Women, Shari'a, and Oppression - Where are the Voices of Conservative Muslims?
"When we stay silent in the face of injustices, non Muslims begin to wonder if we really care about our women as much as we claim to", says American convert to Islam, Saraji Umm Zaid.

A lot of attention has been focused on the issue of Muslim women and human rights since September 11, almost all of it by non Muslims.  Once again, images of women swathed in black veils or blue burqas are de rigeur, as the media soberly reminds us that Muslim women are not considered equals to men in Islam, and that they are oppressed even by the moderate regimes in the Muslim world.

From the Muslims, we have one of two reactions.  The first is the reaction of the "liberal, reformist, secular" Muslims.  They believe that Shari'a oppresses women, and that we need to completely overhaul it, or toss out sections of the Qur'an that are "uncomfortable," or institute secular forms of government that separate the sacred from the legal all together.  These are the same Muslims who equate hijab with oppression, and who support the denial of free speech rights to "Islamists" (all the while, crying for their rights to free speech in countries where it is denied).  They take their political thought not from Islamic sources, but from feminism, socialism, and capitalism.   Naturally, it is to these Muslims that the Western media turns when it wants a "Muslim" perspective on "Muslim issues."

On the other side, we have the organizers of the mainstream conservative Muslims, the leaders of our civic societies, advocacy groups, and associations.  When presented with instances of women's oppression in the Islamic world, these Muslims, almost always men, respond defensively.  They cart out examples of women's oppression in the Western world, or worse, they address the issue by lecturing the questioner about the virtues of the Ideal Place of Women in Ideal Islam.  In other words, they treat the ideal that we are all aspire to as the reality on the ground.  Pressed into taking a stand on real life issues, they retreat in anger.  "That's culture, not Islam, it has nothing to do with me as a Muslim," they sniff.

Meanwhile, real Muslim women suffer at the hands of societies and governments who would harm them in the name of Islam.

Who speaks for them?  Most often, it is the United Nations, human rights groups, and feminist organizations, led by people who have no foundations of knowledge in Islam, and who often have a real antipathy for Islam.  While the Feminist Majority Fund was selling swatches of "burqa" and petitioning the government for action on behalf of Afghan women, the leaders of our Islamic societies stayed silent.  Publicly, many Islamic leaders and organizations disassociated themselves from the Taliban, but other than denying them entry into the Organization of Islamic Conferences (OIC), they took no action to petition the Taliban for change from an Islamic view, or form any sort of Islamic opposition.

Perhaps this is because when any Islamic organization or individual Muslim attempts to change or speak out about injustices towards Muslim women, the rest of the community circles the wagons.  These lone souls are labeled "radical feminists," and accused of attempting to undermine Islam.

Strangely, when a Muslim woman's Islamic rights are violated, many organizations are eager to speak out and petition.  For example, when Merve Kavacki was denied her seat in the Turkish Parliament because of her headscarf (and later stripped of her citizenship), Muslim groups were quick to condemn the Turkish government, as they should have.  In many Western Muslim circles, Merve has been elevated to a symbol of the struggle muhajabat women face in secular societies.

Yet there is a resounding silence when the issue being raised is Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), honor killings, forced marriages, the unequal application of hadd punishments on women, or the denial of education to girls and women.  All of these wrongs are perpetrated on women in the name of Islam.  While it is true that many of these violations occur across cultural and religious boundaries, the only action often taken by conservative Muslims is a condemnation of the action because it is "cultural" and not Islamic.  Meanwhile, women continue to be murdered and little girls continue to be mutilated.

This is not to say that conservative Muslims are always silent or keep their opposition at the vocal level.  In Jordan, conservative Muslims joined with liberals to rally for stricter punishments for men who kill in the name of honor.  In Africa, conservative sheikhs teamed up with women's rights advocates to educate people about the harms of Female Genital Mutilation.  These people get very little mention in the Western media, which, of course, paints the "Islamists" as the opponents of an enlightened, secular minority of liberal Muslims.

