From Islamic to a Muslim Holistic Feminism

Margot Badran*

Abstract This article looks at the trajectory from secular feminism to Islamic feminism to Muslim holistic feminism, examining the changing meanings of ‘the secular’ and ‘the religious’ and the ways they intersect in the different modes of feminism. It contrasts the open, inclusive nature that typifies the secular Muslim and non- created in the twentieth century in contexts of anti-colonial struggle and early nation-state building with the communalism of the new Muslim holistic feminism now emerging in global space at a time when religious identity is fore-fronted and there is an international preoccupation with Muslim women’s rights. The article argues that the communalisation of women’s rights activism or the privileging of Muslim women’s rights occurring at the global level and being exported to local terrain can be divisive and threatening national unity.

1 Introduction broad-based local political work is needed to A generation after the emergence on the global move from a patriarchal to an egalitarian model scene of Islamic feminism, we are now witness to of the family. the appearance of a ‘Muslim holistic feminism’. Like the pioneering secular feminism/s that Today, in an era of religious revival, communal Muslims and non-Muslims created together early identity is fore-fronted. in the last century in their national spaces, the organising is being exported by Muslim women new Muslim holistic feminism draws upon from global to national spaces in contrast to multiple discourses, including Islamic discourse. earlier practice in Muslim majority societies But, unlike these secular feminisms, Muslim when feminist movements were locally grounded holistic feminism is communally based (of, for, and organised within a national context. Nation- and by Muslims) and globally anchored. based feminist movements, such as the pioneering Egyptian , The final major feminist challenge that activists accessed the world of international feminism and face today in Muslim majority countries is did so on its own terms. These national feminist achieving equality in the family. Long after movements were organised and directed by significant equality was realised in the public women as citizens of different religions. domain (although this is unfinished business), Organising activism along communal lines and in the family remains exporting social movement activism from the widespread, sustained by -backed, state- global arena to national space is new to our time. enacted laws. Islamic feminist discourse has made two potentially useful theoretical advances: This article reviews the historically changing (1) breaking down the notion that the sphere of constructions of ‘the secular’ and ‘the religious’, the family constitutes a separate domain positing at a time when they are politically over-loaded instead a continuum of private/family and and central items in the linguistic arsenal. I public/society; and (2) dismantling the notion observe the feminist trajectory from secular that ordains a patriarchal construction of feminism to Islamic feminism to the emerging the family. This lays important groundwork for Muslim holistic feminism, pointing to the arguing against gender inequality shored up by simultaneity of the different feminisms. I speak Muslim family laws. However, intensive and of the communalisation of women’s rights

IDS Bulletin Volume 42 Number 1 January 2011 © 2011 The Author. IDS Bulletin © 2011 Institute of Development Studies Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA

