Islam & the Modern World · Men, Women & Gender

Where feminism came from

Handle with care. Handle with care: many women hear a critique of feminism as a critique of their rights. Name the rights Islam gives before you differ with anything.

In short

• 1.Feminism has waves and internal disagreement; treating it as one thing guarantees a bad conversation.
• 2.Early demands — property, education, legal personhood, protection from violence — are rights Islam gave in the seventh century.
• 3.Islam's disagreement is with the later claim that the sexes are interchangeable and that no obligations attach to either.

The claim being examined

Feminism is presented as a single movement that liberated women from religion, including from Islam.

The Islamic position

Islam grants women rights that Western law reached only in the modern era, and judges every movement by its claims one at a time rather than as a whole.

Analysis

The conventional periodisation is useful. First-wave feminism (roughly 1840s-1920s) pursued suffrage and legal personhood; in England, married women could not own property in their own right until the Married Women's Property Acts of 1870 and 1882. Second-wave feminism (1960s-1980s) addressed workplace discrimination, domestic violence and reproductive questions. Third and fourth waves brought intersectionality and, in some strands, the claim that gender itself is entirely socially constructed. The movement contains vigorous internal argument at every stage. The Islamic response should be equally differentiated. A Muslim woman held independent property in her own name from the seventh century, inherited by fixed Qur'anic shares, kept her own surname, could contract her own business — Khadijah, may Allah be pleased with her, was the Prophet's employer before she was his wife — and her consent was required for marriage. On education, the report that seeking knowledge is an obligation on every Muslim (Sunan Ibn Majah 224) is graded variously but the practice is beyond dispute: Aisha, may Allah be pleased with her, is among the most prolific transmitters of hadith, and Muhammad Akram Nadwi's al-Muhaddithat documented thousands of women scholars of hadith across Islamic history. Where Islam differs is on the metaphysics: it affirms equal worth and accountability before God (Q 33:35, Q 4:124) while assigning differentiated obligations.

From the Qur'an

From the Sunnah

Sources

Muhammad Akram Nadwi, al-Muhaddithat: The Women Scholars in Islam (2007) · Married Women's Property Act 1882 · Muhammad Akram Nadwi, al-Muhaddithat: The Women Scholars in Islam (Interface, 2007)

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