When questioned by co-workers and neighbors, the average run of the mill practicing Muslim is quick to condemn such practices, and lament that they occur at all.  Yet these same average Muslims are loathe to petition governments, or join groups calling for active change.  There is a sense that we don't want to speak too loudly about the horrific wrongs committed by our brothers and sisters in the name of Islam in front of non Muslims.  While keeping to the principal of covering your brother's shame is admirable, the fact of the matter is that their wrongs have been exposed, in the international media's spotlight.  And when we stay silent in the face of injustices, non Muslims begin to wonder if we really care about our women as much as we claim to.

About a year ago, a small band of conservative Muslim women, almost all of us from the West, came up with the idea of starting a Muslim women's human rights group, to petition and advocate for the rights of Muslim women as they are given in the Shari'a of Islam.  Although slow to start, we have managed to form a basis from which to work, and have taken up our first case.

Right now, a Muslim woman in Nigeria is under a death sentence from the Shari'a court for the crime of adultery.  The situation came to the attention of the authorities when the man who impregnated her decided to confess his crime to the police, rather than pay the child support that her father asked of him.  There are many glaring errors in the case, from a classical, "Orthodox" fiqh point of view.  These errors (which would aid the woman) are not coming from a "reformist reinterpretation" of Shari'a, these errors are so great that any of the qadis of the past would have thrown the case against her out.   During a similar case in Nigeria last year, a Muslim lawyer, Asifa Quereshi, documented the legal errors committed by the Shari'a court in the name of Islam.  She didn't use modern, secular legal sources, but instead based her arguments on the rulings of the scholars of the four Sunni madhabs.  Sadly, her analysis got little, if any attention, from the Shari'a courts of Nigeria, and from the Muslim community as a whole.

The response we have received so far, is somewhat encouraging, but it is also discouraging.  For example, we have received little support thus far for a petition to the Nigerian government on behalf of this woman.  One hesitates to send copies of the petition to masajid, since petitions or issues of women's rights are often shuffled under a paper pile or worse, dismissed with the lame excuse that raising such issues will cause anger and discomfort in the community. Meanwhile, the Muslim American establishment continues to enthusiastically promote voter registrations and petitions to the President against Israel's latest atrocities (and there's nothing wrong with that).

Sisters and brothers, it is time to wake up to reality.  While we often like to boast about the large size of our Ummah, the fact is that we are losing more hearts and minds everyday, due in large part to our silence about human rights abuses, especially those directed towards women.  These people will continue to turn to the secular philosophies promoted by those who do take the time to speak out on their behalf: the feminists, socialists, and secularists.

Prophet Mohammed, sallalahu aleyhi wa salaam, was mocked and assaulted because of his strong and courageous stance on the status of women.  He came with a message that lifted women up and gave them dignity.  Fourteen hundred years later, we have descended back into the dark pit of Jahiliya, and Muslim women around the world find themselves cast into the same slavery that the Prophet, sallalahu aleyhi wa salaam, was sent to liberate them from.

It does not make you a "radical feminist" to decry honor killings and volunteer for peaceful campaigns to educate and change laws.  Raising your voice against Female Genital Mutilation does not mean you want to "undermine Islam."  To the contrary, working against these injustices in the way of Allah is a manifestation of the desire to uplift Islam and the Muslim people.

When the Taliban decided to deny education to any girl over a certain age, it is the conservative Muslims, the ones who profess adherence to "Qur'an and Sunnah" that should have spoken the loudest against this.  The longer we stay silent, the more people, both Muslim and non Muslim, will begin to equate "Shar'ia" with the oppression of women.

We need to stop people who abuse the religion of God and His messenger, Mohammed, sallalahu aleyhi wa salaam.  We need to oppose those who would brutalize women in the name of Qur'an and Sunnah.  We need have jealousy for our religion, so that those who would abuse and misuse it realize that they will have no success and no headway under our vigilance.

The above article is © 2003 Saraji Umm Zaid.  Reprint permission should be sought from the author at  websister @ modernmuslima.com

[The email address has been broken up to prevent automatic harvesting for spam purposes.]

Read other articles by Saraji Umm Zaid at here.