78 activism and reflect on the implications of this at structures of thinking and the laws that express the local level. The underlying argument here is them. To these tasks, we bring the various tools that the communalisation of women’s rights – or we possess, including our different vantage the privileging of Muslim women’s rights and its points and varied experiences. export from the global to local terrain, is a potentially divisive force that threatens national Egyptian feminist, Saiza Nabarawi (a close cohesion and can constitute another element in partner of the pioneering feminist leader, Huda the marginalisation of non-Muslim citizens. Sha’rawi), confessed to me more than four decades ago that the greatest disappointment of 2 Positionings and multiple identities the founding feminists was their inability to make Like many women today, my positionings and significant headway in reforming the Muslim identities are multiple and complex. It is as a life- Personal Status Code and their unhappiness over long feminist, scholar-activist and historian of the injustices such failure perpetuates. I place feminisms that I come to the subject of this myself alongside others in the long struggle to article. As a young scholar in the 1960s, I began complete the quest for , and research on the rise and evolution of feminism in especially the unfinished business of equality in Egypt and the Middle East. From the 1990s, when the family and gender justice more broadly. Islamic feminism was ascendant, I broadened my scope to include the global in which 3 The secular and the religious it circulated. My feminism first bloomed four The equality struggle has been fought on terrain decades ago as a form of consciousness, thinking, variously claimed, constituted and staked out over activism simultaneously in the USA and in Egypt time and space by ‘the secular’ and ‘the religious’. while living, studying and moving between the The extent to which many have been imprisoned two countries. I am a citizen of the USA by birth by terms taken to be far more narrow and static and of Egypt by choice, allowed to me by the than the dynamic realities suggest, is striking. It patriarchal structuring of naturalisation.1 I do not is also striking to observe how ‘the religious’ is publically position myself within a religious equated with ‘the indigenous’ or ‘the authentic’ framework and am not interested in having and ‘the secular’ with ‘the alien’, a notion with a legitimacy conferred or withheld by my religious history stretching back to colonial days. ‘Secular’, identity. Irrespective of my religious affiliation which is often simplistically seen as religion’s and nationality through marriage to a Muslim other, needs to be unpacked and historicised. In citizen, I am subject to Egypt’s Muslim Personal Egypt, the term for /secularisation was Status Code. For more than four decades, I have coined in in the late nineteenth century as been a ‘ living under Muslim Law’ in almaniyya. It denoted a separation of state and Egypt. When it was being formed in the mid- religious authority and the process by which the 1980s, I became part of the global network: modern state in formation assumed legal and Women Living under Muslim Law (WLUML). As institutional responsibility for matters previously one subject to the Muslim Personal Code in under the purview of the religious authorities Egypt, I have an immediate stake in how it is (Badran 1999, 2009). The state during re/constructed, and as I see it, a responsibility to secularisation took it upon itself to protect become directly engaged in building a locally religion, not just Islam, but all religions. The based movement. state instituted a system of secular education leaving to Al Azhar, the ancient seat of religious My analysis and interpretation of feminism, learning, the teaching of the Islamic sciences. Islam and culture, come from my research and Law was secularised, with the exception of my participation in debate, which are informed personal status or family law (this article uses the by the world of lived realities. My activism is two terms interchangeably) that was left under inspired by real-life challenges that I, along with the aegis of the religious authorities. The state other women in the places where I live and work, enacted separate religiously backed personal experience as we defend our rights – the right to status codes for Muslims and Christians. speak, to be heard, to be equal and to be However, in the process of the codification of the included as guaranteed to us as citizens by our Muslim Personal Status Code by the state in the national constitutions. Our activism is directed early twentieth century, foreign elements were towards achieving specific goals and changing absorbed (Sonbol 1996).

