After Muslims conquered the Iranian Empire, parts of the Greek Byzantine Empire and Hindu India, they were ruling over populations whose women were restricted to household activities and child rearing. Even as the locals embraced Islam, they did not give up all their social practices. And local jurists writing new Islamic laws began “interpreting the Qur’an in a manner that reflected their older cultural value system,” writes Guity Nashat.26

Women were relegated to a subordinate role by the end of the tenth century. By the thirteenth century, polygamy and the seclusion and segregation of the sexes had become common. “The position of woman sank to the low level we find in the Arabian Nights,” wrote Philip Hitti in his classic History of the Arabs. “There the woman is represented as the personification of cunning and intrigue, and as the repository of all base sentiments and unworthy thoughts.”27

Women were veiled and relegated to the zenanah (women’s quarters) or, in the case of the debauched rich, to the harem. They were shut out of the public realm, including the mosque, which is why they took to visiting the shrines of Sufis and mystics where they were welcome, and still are. Travel through any Muslim country where Sufi shrines are allowed — they are not in the more puritanical states — and you will find almost as many women as men pilgrims.

The restrictions on women, instead of relaxing with the passage of time, kept getting worse. The separation of the world of men and women was complete well before the European colonization of Muslim lands. This is one area where Muslims cannot blame the West for their woes. In fact, some of the more regressive policies toward women have emerged in the past two or three decades, with the growth of fundamentalism among Muslims. But fundamentalists are being challenged by a new generation of Islamic feminists.

ISLAMIC FEMINISM

There are two main discourses on Muslim women — one largely but not exclusively among Muslims and the other, more dominant, in the Western media. “To the Muslim ear, [Western] feminist discourse smacks of colonial imperialism,” writes Waleed Aly, a Melbourne lawyer active in the Islamic Council of Victoria in Australia. “Feminism and imperialism seemed to have some kind of undisclosed memorandum of understanding. Feminists only defend a woman’s right to choose when she chooses to renounce Islamic norms but not when she chooses to adopt them.”28

As for the debate among Muslims, a growing number of women and men do recognize the patriarchy that prevails in the Muslim world, and they are battling it. It is difficult to pigeonhole them, since feminism can mean different things to different people. They include secular-minded Muslim feminists living in the West as well as in Muslim lands, who tend to think along the same lines as Western feminists. Among them are Muslim women estranged from Islam for intellectual or personal reasons, whose bitter anti-Islamic tirades are lapped up by the media.