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Despite the differences in ideologies, these Moroccan activists work together to define the woman's role in Islam. From WeNews:
In a nation that has outpaced its neighbors in liberalizing Sharia family laws, two female scholars in Morocco--Latifa Jbabdi and Nadia Yassine--are swaying the religious debate about women's role in Islam.Jbabdi is an ex-Marxist and has fought for women's rights in Morocco for a quarter century. Yassine is the daughter of the founder of the Justice and Charity Group, a banned Islamist organization that seeks to establish an Islamic state governed by Islamic Sharia.
While Jbabdi presses for a secular future, Yassine sees the world ahead in religious terms.
Theirs is a debate that is occurring throughout the Islamic world, between religious conservatives and Islamists on one side, secularists and those seeking an Islamic reformation on the other.
That debate is thriving in Morocco, where the young King Mohammed VI has, more than any other Arab ruler, taken concrete steps towards democracy since assuming the throne in 1999.
Increasingly, women are moving to the forefront of this discourse.
As became apparent last month in Saudi Arabia--when a group of Saudi women gave U.S. Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes a tongue-lashing--not all women living in Islamic states share the West's view of women's freedom.
In their own ways, however, women in the region are taking more control of a debate that vitally affects them.
Secularist women are educating themselves in Islam, and challenging the religious status-quo about what the Koran does and doesn't say about women. And conservative Islamist women are starting to penetrate official male bastions such as Al-Azhar University in Egypt, and popular grassroots organizations like Yassine's.
For years Muslim activists such as Jbabdi waged their battles with ideological help from Western pioneers such as Betty Friedan and later with international accords like the 1979 United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.
Relying on foreign points of reference such as these, however, they made little progress. The international language of gender equality exerted little sway over their traditional, religious societies.
"A religious fundamentalism began to confront us, calling us infidels, and we wondered, how is this possible?" said Jbabdi, from the headquarters of the Union of Feminine Action in Rabat, the organization she founded in 1983. "We started asking, is Islam truly against the rights of women?"
Jbabdi and her colleagues decided to find out. They took classes and held dozens of study sessions. Today, women such as Jbabdi are abandoning their secular approach, immersing themselves in the Koran and the hadith--the principle sources of Islamic law--and proffering their own interpretations of Islam.
If the modus operandi doesn't spring from Islam, then it must be abandoned. Please read it all.
Posted by at October 9, 2005 7:44 AM
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In morocco, the islamists are the most voted party and the King for making up the results, tolerate them, pacting with them, and islamists only present in half of the districts. Morocco is a dangerous country and very expansionist. But US thinks that itīs an ally.
Posted by: Franze![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at October 9, 2005 8:41 AM
"Burkha feminism" is very fashionable these days, and secular feminism is on the way out in the Islamic world - much because academic "feminists" in the West, following their idol Foucault, adore "the revival of Islam" (themselves, like him, staying at comfortable distance; enjoying their full equality at home that they so love to dismiss as insignificant). Unfortunately, it's more about feminists being Islamized than Islamists becoming actually "feminist" (they can't, because to reject Islam's gender system is to reject Islam itself);"feminist" Islamism is an oxymoron. Women took part in the Islamic revolution in Iran too, and what did they win? The "right" to get married at 9 and stoned for adultery!
Posted by: rahel at October 9, 2005 10:09 AM
Saleh has taken stances that make many women's rights activists shudder. A light beating of a wife who betrays a faithful and caring husband, she argues, is preferable to divorce because it preserves the sanctity of the family.
Idiot.
at October 9, 2005 10:47 AM
Here's an article about similar idiocy in Egypt:
http://mondediplo.com/2005/09/12woman
The Western author of the article sounds pretty exited about the love story between Islamism and "feminism". Why oh why is one still not convinced? (Perhaps the quote above in Interested's post has something to do with it? How about a light stoning of a wife who betrays a faithful and caring husband?)
Posted by: rahel at October 9, 2005 10:59 AM
"'Burkha feminism'" is very fashionable these days..."
-- from a posting above
One practitioner of a variant on the theme is Lila Abu-Lughod, self-described feminist, save when Islam seems to be criticized for what, she hastens to assure us, are "cultural" practices alone (the Bedouin in Egypt, with whom she lived).
She has also praised as "portable seclusion" the chador, the abaya, the full-court niqab. Fascinating.
For more on this scion of "Palestinian-American feminist scholarship" google "Lila Abu-Lughod" and "Posted by Hugh" or "Hugh Fitzgerald."
Posted by: Hugh at October 9, 2005 11:34 AM
Time to start a feminist Darwin Award?
Posted by: treehugger at October 9, 2005 1:10 PM
"'Burkha feminism'" is very fashionable these days..."
"She has also praised as "portable seclusion" the chador, the abaya, the full-court niqab. Fascinating."
Sounds more like somebody trying to pull a burkha over our ears...
Posted by: sheik yer'mami at October 9, 2005 4:11 PM
I wish GEorge Orwell was alive today. He would perhaps be shocked at his own prophecies coming partly alive today. Such doublespeak as "burkha feminism" and "hijab commands respect" would be vehemently dissected by the old master...who is willing to be 21st century's Orwell?..when we need him most.
Posted by: Tushar Saxena at October 9, 2005 9:49 PM
One of my colleagues is from Yemen. She is an MD and runs a strong department. She is married, has two children and considers herself a devout Muslim. Her husband is equally accomplished and the family functions as the quintessential nuclear family with strong roots in religion.
Upon a quick discussion about this very topic, she abruptly said: "Its cultural and is changing. Things like this require help from Western Muslims who can and do show the world that we are a strong and capable people if only removed from the grips of corruption, poor education and chauvanist culture."
Posted by: KingTolerance at October 10, 2005 4:20 PM
"Things like this require help from Western Muslims who can and do show the world that we are a strong and capable people if only removed from the grips of corruption, poor education and chauvanist culture."
In which case, KT, you should be applauding our efforts to expose that very same corruption blossoming in mosques and madrassahs across the US, Europe and elsewhere.
Posted by: Gary at October 10, 2005 7:06 PM
Tushar Saxena> who is willing to be 21st century's Orwell?
Billy Beck: http://www.two--four.net/weblog.php
Posted by: Mike Schneider at October 11, 2005 4:22 AM
Mike Schneider:
What about Christopher Hitchens, who has, among other things, recently published an essay "Why Orwell Matters" and also clubbed the snot out of Michael Moore for misusing an Orwellian quote in Unfairenheit 9/11?
Posted by: waterdragon52 at October 11, 2005 12:59 PM
When Muslim women in the West strip off their veils then, and only then, will they deserve to be treated as equals. Until then they are part of the problem.
Posted by: former liberal WF at October 11, 2005 6:31 PM
Like I said in another post, if you force some of those left wing harridans into silence who mouth off about the wonders of Islam under a burka, you might see some progress on this matter. Right now, the leftist/Muslim alliance sees the hijab as a "human rights" issue! The more women want to cast the thing off in Arab societies, the more they seem to want to wear it in the West.
Posted by: londongirl at October 13, 2005 1:40 AM
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