IDS Bulletin Volume 42 Number 1 January 2011 79 There have been different constructions of the secular state, branded ‘the secular’ as Western secular in Muslim majority countries ranging and un-Islamic or anti-Islamic and, accordingly, from the singular example of the total the secular state as illegitimate. In the 1970s and evacuation of the religious from the state and 1980s the terms ‘secularism with religion’ and public sphere in Turkey (although the secular ‘secularism without religion’ began to circulate state retained administration of religious indicating two ways of understanding secularism. properties including ), to the Egyptian However, the later meaning gained ground with model that is described above and that was the continuing spread of political Islam (Badran followed in the Arab countries of the east 2009) and the secular and the religious came to Mediterranean and Iraq (the Arab east). In the be seen as stark and oppositional categories.3 Maghreb, with its experience of French colonial rule, different from the French mandate system Scholarship and ongoing historical investigation in Syria and Lebanon and to the less directly is now showing ways the secular and the religious interventionist British colonial practices, there have mutually constructed each other (Asad was a sharper distinction and polarisation 2003; Hurd 2008). The persistent perception of between the secular and the religious than in the ‘the religious’ and ‘the secular’ as distinct, that is Arab east. These varying modes of secularism reinforced by political Islam, keeps alive the have held diverse implications for feminism in notion of sharp and, indeed, antithetical different national locations (Badran 1995; demarcations. As part of their polarising political Kandiyoti 1991; Lazreg 1994; Thompson 2000). project, Islamists re-invigorate not only the secular/religious binary but also East/West, In Egypt, as elsewhere in the Arab east, the term public/private and male/female oppositions. ‘secular’ was also used to denote a state whose Islamists’ assiduous promotion of the notion that constitutions declare all citizens equal, ‘the secular’ is alien, foreign, non-native and irrespective of religion and whose national hence inauthentic and that ‘the religious cohesion was not based on religious affiliation.2 constitutes the indigenous, native and authentic Countries like Egypt – under with is deliberately divisive and carries negative policies of ‘divide and rule’ or declining Ottoman implications for feminisms. suzerainty, which organised populations under its control into separate millets ordered by religion 4 Secular and Islamic feminisms and ethnicity – sought to construct themselves as Feminism, because it involves the awareness and sovereign territorial countries and their analysis of gender inequality and women’s populations as equal citizens. The secular nation- deprivation of their rights and efforts by women state signified a territorially based state to redress wrongs, poses a threat to entrenched composed of equal citizens sharing a common patriarchal power and privilege. Feminism which land. Early last century in the colonial and first appeared in Egypt and other Muslim- postcolonial moment, ‘secular’ was also used to majority countries during the colonial era was signify national specificity. For example, secular branded by its adversaries as Western and anti- nationalism indicated Egyptian nationalism and Islamic and thus a pernicious form of colonial the secular feminist movement signalled the cultural invasion. The notion of feminism as a Egyptian feminist movement (Badran 1995). This Western and an alien assault upon religion – and usage, however, gradually disappeared. of secular as Western and anti-religious – re-enforced by Islamists, persists to this day. In Egypt from the time the nation-state was being consolidated early in the twentieth century History, however, reveals a different story. In until around the 1970s, the term secular Egypt, from the moment Muslim women first generally carried a positive connotation. This is began to articulate their feminism, they drew not to say there were not those who previously inspiration from religion in seeking the claimed that ‘secular’ was a synonym for restoration of their rights as women that Islam ‘Western and un-religious’, as the Muslim had granted them. Christians also claimed that Brothers did following their creation in 1928. women’s rights were religiously endorsed. But, from the 1970s, the term secular began to Religious argumentation was embedded in the be heavily demonised when the rising forces of secular (national) feminism that Muslims and political Islam or Islamists who, in opposing the Christians as Egyptian citizens shaped together

80 Badran From Islamic Feminism to a Muslim Holistic Feminism in the nation-state they shared and for whose scholars of Islam. In time, however, some came to liberation they had fought side-by-side (Badran accept the term Islamic feminism. 1995). The nation-based secular feminism, which Egyptians and others created in the early It might be seen as ironic that the scholar who twentieth century emerged in the form of social has been credited with writing the first book- movements. These feminist movements were length text of Islamic feminism was a secular connected to secular nationalist movements feminist. Moroccan feminist sociologist, Fatima agitating for independence from colonial rule – Mernissi, troubled by the rampant calling simultaneously for women’s rights and perpetuated in the name of Islam in the form of national rights – and were at the same time part (reported sayings and deeds of the Prophet of movements for religious reform (Jayawardena Mohammed) to denigrate and intimidate women 1986). Following national independence, secular undertook her own investigation of hadiths. Using feminists directed their attention to building classical Islamic methodologies, she exposed new institutions of state and society inclusive of many commonly circulating misogynist hadiths as women using constitutional, democratic, and spurious (Mernissi 1987 in French; 1991 in humanitarian arguments. Secular feminists English). Moroccan cultural studies specialist, argued for equality in the public sphere (that is, Raja Rhouni, who offers an incisive analysis of the secular public sphere, not the domain of the Mernissi’s work and through the example of religious professions and ritual which would late Mernissi, demonstrates ways individuals may be taken up by Islamic feminism), while in the generate and operate within the framework of domain of the family they upheld the notion of both secular and Islamic feminisms (Rhouni the complementarity of gender roles, not gender (2009). equality, which in keeping with the general knowledge of their day, they accepted as An early collective contribution to the production ordained by religion and nature (Badran 1995). of Islamic feminism came from (SIS), created by professional, scholarly, and Unlike secular feminism’s emergence in the form activist in the 1980s, and of a social movement, Islamic feminism burst on the credited as being the first Islamic feminist global scene in the late twentieth century in the association. Since many practices oppressive to form of a discourse – a trenchant religiously women were justified in the name of religion, framed discourse of gender equality. Muslim Sisters in Islam proceeded from women’s real-life women in different parts of the globe from Iran experience to Qur’anic investigation. They took to Malaysia as well as in the West simultaneously up the issue of wife-beating, for example, and in the late 1980s and the 1990s began to demonstrated that the Qur’an did not condone articulate a discourse of women’s rights and the practice as many have been led to believe. gender equality going directly to the Qur’an and They disseminated their findings in accessible other religious texts, exercising their own ijtihad language via inexpensive pamphlets in order to or independent critical examination. Iranian reach a wide public (Badran 1999, 2009). The legal anthropologist Ziba Mir-Hosseini, and a idea of scholarship-activism that became central major figure in the production of the new to Islamic feminism was first manifested by gender-sensitive Islamic knowledge, was among Sisters in Islam, and indeed, many women, whom the first to report what she called ‘a feminist others labelled Islamic feminists, called reading of the Shari’a’ (Mir-Hosseini 1996) – that themselves scholar-activists (Webb 2000).4 some secular feminist Muslims in different parts of the world would soon label Islamic feminism In the West, Muslim women from convert and (Badran 1999). It is important to note that those immigrant communities in the USA produced who have been recognised as the producers of what soon became regarded as key foundational this new discourse did not regard their texts of Islamic feminism. African-American formulations of gender equality and gender theologian (also one of the justice grounded in their re-readings of religious founders of Sisters in Islam) articulated a theory texts as ‘Islamic feminism’. Indeed they typically of gender equality based on her Qur’anic rejected this term and did not identify hermeneutic work first published in Kuala themselves as feminists (of any sort) but Lumpur (Wadud 1991) and later in New York preferred to position themselves as committed (Wadud 1999). She followed this up later with a

