What does it mean to be a Muslim feminist?

In a previous post, I referenced a "theory" that the perceived Islamic patriarchy as it stands today was largely a relic of colonialism. The Emel Magazine article's author goes on to say that whether or not this is true, simple finger-pointing to the West does not absolve the fact of what is, which, specific to this article, is the denunciation of early Islamic female scholarship. The post-colonial theory is used to explain why few, including Islamic scholars, are aware of the female scholarship revivified in Dr. Akram Nadwi's canon.

In Islam, and particularly in certain schools of thought, the examples of people, both Muslim and non-Muslim, living around the time of the Prophet(SAW) strongly influence religious interpretation and practice.  So, though the Quran directly invokes that all believers-- men, women, children and everyone in between, are both literate, requiring that they can read and understand the Quran, and seek knowledge in the wider world, if there is no prevalent example of this among the early believers, it is believed by many to be a lesser aspect of Islamic practice. If there are only examples among the men and not among everyone else, it is believed to be an aspect of practice prescribed primarily, if not exclusively, to men.

Before Islam, the women of the Arabian peninsula could be treated as like chattel as were livestock. Not all women were treated this way-- as can be understood from the example of the prophet's first wife, Khadija, who was a successful and respected businesswoman, but there was nothing that prevented it. Islamic jurisprudence, called Sharia, drastically changed this, primarily by giving women the right to literacy, divorce and the inheritance of property. This was more than one thousand years before western countries began to conceptualize rights equivalent to those Islam brought to women. However, the post-colonialist theory is that, even before this, Western domination of Islamic countries brought with it the domination of Muslim women by Muslim men.

I am extremely interested in how this happened. Social change, especially that which entitles previously disempowered groups, is usually adopted gradually and embraced far after enacted legal reform. But how can such a long held reform been so pervasively swept away? Though the author of "The Lost Female Scholars of Islam" discourages finger-pointing for the sake of moving beyond such, I believe the fact that enough female scholarship to fill 40 volumes can have been lost under imperialism and colonialism demonstrates not only the sheer extent of cultural domination that happened but also a certain readiness to return to old habits.

As a teenager, I came across feminist discourse on the internet. This was before the prevalence of radical feminism and what I encountered, specifically the fact that the ERA is yet to be enacted, is what has been classified as first wave feminism. I was shocked by it and immediately identified myself as a feminist. Next, I found second wave feminism and the discussion of gender in college classrooms. What interested me the most about second wave feminism was the call to female scholarship for the purpose of social change. Knowledge, before then, had been so gendered for me that I usually assumed that most things I read were written by men and, in fact, didn't think anything of it. My encounter with second wave feminism changed that. Finally, I came upon belle hooks and the idea that American feminism is about white, middle class women.

This was the most difficult feminism for me to understand, and is probably so for most people who are socialized with the dominant white, middle class American culture. When American feminists rose up against the oppression of women in Islam, I felt distanced from both feminism and the treatment of women in Islam. I tried to read works by Islamic feminists. They usually called for feminist interpretations of the Quran. However, the imposition of American feminism (western, white, middle class feminism) upon the Quran did not feel right to me. It wasn't something I could bring home to my mom, who is both very religious and believes in women's rights. However, there are Islamic feminists, who by the American definition are third wave or multicultural feminists, and the tradition of female scholarship in Islam and its contribution to Islamic thought provides a framework from which Islamic feminism can be understood as an inherent part of Islam and more widely accepted by Muslims.Though second wavers may not necessarily concede to Islamic feminism, it's not really any of their business to do so.