Islamic Feminism(s) in the Mediterranean Area: a Hermeneutical Approach

Abstract

This article aims at questioning some conceptual assumptions which frame the current debate on Islamic feminism. Firstly, there is the assumption regarding the existing structural incompatibility between the Qur’an and women’s rights that needs to be tested by means of methodical hermeneutical tools. Secondly, the thesis affirming the uniqueness and univocity of the movement should also be questioned. The article argues that the syntagma ‘Islamic feminism’ should be approached as the ‘indicator’ of an extremely fluid, dynamic and pluralistic set of phenomena which has not yet assumed, and may never assume, its final conformation.

Notes

1. Glocalization: this is the concept that puts the binary logic in a critical position. The binary logic interprets reality by means of the mutually excluding terms of homogeneity‒heterogeneity, integration‒disintegration. On the contrary, Robertson understands differently the relationship between universalism and particularism and states that their thick, multi-dimensional, dynamic and open interaction opposes a globalization understood merely as global homologation from above. R. Robertson, Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture, Sage, London, 1992.

2. A. F. Amor, ‘Constitution et religion dans l’État musulmans [Constitution and religion in the Muslim States]’, in AA. VV. (Préface Henry Roussillon, Conférence inaugurale Jean Imbert), Constitutions et Religion, 4, Académie international de Droit Constitutionelle, Epuisé Presses de l’Université des sciences sociales de Toulouse, Tunis, 1996, p. 53; Nouveau tirage Académie Internationale de Droit Constitutionnel, 2007, 1060, Tunis B.P. 72, 1013, Menzah IX (Tunisie).

3. A. Vanzan, Le donne di Allah. Viaggio nei femminismi islamici [The women of Allah. Journey through the Islamic Feminisms], Mondadori, Milan, 2010, pp. 1–4.

4. M. Badran, ‘Islamic feminism. What is in a name?’, in Feminism in Islam, OneWorld, Oxford, 2009, p. 244.

5. F. Mernissi, Women in Islam. An Historical and Theological Inquiry, trans. Mary Jo Lakeland, Oxford, Blackwell, 1991.

6. R. Pepicelli, Femminismo Islamico. Corano, diritti, riforme [Islamic feminism. Qur’an, rights, reforms], Carocci Editore, Rome, 2010, p. 14.

7. V. M. Moghadam, ‘Feminism and Islamic fundamentalism: a secularist interpretation’, Journal of Women’s History, 13(10), 2001, pp. 43–45.

8. S. Shimada, ‘Aspetti della traduzione culturale: il caso dell’Asia’ [‘Some aspects of cultural translation: the Asia case’], in B. Henry, E. Batini and I. Possenti (eds), Mondi globali [Global Worlds], ETS, Pisa, 2000, pp. 137–159; N. Labanca, ‘Una visione postcolonale’ [‘A postcolonial vision’], in G. M. Cavallarin et al. (eds), Gli ebrei in Cina e il caso di ‘Tien Tsin’, prefazione di N. Labanca [The Jews in China and the ‘Tien Tsin’ case, preface of N. Labanca], Belforte, Livorno, 2012, p. 18; E. Said, Globalizing Literary Study, Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 116, 2001, p. 65.

9. C. Bartoli, ‘Subalternità, rappresentazioni sociali e rappresentanza politica’[‘Subalternity, social representations and political representation’], Ragion pratica, 2, 2004, p. 23.

10. M. Foucault, Society must be Defended. Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975/1976, Picador, New York, 2003; J. Murdoc, Post-structuralist Geography, Sage, London, 2006; Said, op. cit.

11. N. Bobbio, L’età dei diritti [The age of rights], Einaudi, Torino, 1992.

12. Badran, ‘Islamic feminism’, op. cit., p. 242; M. Badran, ‘Toward Islamic feminisms: a look at the Middle East’, in Asma Afsaruddin (ed.), ‘Hermeneutics of Honor’: Negotiating Female ‘Public’ Space in Islamicate Societies, Harvard University, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Cambridge, MA, 1999, pp. 159–188.

13. Pepicelli, op. cit., pp. 31–32.

14. Such as the closure towards the individual interpretative effort (ijtihad) that occurred in the tenth century.

15. N. āmid Abū Zayd, Testo sacro e libertà. Per una lettura critica del Corano, Introduzione di N. zu Fürstenberg [Holy Text and Liberty. On behalf of a Critical Reading of the Quran, Introduction of N. zu Fuerstenberg], a cura di F. Fedeli, Marsilio, Vicenza, 2012.

16. E. Pace, Sociologia dell’Islam [Sociology of Islam], Carocci, Roma, 1999, pp. 165–172.

17. ^‘The segregation of women still practised in the first decades of the twentieth century, was considered a symbol of prestige and social status. Only in the higher classes, where the women could afford not to work, delegates the servants to carry out the domestic chores, was it in fact possible to observe the almost total exclusion of women from the public sphere.’ Pepicelli, op. cit., p. 33.