IDS Bulletin Volume 42 Number 1 January 2011 81 powerful statement of human equality embedded head-way was achieved. In Turkey, Tunisia, and in what she calls the ‘tawhidic paradigm’, south Yemen, the few places where advances demonstrating that is unique and above were made in the twentieth century towards human beings who are on the same plane and progressive – but not fully egalitarian – family equal to each other (Wadud 2008). Pakistani- laws, they were bestowed from on high by the American international relations scholar Asma states, which used family law reform as part of Barlas, deconstructed and the their larger political and nation-building agendas inequality it perpetuated in the name of Islam (Kandiyoti 1991; Charrad 2001; Molyneux 1991). Barlas (2002). The work of Wadud and Barlas was soon translated into many languages It was only in the twenty-first century (in Turkey commonly spoken by Muslims, enabling activists and Morocco) when the interests of feminists in their struggle to reform Muslim family laws to and the state coincided, that the patriarchal offer compelling argumentation that the model of the family was overturned in favour of patriarchy is un-Islamic. an egalitarian model. The 2001 revisions of the secular Turkish Civil Code and the 2004 fiqh- An Islamic discourse of equality has broad backed Moroccan Mudawana cast husband and implications. Wadud’s tawhidic paradigm applies wife as equal heads of family. The Turkish Civil not simply to Muslims but to all human beings – Code of 1926, which had gone the furthest in to the equality all citizens irrespective of gender dismantling the patriarchal model of the family, and religion. Indeed, non-Muslims as well as fell short in enshrining the husband as head of Muslims have welcomed Islamic feminism’s family, revealing that gender inequalities could articulation of equality. be sustained not only in Islamically backed law but in secular law as well. This was contrary to The following two sections look at shifts in the widespread belief that secular law, especially feminist organising. The first section looks at law explicitly modelled on a western prototype locally grounded citizen-inclusive feminist (the Turkish law was patterned after the Swiss activism within the context of a Muslim-majority model), meant full gender equality. country. The second section discusses exclusivist communalised feminist activism spearheaded by The 2004 Mudawana, as the only existing fiqh- a Muslim women’s global network and exported backed egalitarian family law, serves as a powerful to national locations. inspiration today for women in other countries. The Moroccan example demonstrates that fiqh- 5 Secular and Islamic feminisms: local ground, backed family legislation is not immutable sacred shared interests, mutual need law and shows that it is possible within an Islamic Secular and Islamic feminisms have been framework to enact into law an egalitarian model mutually re-enforcing. Not only is there an of the family. The Moroccan and Turkish cases important secular feminist past behind Islamic show the importance of independent feminist feminism but also an ongoing side-by-side organising – and in the Moroccan instance, the presence of the two feminisms. Activists have power of combined secular and Islamic feminist used both secular and Islamic discourses in their argumentation. The Turkish and Moroccan campaigns to achieve women’s rights and gender revisions came after two decades of intense equality. In the early twentieth century, secular feminist activism and at a moment when the feminists accessed Islamic modernist discourse regimes in both countries found it in their political and from the late twentieth century, they drew interest to switch from a patriarchal to an upon the new Islamic feminist discourse. While egalitarian model of family law. In demanding some feminists prefer to use only constitutional reform of their secular family law, Turkish activists and arguments, in campaigns to advanced arguments drawn from democratic and reform fiqh-backed family laws, activists must use human rights discourse (Toprak 2010). Moroccan Islamic arguments. activists, as just noted, marshalled both Islamic and secular arguments (Mir-Hosseini 2009; Although feminist organising, which goes back to Balchin 2009: 224; Pruzan 2011). In Turkey and the early twentieth century in Egypt, included Morocco, countries with miniscule minorities, calls for the reform of Muslim family law as an family law activists were virtually all Muslims. integral part of its comprehensive agenda, little

