Islam’s Woman Problem

Even the concept is changing for Muslims. Tariq Ramadan puts it this way, "…most of the classical texts concentrated on the role of woman as ‘child,’ ‘wife,’ or ‘mother,’ woman is now spoken of as ‘woman.” The difference is upending a civilization. The West has seen its share of male chauvinism of course but dominance over women (or members of an inferior faith) has never been quite so central to the typical westerner’s sense of self as it is to your average Muslim male. For centuries Arab travelers were shocked by European attitudes towards chivalry. The idea that a man might hold a door for a woman, allow her to eat at his table, and stand as she entered or left the room was incomprehensible. What Muslims consider to be licentiousness among Western women is a major source of Islamic angst today.

Ramadan also has this to say. “To believe that nothing in the message of Islam justifies discrimination against women is one thing: to say that they do not suffer any discrimination in Western (or Eastern) Muslim communities is another.” That such discrimination does exist is plain to see. For Muslim clerics and intellectuals to pretend otherwise and hide by quoting verses and prophetic traditions is a lie. This from a man the US State Department considers a national security threat. That he is right is obvious. That a prominent male Islamic thinker would say it is remarkable. He isn’t saying Islam is wrong. He is saying Muslims are wrong. He is saying the attitude is profoundly damaging not just to women but to the community at large. It is at root thoroughly un-Islamic and is one reason why Islamic communities are having so much trouble advancing into the 21st century. Ramadan is urging his co-religionists to go back to the scriptures and read them again in light of the world we live in. He is one of those rare Muslims who are willing to distinguish between Islam and the culture that surrounds it, and to argue that the latter must be changed.

I have thought for some time that it is women who will lead Muslims out of the Islamic version of the Dark Ages and it is happening. I don’t mean the bra burning Betty Friedan types. I mean educated Muslim women who are thinking seriously about their faith and rethinking their role in it; women like Ingrid Mattson who is the first convert, the first Native North American, the first woman to be elected President of the Islamic Society of North America, and one who sees nothing wrong with women in leadership positions; or Anzar Nafizi who wrote Reading Lolita in Teheran, her memoir about secretly gathering seven of her most committed female students to read forbidden Western classics while a revolution raged around them. I also don’t mean to imply it is happening quickly. It may take generations but these are women who have real ideas, they make too much sense to be ignored, if they are a small minority there are still a lot of them, and they are having an impact.

There has been so much insanity from so many Muslims over so many years I have come to believe Islam can no longer co-exist with its neighbors. Professor Samuel Huntington’s essay Clash of Civilizations struck a chord with me as it did with many others. Tariq Ramadan maintains the religion isn’t the problem. It is a civilization stuck in medieval times and faraway places that has to go. He is right but it isn’t me he has to convince.