چکیده:
This paper contends that there has been a definitive and negative change
in the trajectory of so-called Islamic feminism. This change has been effected
in large part in the West, as part of the growing discourse of Euro-Islam, European
Islam, indigenization of Islam, etc.,a discourse that comes not from governments
(though it is mirrored, applauded and rewarded by governments in the region) but
from Muslim civil society, activists and intellectuals.
The characteristics of this change include: the move from expressing a universal
but co-operative form of ‘feminism’ to a particularist one; the unusual aspect of
that particularism as an expression of mutedness as opposed to empowerment,
as a form of enclosure and ringfencing rather than an expression of solidarity
or an attempt to work / speak / understand co-operatively; a positioning of this
‘feminism’ within an enlightenment rather than a critical and / or decolonial
normative framework; an implicit rejection of liberation in favor of assimilation;
expression as a peculiar interaction between Islam and the West; an aspiration for
inclusion into an unsophisticated and idealized notion of the West and a perceived
teleology of progress; a distinct lack of solidarity with other oppressed groups,
whether gendered or ethnic or religious or class based; co-option and complicity
with neo-colonial projects and policies.
The paper concludes with a re-evaluation of the Islamic feminist project in
certain forms as one which has been hijacked and used to undermine the goal
of women’s liberation per se and Muslim women in particular by denying Muslim
women and by implication all women of color or those who express themselves in
political opposition to Western norms and / or domestic and foreign policies, the
right to define their own terms for liberation
خلاصه ماشینی:
"The characteristics of this change include: the move from expressing a universal but co-operative form of ‘feminism’ to a particularist one; the unusual aspect of that particularism as an expression of mutedness as opposed to empowerment, as a form of enclosure and ringfencing rather than an expression of solidarity or an attempt to work / speak / understand co-operatively; a positioning of this ‘feminism’ within an enlightenment rather than a critical and / or decolonial normative framework; an implicit rejection of liberation in favor of assimilation; expression as a peculiar interaction between Islam and the West; an aspiration for inclusion into an unsophisticated and idealized notion of the West and a perceived teleology of progress; a distinct lack of solidarity with other oppressed groups, whether gendered or ethnic or religious or class based; co-option and complicity with neo-colonial projects and policies.
" Although replete with stereotypes, these claims translate as the attempt to stigmatize and delegitimize: Muslim citizenship through political organization and dissent through Muslim grassroots support for the Palestinian struggle for liberation; The removal of troops from Western countries based in Muslim lands; Khilafah and also all types of pan-Islamic or indeed alternative forms of Muslim political organization When tied to this agenda, the European Islamic project is compromised as deeply anti-liberatory and pseudo-assimilationist in the fact that it allows itself to be International Journal of Women’s Research used to stifle Muslim individual and communal aspirations to political self-organization at every level unless it conforms to liberal notions of the self, civil society and the state in a Kantian manner (Seligman, 1992,p."