradiction between the realities of subjective historical experience and transcendence of faith. The inner and the outer coexist and mutually affect each other. I was raised not only to link concep- tions of the divine with justice, but also to link notions of justice with the divine. The development of my moral awareness started during the height of the American civil rights movement under the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Of course, being the daughter of a minister who followed closely and participated personally in that struggle for justice with its strong articulation through a religious leader left its influence on me. Now, as a Muslim, wherever injustice, discrimination, and oppression occur, I am immediately conscious of explicit and repeated articulations in the Qur’an
    that “Allah does not oppress ( do zulm ).” 4 Zulm is real in historically
    subjective terms, but its practices cannot claim divine inspiration or values. This reasoning causes me to consider myself a believing Muslim who works for justice on the basis of my faith . I consider myself a pro-faith, pro- feminist Muslim woman.
    Standing up for justice inspired by belief in the Ultimate, or in the divine, Allah in Arabic, may seem unnecessarily overstated. Yet this is an impera- tive at the outset to emphasize my disagreement with those who resist my positions on Islam and gender justice by hurling charges of blasphemy or heresy. Sometimes such charges push people out of the pro-faith perspective and oblige them to take up secular Western articulations of human rights or social justice. As a Muslim woman struggling for gender justice in Islam, I

    4 inside the gender jihad

    have not only been accused of working from outside Islam doing whatever I want, but also rejected as anti-Islamic. I will show later that efforts to push progressive Muslim women and men outside of predetermined parameters of Islam actually result from matters of definition or particular interpre- tation. The implication is that for any who wish to be accepted as truly Muslim, their struggles cannot go beyond established patriarchy or male authorities, otherwise they face the potential consequence of being labeled outsiders to Islam. Many sincere women and men accept the choice to stay in Islam as authoritatively defined by Muslim neo-conservative specialists
    or laypersons, sometimes erroneously called
    “fundamentalist,” so they
    simply choose silence. This is precisely why female voices and female- inclusive definitions of key terminology are central to the development of this work. This book offers a look at some of that terminology and at the implications behind the pragmatic inclusion of alternative definitions in the developments of all aspects of Islamic reform.
    Islam is not a monolith. It has a plethora of meanings and experiences. For that reason I begin with constructions of the term Islam, not only as I have experienced them as a woman and a Muslim, but