The issue of women has always been a priority in my commitment. I have kept questioning traditional interpretations and inviting Muslims to honest lucidity and critical reflection over the situation of women in Muslim majority societies and in communities settled in the West. The point was not to respond to Western criticisms by adopting a defensive (or altogether apologetic) attitude but to answer the requirement of intellectual probity and consistency. I have repeated this many times: Islam has no problem with women, but Muslims do clearly appear to have serious problems with them, and the reasons and sometimes the (questionable) justifications for this must be sought from within.
First, there is a double phenomenon at the source of all the theological and social constructions that have been established a posteriori. The issue of women is among those most widely affected by literalist readings of the Quran and of Prophetic traditions. Neglecting the fact that the Revelation took place in a given context and that its transmission over a period of twenty-three years determines an orientation as to divine pedagogy, literalist readings freeze the text out of its context, of its internal progression, and of the ends of the global message. They proceed by “reduction” and sometimes manage to justify interpretations that clearly contradict the overall message in its historical evolution or the model of behaviour set by the Prophet of Islam. Beyond unjustified practices (such as physical violence as already mentioned), reformist and literalist interpretations differ in their very conception of women, and of their identity and autonomy. Literalist interpretations integrate the patriarchal context of the time without any critical distance and associate women’s presence and role to their relation to men, while the reformist approach reaches out beyond the historical context to extract fundamental objectives as to women’s identity and their status as autonomous beings. Women should thus become subjects and master their own fates.
The study of the writings and commentaries of early ‘ulama (scholars), from Tabari to Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, clearly shows that they were greatly influenced by their cultural environment. One can often observe that they unwittingly proceed by “projection” on the Texts, their substance and their objectives. A contemporary faqih (Muslim jurist) or commentator must therefore perform a twofold dialectical analysis: the scriptural sources must first be read in light of their context, and then later commentaries must be read in light of the sociocultural contexts of the scholars who produced them. This process of deconstruction is difficult, but it makes it possible to critique the historical and cultural coating that has been projected onto primary sources. Thus, discourse about women has been widely influenced by patriarchal cultures, so that some cultural practices that were not “Islamic” have come to be justified. Female excision, forced marriages, honour crimes, for instance, are not Islamic even though certain scholars may have attempted to provide religious justification for them. This critical work is a long way from being completed, and awareness must be raised among Muslims and their fellow citizens about those confusions that lead to the original message being betrayed. This is why I cooperated with the Muslim organisation SPIOR from Rotterdam in launching a European campaign against forced marriages in May 2008: the point is to speak out and state forcefully that such practices (like excision, honour crimes, and others) are against Islam.
Moreover, the psychological dimension in the debate over women should not be downplayed. The relationship to the West is a complex one: before, during, then after colonisation, the issue of women has been central to power relations and political as well as theological and cultural debates. This has fostered a kind of reflex reaction in the contemporary Muslim psyche: the less Western the discourse about women, the more it is perceived as Islamic, and conversely, the more Islamic it is, the more it should be restrictive and oppose Western permissiveness whose objective is supposed to be to undermine religion and morals. Such an attitude has often prevented Muslim scholars and intellectuals from undertaking an autonomous, rigorous critique from within, stemming from a concern for reconciling Muslims with their own message and its ends. The point is not to be naive about relations of domination but indeed to get rid of the fear and alienation that keep thought static in order to stand apart from the others and refuse their control. Refusing “Western” domination by betraying one’s own religious message is an even more dangerous form of alienation since, in the process of resisting, one’s critical capacity, concern for consistency, and creative energy are lost. One ends up being defined only through the others, through their negative mirror: here, psychology wins out over liberation.
It is therefore important to carry out in-depth critical work and encourage women to become involved and acquire the religious learning necessary to develop new feminine readings. Women must be present in the religious community’s decision circles, in organisations, in mosque managing bodies, and other places. Things should be shaken up so that women can recover their proper place, but women themselves must also get organised: they will achieve nothing if they retain a victim mind-set. It is obvious today that wherever women have had access to schooling, have received Islamic education, or have become involved at the community or social level, they perform better than men: they achieve better results, they are more committed, more rigorous, and more earnest. Facts and figures speak for themselves. This process must go on and offer women full access to civil society and to employment with demands that should be taken for granted: similar training, similar qualification mean getting the same salary, and job discrimination (because a woman is too young and will probably have a child,or because she is too old and does not fit with the youthful “image”) must be rejected and fought against. Whether or not one calls it feminist (I do not mind), this commitment for women’s legitimate rights can and must take place from within.
Tariq Ramadan, What I believe
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