"Mohammed was a Feminist"

MJ: Who are the main people you have in mind as contributors?

AN: I’ve really been inspired by Khaled Abou El Fadl, a lawyer by training. He is one of the few scholars brave enough to come right out and acknowledge women’s rights to be imams, to both women and men. Reza Aslan, an Iranian immigrant who’s written a book called No god but God. He says very clearly that women are not obligated to cover their hair with a scarf, which is considered part of the Islamic code according to so many people. And he takes a brave stand in accepting homosexuality. Dr. Amina Wadud, the woman who lead the prayer in New York and Asma Barlas, another professor. They both have done these great readings of the Koran. Omid Safi, he has written a book on progressive Islam. In Malaysia, Zaina Anwar from Sisters in Islam. They’ve already challenged so much of the family law that denies women’s rights. Kecia Ali, she’s done really important work on sexuality issues in Islam. There’s a lot of really great work out there by great scholars of the day who are doing their piece of the pie. Now is the time to bring the pie together so that everybody can share it.

MJ: You mention a lot of men in your list. Do you think men have a particular role in Islamic feminism that is different from the role men have played in other feminist movements?

AN: It’s true that in a lot of western feminist movements, you see women working singularly from men. Suffragettes and the women’s rights movement in the 60s here, but when I think of the Islamic feminist movement, I think of a lot of men who are very much standing with the women. It really feels like in equal numbers. Women are catching up in the field because we were not given access to knowledge and encouraged into these studies and so these men are helping us and empowering us. They are men of conscience who are fed up with this assumption that they’re [entitled].

In our world the men stand with us. And they know that we need them and we know that we need them. Other men turn on them. They are ostracized, they’re mocked, they’re ridiculed. They go through their own hell for supporting us. But they back us up and we definitely are stronger because of it.

MJ: You’ve said before that “Intolerance toward women is like the canary in the coal mine for intolerance toward other people.”

AN: When we think about Islamic feminism, it is not just about women’s rights. It’s about a more progressive and tolerant expression of Islam in the world for all people. It’s about kindness and goodness to all people. Women’s rights is one aspect of it, it’s not the end-all, but I also think that the women’s issue is the strongest entry point that we’ve got to challenging extremism. You raise a woman’s issue and you get the backs of the conservatives up against the wall faster than just about any other issue in our community. It’s the fastest path that we’ve got to making change happen. If as women we stand up day in and day out, day after day, then we really force the extremists to confront their real ideas.

MJ: In what ways do you think U.S. Muslim women’s concerns differ from Muslim women in Africa and the Middle East?

AN: I think that we don’t have as much threat to our physical and economic livelihood as women in other parts of the world. But the continuum is the same. The pressures on women to fit into a certain image of a good Muslim girl is the same. The controls and rules are the same, but there are different degrees of it. So, in America, a father will threaten a daughter that he will disown her if she marries the American boyfriend and in Pakistan she faces acid thrown on her face. The power dynamic is the same, it just expresses itself differently.

MJ: What role do American Muslim women play in the international Islamic feminist movement?

AN: Personally I get so much of my inspiration from women in other countries, so I don’t feel like we are the leaders and I don’t agree with the notion that Americans can accomplish more or do more. These women are so far ahead of where we are as American Muslims in affirming and asserting their rights in the world. But I do think that what we can uniquely do here in America is mobilize and galvanize a lot of these ideas and resources. It’s a war of ideas. We are very well supported in this country by institutions, academic and nonprofit, that are already in the field endorsing women’s rights and tolerance. We have skills and resources from growing up in America to raise funds or build websites or publish papers or develop big picture plans. We can publish op-eds in newspapers that get wide circulation to send strong messages out to the world. The women in other communities have been the pioneers in this work. They’re putting out newsletters and guidebooks and media points, but I believe that a lot of the war right now is on getting the ideas out there through books and newspaper articles and interviews. In America we’ve got the machinery to do that.

MJ: Some critics have charged that Islamic feminism is unduly influenced by western social trends. And yet, women from the congress in Barcelona say that this is a movement coming from within Islam. Do you think that it’s strictly one or the other, or could it possibly be both?

AN: Talk to me 20 years ago and I had a complete sense of illegitimacy as an American Muslim. I felt like I wasn’t authentic. But I don’t understand and I don’t believe or subscribe to this idea that I don’t have a right to speak as a Muslim because I’m an American. I don’t speak Arabic, but Osama bin Laden does, and I don’t consider him a more authentic Muslim than I am. Being Muslim is to accept and honor the diversity that we have in this world, culturally and physically and linguistically, because that’s what Islam teaches, that we are people of many tribes. I think the American Muslim experience is of a different tribe than the Saudi Muslim world, but that doesn’t make us less than anyone else.

MJ: In that sense, when you look ahead to your idea for the Islamic Dream, why is collaboration among women from different countries so important?

AN: I think there’s probably going to be a lot of differences when it comes to implementation because that is going to be uniquely cultural. Communities are all going to evolve differently from each other, but at the conference we hit just about every hot button issue, like homosexuality and women imams, capital punishment, terrorism, sex, and I think in all of these, there’s consensus out there. What’s going to have to get worked out is developing where there’s common ground and then allowing places where there’s difference to get worked out over time.

MJ: And what about women and men who are not Muslim. What role do they have, if any?

AN: One of our greatest challenges here in America [is that] pogressives don’t always stand with the progressive Muslims because in the interest of freedom of religion and civil liberties and political correctness, they don’t want to offend cultural choices by Muslims. I know that people have gone to these interfaith sessions at different mosques and they see that the women end up in the basement, but they don’t want to challenge anyone because they think, “Oh, well this is your way.”

But we’re standing up for women in the community and we’re saying, “This isn’t our way, this isn’t the right way, this isn’t the Islamic way,” and yet it’s really hard for people who think of themselves at outsiders to weigh in. We have to evolve all of us. When we stand up against sexism and prejudice in a Muslim community, we’re standing up against ideas, not an entire group of people or the whole faith. We have to mature and the larger American progressive community needs to mature with us. Progressive Americans need to know that they really are needed in this struggle to encourage more inclusive and tolerant expressions of Islam in this world.