82 Badran From Islamic Feminism to a Muslim Holistic and other Arab countries of the east measures inhibit independent activist organising Mediterranean and Iraq (unlike Turkey and of any sort. Emergency law in effect in Egypt for Morocco) there are well-established Christian over three decades enables a wide range of communities with ancient roots. Women from escalating security measures aimed at these communities formed an integral part of controlling perceived Islamist threats. early twentieth century nationalist and feminist Significant change in the Muslim Personal Status movements in Egypt. In organising, setting Code in Egypt could ignite Islamist opposition priorities and strategising, feminists understood which the state is fearful to risk and therefore that it was important to their success that their such reform is stalled. feminist movements gained the backing and input of a wide base of citizenry. The composition The feminist struggle to reform Muslim family of the feminist movement, like the nationalist law in Egypt is first and foremost an internal movement, reflected the religious diversity that battle (as it was in Turkey and Morocco). was a hallmark of Egypt and a source of strength. Egyptian women in their long history of feminist Demands for the reform of the Muslim Personal activist work exploited international and Status Code were an integral part of the regional or transnational forums and networks comprehensive feminist agenda in Egypt, which when they decided it could serve their interests. Muslim and Christian women jointly created and They remained in charge of their own agenda supported. even in the early and middle decades of the last century in international forums under the Today in the context of widespread religious shadow of imperial feminisms (Badran 1995; revival and assertion of religious identity, the Rupp 1997). Today, broad collaboration across broad cooperation that has been a fundamental lines of religion and locally anchored feminist mark of Egyptian feminist campaigning – activism are threatened in ways discussed below. including the push for the reform of the Muslim Personal Status Code – is now threatened by the 6 From secular and Islamic feminist collaboration spread of communalism. One of the first areas to communalism; from the global to the local affected by the intensifying communalisation is There has been positive synergy between secular the now century-old cooperative effort in Egypt feminism and Islamic feminism and cooperation in seeking reform of the Muslim Personal Status between activists of different religions, as noted Code. above. Increasingly, however, communalism is threatening the collaboration of Muslim and Not only is broad work critical to success in non-Muslim citizens and internal cohesion altering any state-enacted laws, including the within nations. I am not interested here in the Muslim Personal Status Code, but the Egyptian communalism among the ranks of the religious Muslim Personal Status Code directly affects and political conservatives, but rather how more than just Muslims. It is not only Muslims communalism is being fed from within the world but some non-Muslims who fall under the of feminism and more specifically through purview of the Muslim Personal Status Code, and progressive Muslim women’s global organising. I who accordingly have a direct interest in reform look at (equality in Arabic), which is a work. The non-Muslims include wives of Muslims transnational organisation created and run by (typically of foreign origin) and Christians and for Muslims. Musawah announced itself as ‘A belonging to different denominations in Egypt, global movement for equality and justice in the who in seeking divorce (to give one example), Muslim Family’ at its launch in the spring of fall under the jurisdiction of the Muslim law 2009 at a large conference in Kuala Lumpur. The (Tadros 2009). event was hosted by Sisters in Islam, the veteran Islamic feminist organisation now two decades Now in Egypt, more than ever before, broad- old, which has played a central role in the based political work is necessary not only to creation of Musawah.5 achieve feminist goals but in the interests of national unity, which is threatened by Musawah is directed by a small nucleus of communalism. Feminist, and human Muslim women that focuses on the reform of rights movements need to re-enforce each other Muslim family laws. Musawah’s planning but this is difficult as heavy state security committee is composed of a small group that

