Gender Jihad: Muslim Women's Rights

Gender Jihad is a phrase coined by Amina Wadud, an African-American female Muslim legal scholar and activist, to describe the activities of Muslim women worldwide who are attempting to improve the lives of fellow Muslim women in respect to their faith as well as work and family. 

Margot Badran has written about how women have also struggled for equal access in mosques because they often have to pray in less than ideal spaces since the women's section is often behind, above, or sometimes below (such as in a basement) the main men's hall. This makes it harder for women to hear the prayer leader during prayer, and also to hear the sermon after the prayer service. As more and more women have sought to pray publicly in mosques (to which some religious leaders object) over the last century they also want to have equal access to perform this most central religious observance.

Badran also mentions that Saudi Arabia even attempted to exclude women from praying inside the main mosque in Mecca, even though they have a special section for women inside the mosque. In 2006 Muslim women worldwide protested this attempt and thwarted Saudi efforts. Who says Muslim women are voiceless victims who cannot stand up for change?

Mohja Kahf (Univ. of Arkansas scholar, poet, and novelist) has written Little Mosque Poems to point out such discrepancies that make women feel unwelcome at mosques in the US, as a call on Muslim mosque leaders to address their needs. Muslim women in America have been heard because the first female president of ISNA (Islamic Society of North America), Ingrid Mattson, held a series of mosque meetings to show men how women felt by having them sit in the women's section and try to listen to her speak. Other organizations have followed suit and reports on the issue have been published in the attempt to address the issue in Canada and the US. See more on this topic in Altmuslimah's pray-in blog post.     

Also, UC-Berkeley anthropologist, Saba Mahmood, writes on page 72 of her work on Muslim women's religious activities in Cairo, Egypt (Politics of Piety (Princeton, 2005)) that as of 1996 there were more women preachers enrolled for certification than men. Take a look at  this youtube video for more: Muslim Women Preachers.

The pew Foundation today had a link to an article on how women activists, teachers, artists, and doctors are working to improve the general well-being of Muslim women throughout South Asia.

I view my role as a researcher and educator to focus more on what Muslims are actually doing, rather than taking part in the well-worn debates about oppressed Muslim women. People who generally make that argument seem to know very little about actual Muslim women's lives. Like most things, we need to talk in concrete terms, and when issues of oppression arise they should not be avoided, but neither should this stereotypical issue blind us to the efforts and achievements of women worldwide.

In conclusion, we should not think that all Muslim men oppose these efforts either. Actually, the renowned 10th century Qur'an commentator, historian, and legal scholar, Muhammad Ibn Jarir al-Tabari founded the now extinct Jariri legal school, which held that Muslim women could lead men in prayer if they were the most knowledgeable in the community. Khaled Abou El Fadl, UCLA Law professor and seminary trained specialist in Islamic law, currently stands in al-Tabari's footsteps by siding with him on this issue, based on the argument that intellect trumps gender.