18. The first text in favour of female emancipation should really be attributed to the jurist Murqus Fahmi who in 1894 privately published Al-mar’a fi al-sharq [The Women in the East]. However, the general picture and objective, both of an instrumental character, do not change. Cf. I. Segati, ‘Feminisms in the Arab world between secularism and Islamism. Origins and characteristics to orientate in the contemporary academic debate’, unpublished final paper, 2012.

19. M. Badran, ‘Dual liberation: feminism and nationalism in Egypt: 1870s‒1925’, Feminist Issues, 3, 1988, pp. 15–34.

20. Opinions contrary to those of Amin have been expressed by some feminist authors such as the Egyptian Malak Hifni Nasif and, more recently, Leila Ahmed, who have questioned the specific recommendations of the jurist to abandon the use of the veil (Nasif), and the instrumental use of the condition of Muslim women with the aim of discrediting the whole Islamic cultural universe, with respect to the occidental world ‘more advanced on the road to progress’ (Ahmed). Cf. L. Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 1992, particularly Chapters 9 and 10; C. L. Ahmed, Oltre il velo: la donna nell’Islam da Maometto agli ayatollah [Beyond the veil: the ‘woman’ inside the Islam from Muhammad to the ayatollah], La Nuova Italia, Firenze, 1995; see Segati, op. cit., p. 8.

21. M. Badran, ‘Between secular and Islamic feminism/s, reflections on the Middle East and beyond’, Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, 1(1), 2005, p. 7.

22. Ibid., pp. 6–7.

23. Badran, ‘Between secular’, op. cit., p. 8.

24. Badran, ‘Dual liberation’, op. cit., p. 16.

25. Ibid., p. 17.

26. Badran, ‘Dual liberation’, op. cit., p. 24.

27. Pepicelli, op. cit., p. 41.

28. The author Shahrzad Mojab counterposes the use of this term to the more organic and conscious feminist movement that emerged later. See S. Mojab, ‘Theorizing the politics of Islamic feminism’, Special issue: ‘The realm of the possible: Middle Eastern women in political and social spaces’, Feminist Review, 69, 2001, pp. 124–146.

29. The centre of diffusion of these movements was Egypt, where between 1892 and 1925 we could count at least 24 women’s journals, and where in 1923, due to the work of the feminist Hoda Sha’rawi, the Egyptian Feminist Union (UFE) was founded, the first organization aimed at the female right to education and work, the reform of the Code of the personal statute and at universal suffrage, which would be recognized in 1956. Other organizations followed in Palestine and Morocco, in the wake of the Egyptian example, and these attempted to systematically reconcile feminist demands with national contexts which included the ideology of the modernist movements of the Nahhda of the end of the nineteenth century.

30. H. Ahmed-Gosh, ‘Dilemmas of Islamic and secular feminists and feminisms’, Journal of International Women’s Studies, 9(3), 2008, pp. 99–116.

31. V. M. Moghadam, ‘Islamic feminism and its discontents: toward a resolution of the debate’, Signs, 27(4), 2002, p. 1162.

32. The urgent issues of the compatibility of human/women’s rights with Islamic thought and especially Islamic regimes have again become of crucial relevance worldwide. More precisely, the turmoil provoked by the Arab uprisings have revived an ongoing debate on the relationship between secularism and religion, on the role of constitutionalism and women’s rights within Islamic contexts. In the MENA region and the Arab (Islamic) world in general, the relationship between states and religion are undergoing a profound process of internal redefinition, with revolutionary developments that, for example in Tunisia, have brought a new promising Constitution, while in Libya has led so far to the dismantling of any form of the rule of law, in the hope of a real endorsement of the proclaimed institutional change in the very near future. See F. Dallmayr, ‘Whither democracy? Religion, politics and Islam’, Philosophy and Religion, ‘Reset’, Web Magazine, Istanbul Seminar, Wednesday, 29 August 2012.

33. A. A. An-Na’im, Islam and the Secular State: Negotiating the Future of Shari’a, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2008, pp. 1–2.

34. Ibid., p. 2.

35. Ibid., pp. 4–6.

36. Ibid., pp. 3–4.

37. Dallmayr, op. cit., n. 15.

38. Badran, ‘Between secular’, op. cit., p. 6.

39. Badran, ‘Islamic feminism’, op. cit., pp. 246–247.

40. One can accept here, due to the clear assonance with the Hebrew term nefes (soul), the solution proposed by Ḥāmid Abū Zayd, op. cit., p. 42. Cf. the note by the editor, F. Fedeli, who motivates the choice and directs it to a traditional and patriarchal setting which recognized in that ‘person’ the first human, Adam. Ibid., p. 67.

41. Badran, ‘Islamic feminism’, op. cit.,, pp. 248–249.

42. R. al-Gannushi, The Right to Nationality Status of Non-Muslim Citizens in a Muslim Nation, Islamic Foundation of America, Springfield, USA, 1990. See A. Santilli and P. Longo, ‘Tunisia: models of Islamic state compared. Al-Nahda and Hizb al-tahir between Islamic democracy and universal caliphate’, The History of Political Thought, Special issue: ‘The ambiguous concept of Islamic state’, 3, 2014, pp. 399–422.

43. Moghadam, ‘Islamic feminism and its discontents, op. cit., p. 1162.

44. VIbid., p. 1147.