MUSLIM WOMEN: BETWEEN CULTURE AND FEMINISM by Hanadi Alotaibi A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, Florida May 2016 Copyright 2016 by Hanadi Alotaibi ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It was not possible to complete this research paper without the help and the support from everyone, including my parents, my professors, and my husband. I first would like to express my sincere gratitude to my adviser, Dr. Patricia Darlington, of the School of Communication and Multimedia Studies at Florida Atlantic University. Dr. Darlington kept her door open any time I needed help or had a question about my research progress. My special thanks for her support, her patience, her motivation and her knowledge. Second, I would like to thank my committee members, Dr. Susan Reilly and Dr. Nannetta Uwechue, for their guidance, feedback, patience, motivation, and immense knowledge. Third, I would like to thank my husband who patiently supported me during writing the thesis, who understood how hard the work was, and who helped me deal with stress. Finally, I would thank my parents who supported me my entire life, who taught me to reach my goals, and who taught me that education is the key to success in life. iv ABSTRACT Author: Hanadi Alotaibi Title: Muslim Women: Between Culture and Feminism Thesis Advisor: Dr. Patricia Darlington Degree: Master of Arts Year: 2016 Women’s rights in Islam became a major subject after the third feminist movement in the United States. When feminism spread globally, many Islamic scholars connected it to Islam. Islamic feminism is a term that takes most of its ideologies from the two primary sources of Islam – the Quran and the Sunnah. This qualitative research explained the bias directed towards women in Islam by using objective reasoning through examples as well as by encompassing any misinterpretation of views regarding women’s rights in Islam. The method used was a content analysis. The findings were that Islam is a feminist religion. While Islam provides Muslim women with full rights, U.S. and Saudi Arabian cultures have impeded Islamic feminism. Lastly, the U.S. feminism started as a movement by women to empower women. However, Islamic feminism first focused on the rights of all human beings, then concentrated on women in Islam. v MUSLIM WOMEN: BETWEEN CULTURE AND FEMINISM CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................... 1! Operationalization of Terms ........................................................................................ 5! CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW ............................................................................ 8! The Origins of the Term Feminism ............................................................................. 8! The Western Brief History and the Definitions of the Term “Feminism” .................. 9! “Islamic Feminism” ................................................................................................... 13! Islam and Islamic Law ............................................................................................... 14! Arab Culture and U.S. Culture .................................................................................. 15! Feminism from an Islamic Perspective ...................................................................... 18! Summary .................................................................................................................... 20! CHAPTER 3. METHODOLOGY .................................................................................... 22! CHAPTER 4. DISCUSSION ............................................................................................ 25! Islamic Perspective of Women Rights ....................................................................... 25! The Differences between Equality and Justice ................................................... 25! Both Sexes Are Equal When Created ................................................................. 27! Worship, Dignity, and Honor ............................................................................. 28! The Right to Live ................................................................................................ 30! The Right to Be Educated ................................................................................... 31! The Rights in Marriage and Family .................................................................... 32 vi The Right to Work .............................................................................................. 34 The Right to Participate Publicly and Politically ............................................... 35! The Right to Own Property ................................................................................ 36! U.S. Feminists’ Misinterpretations of Women’s Stature in Islam ............................. 37! Cultural Perspective of Muslim Women Rights in the United States and Saudi Arabia .............................................................................................................. 43 The Relationship between Islamic and U.S. Feminism ............................................. 45! CHAPTER 5. LIMITATIONS .......................................................................................... 47! CHAPTER 6. CONCLUSION ......................................................................................... 49! REFERENCES ................................................................................................................. 52! vii CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION There are many misconceptions about Islam. One of them concentrates the statue and rights of women in Islam. As many people describe it, especially in U.S. culture, the religion of Islam discriminates against women. The story of Aminah Assilmi, a radical feminist, is an example to show how U.S. culture views Islam. Aminah Assilmi was born in Oklahoma. She earned degrees in education, communication, and broadcasting, and was known for lecturing about women living under Islamic laws (tobygeral, 2011). In 1977, Aminah did intensive research on religions (tobygeral, 2011) and after her Islamic studies, she converted to Islam. When she told her family, one of her relatives tried to kill her; others thought that she needed mental help. They did not believe that educated women could be converted to Islam. Her husband left her. She was asked by the judge to choose between her two children and her new religion (Islam On Demand, 2011). Her family’s reaction reflects how most Westerners view Islam. There are many similar stories about how people who convert to Islam from Western culture are treated. The recent documentary Islam In Women (Muslim ForEver, 2015) has shown that a significant number of individuals, approximately 70%, who convert to Islam in the United States are female. The question of why those women are choosing to lose their rights and become involved in a religion such as Islam remains relevant today. Scholars became interested in studying the motivations behind Western women converting to Islam (Muslim ForEver, 2015). U.S. citizens believe that the United States is a democratic country where women have more rights than any other women around the 1 world (tobygeral, 2011). Women’s rights in the United States have been connected to the term feminism, yet today people around the world have adapted the term feminism and connected it with their culture and their style of life such as Islamic feminism. Since the U.S. feminist movements have given women their full rights, what could be the reasons that drive U.S. women to convert to Islam? If one looks at Muslim women in U.S. culture, it is obvious they have the same rights accorded to all women in the United States. However, as the U.S. media discusses the issue, Muslim women who live in Saudi Arabia do not have any rights. In a news article on CNN titled “Don’t celebrate Saudi voting move,” Tucker (2015) discussed women’s right in Saudi Arabia. She illustrated that Saudi Arabian women are prohibited from driving a car or from leaving the house without a male relative. Many articles in Western news media concentrate on those two points (Mohammed & Smith-Spark, 2013; Tucker, 2015). In fact, most writers have connected that behavior to Islamic concepts, forgetting that Saudi Arabia has its own culture and can interpret the concepts differently (Ali, Mahmood, Moel, Hudson, & Leathers, 2008). A study at the University of Iowa analyzed the influential relationship between culture and feminism from Muslim women’s perspectives. One of the Muslim participants in this study explained the relationship between Islam and Arab culture. She stated that Islam gives women and men the same equal rights, but the culture is “getting in the way of religion” (Ali et al., 2008, p. 43). Arab culture seems to have an enormous influence on women’s rights and power, as Darlington and Mulvaney (2003) have stated in the book Women Power and Ethnicity. After 9/11 and the recent Paris attacks in November 2015, Muslims are facing severe discrimination and profiling, which is portrayed in Western media, and in many 2 cases promotes negative propaganda. By living in a Western society, one may question what Saudi Arabian students face and how do women who live in Saudi Arabia seemingly does not have any rights? The purpose of this qualitative research was to explain the