Muslim women pushing for reform

According to Victoria Brittain of the Guardian, a lack of awareness has hindered the growing international Islamic feminist movement. Brittain believes that the phenomenon of strongly Muslim, activist women should no longer be ignored.

Brittain advocates a different image of the current emerging movement in Islamic feminism, not only amongst the powers of conventional Islam but also in the western media. This is very crucial at present if Muslim women are to reclaim their rights.

In recent years, Islamic women activists’ campaigns have garnered significant achievements, but greater reforms are still needed, because, as Brittain writes, “Embattled Muslim women, suffering the burdens of the worst cultural attitudes to rape and adultery enshrined in medieval laws in Pakistan and Northern Nigeria; or the sexual violence and rolling back of their rights, unleashed by the war in Iraq; or the targeted killings of women activists in Afghanistan.”

Brittain follows up on the Egyptian writer Haifa Khalafallah’s challenge to all Muslim women to discuss the importance of promoting practical women’s human rights at a meeting next week in Brussels entitled “Towards an emerging Islamic feminist consciousness in Europe.”

Brittain argues that we need to be aware that injustice, inequality and the lack of freedom of thought have nothing to do with Islam. The Quran preaches gender equality, with the same rights to education and self-fulfillment afforded to men and women.

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