IDS Bulletin Volume 42 Number 1 January 2011 83 includes highly respected scholars and seasoned feminists proceeded from their national base to activists, some with roots in Islamic feminism access the world of international feminism and and others with more secular experience used its forums and networks on their own terms. (Musawah 2009; www.musawah.org). In the run- Their international organising (what they called up to its launch, Musawah held a number of ‘international’ would now be referred to as closed planning committee meetings, including ‘transnational’) was grounded in national one in Cairo in 2007, and post-launch held a associations which functioned as the centres of meeting in Cairo in January 2010. For an gravity. Third, secular feminism emerged on the organisation aiming for massive global outreach, scene in the form of organic social movements in Musawah runs a tight ship, as was noticed in progress, while the new Muslim holistic feminism Cairo last winter.6 Egypt will be the upcoming of Musawah surfaced as an envisioned movement. focal point for activism conducted through the Fourth, secular feminism was organised by local NGO called the Center for Egyptian politicised women who were first and foremost Women’s Legal Assistance (CEWLA) whose head activists, while the new Muslim holistic feminism and founder is Azza Suleiman, a lawyer and as the product of scholar-activists exhibits a member of Musawah’s planning committee highly developed theoretical structure. Fifth, (www.cewla.org; Abu-Lughod 2010a,b). secular feminism began and long remained voluntary and self-funding and has preserved this The Musawah Framework for Action (Musawah tradition, even as it has become increasingly 2009) and Musawah publication Wanted: Why ‘NGO-ised’ to use Islah Jad’s expression, and Equality and Justice Now (Anwar 2009) prepared although some secular feminists as NGO leaders for the launch and edited by Zainah Anwar, and staff are now remunerated their president of Sisters in Islam, explain that the organisations retain the openness that has been organisation takes a holistic approach to rights the mark of secular feminism (Jad 2004). Muslim work, using multiple discourses including holistic feminism is being jump-started by ‘religious, human rights, constitutional, and income-earning professional women, public fundamental guarantees, and women’s lived intellectuals, and NGO-ers who are savvy, well- realities’ (Anwar 2009). The religious discourse connected, cosmopolitan and income-earning holds a special prominence, as indicated in the (Abu-Lughod 2010a). stunning collection of papers published in Wanted by leading scholars of Islam and prominent The new holistic Muslim feminism is being activists whose work has influenced both Islamic propelled during a moment when the USA and and secular feminists. other Western governments are endeavouring to produce moderate Muslims and moderate or Because of its communalism, I call Musawah’s moderated behaviours, in the context of their project ‘Muslim holistic feminism’. In using larger political and security concerns and Muslim Islamic feminism’s theorisation of equality and women are seen as ideal agents (Abu-Lughod justice grounded in religious sources, together 2010a). The pioneering secular feminism of the with the secular discourses of democracy and last century, on the other hand, emerged in the human rights, the new Muslim holistic feminism context of intense anti-colonial struggles. echoes the multi-stranded discursive approach that characterised the secular feminism which A glimpse at Musawah’s focus on ‘equality and emerged in Egypt early in the last century and justice in the Muslim family’ provides an insight was developed elsewhere in the region. As such, into the new Muslim holistic feminism in the secular feminism was a holistic feminism before making and what separates it from secular the term ‘holism’ came into use. We have seen feminism which dealt with the functional family earlier that ‘secular’ was another way to convey (unqualified by religion) along with trying to holistic. reform Muslim family law. One asks of Musawah: ‘Why the Muslim family? Is this an However, there are clear differences in these two elision between ‘the Muslim family’ and Muslim holistic feminisms. First, the pioneering secular family law? But, more to the point, ‘What is ‘the feminism was created by Muslims and non- Muslim family’? This is a question I asked at Muslims together as citizens in their respective Musawah’s launch but no answer was countries. Second, as just mentioned, secular forthcoming and at a subsequent conference held

84 Badran From Islamic Feminism to a Muslim Holistic Feminism in Cairo, I asked some Musawah members again context of and their to no avail. Avoidance of the question of what constituencies. The appearance on the scene of constitutes a Muslim family indicates reluctance communal feminism, that I have called ‘Muslim on the part of Muslim holistic feminists to deal holistic feminism’, is a striking new departure that with the contemporary reality of the religiously deserves attention. I have looked at this mixed marriage about which An-Na’im and phenomenon as expressed through Musawah others have written (An-Na’im 2005). This (although there are other sites where Muslim indicates the limits, or the hesitation, of holistic feminism is appearing) to consider its communally based feminism to deal with intra- implications. Muslim holistic feminism is still early religious gender issues and especially those in the making and like other works in progress, it related to the family. is fluid and not always consistent in its self- presentation, which can be viewed as a mark of The intention of this article has been to look at the creative dynamism. I have raised irksome issues porosities and complexities of ‘the secular’ and out of the conviction that acknowledging them is ‘the religious’ as they play out in the feminisms essential to dealing with them – to discovering the Muslim women have created, together with conceptual, practical, and political possibilities and women from other religions, as well as separately limits of various approaches. I end with three in national and global spaces. I wanted to reflect questions: (1) Whose interests do the new Muslim on the continuities as well as the new directions in holistic feminists serve? (2) How can the rights of feminist thinking and activism in the context the communal and the national be honoured in the shifting grounds. I wanted to look at this from fluid spaces between the secular and the religious? within the context of the nation-state and the (3) Does secular feminism have a future?

Notes result in the Islamicisation of law. The latter * I would like to thank Mariz Tadros for inviting changes occurred in the context of the spread me to the workshop, ‘Religious Framings of of . Gender Policies and Practices’, at the Institute 3 In the 1970s and 1980s when ‘almaniyya bila ’ for Development Studies at the University of began to be used to signify secularism without Sussex and the participants of the workshop religion, the implication was that ‘almaniyya’ for two days of lively debate and provocative did not necessarily imply secularism as devoid discussion during which a range of views was of religion. Although with the spread of brought to the fore. The workshop provided an Islamic secularism it became commonly excellent opportunity to share ideas in understood as un-Islamic and even anti- formation as well as the fruits of longer work. I Islamic. I remember discussing this shift in thank also Philippa Strum, my colleague at the meaning with colleagues at the time. Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, who 4 Gisela Webb (2000: xi–xix), the centrality read the final version of this article. Finally I scholarship-activist and the scholar-activist in would like to convey my thanks to the many Muslim women’s theoretical and applied work friends and colleagues with whom I have had on women, gender, and Islam, points specifically the privilege of enjoying a moveable feast of to North American experience. Later, a South conversations, in cyber and real space, on African scholar of Islam and gender, Sa’diyya issues raised in this article, and many more. Shaikh found that the battered women she 1 Foreign women married to Egyptian citizens interviewed developed what she calls a ‘ are permitted citizenship, while foreign men () of praxis’ finding for themselves a married to Egyptians are not. contradiction between the ethical message of the 2 The secular and religious have been Qur’an and the brutalities they experienced at the complexly interwoven in the ‘secular state’ as hands of their Muslim husbands (Shaikh 2007). the case of Egypt has illustrated, where the 5 I participated in this event held in Kuala constitution declares Islam to be the state Lumpur attending the plenary events and religion and where the 1971 constitution breakout sessions as well as engaging in declared the to be a source of law and numerous conversations. the 1980 constitution declares that the Sharia 6 I was in Cairo at the time and heard is the source of all law (not just the Muslim complaints from Muslims about exclusivity, Personal Status Code). However, this did not who were eager to be in the loop.

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