Content area
Full text
(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)
Religion and Secularism
Despite much research over the last few decades on the subject of feminism in Islam, our familiarity with "Islamic feminismâ[euro] is still minimal. Given this situation, Margot Badran's Feminism in Islam: Secular and Religious Convergences is a particularly welcome addition to the literature on the subject. Badran explains that whereas Westerners have assumed feminism in Islam to be "non-existentâ[euro] and an oxymoron, in the East it has been viewed "as another form of Western assault upon [Muslim] culture, and . . . a blasphemy to religionâ[euro] (p. 1). At the outset of her book, Badran differentiates between Western feminisms and Muslim women's feminisms, which have been termed "secular feminismâ[euro] and "Islamic feminism,â[euro] respectively (p. 2). She then examines how in the Muslim world "secular feminismâ[euro] has been "action-orientedâ[euro] and emerged as a social movement "in the context of a secular territorial nation-state composed of equal citizensâ[euro] (p. 3) regardless of religious affiliation, whereas "Islamic feminismâ[euro] emerged as a new discourse grounded in independent investigation and interpretation of the Quran and religious texts (ijtihad). Badran's main argument, however, is that the emergence of "Islamic feminismâ[euro] in Muslim countries did not indicate the nonexistence of "secular feminism,â[euro] even as gender equality has been approached differently there.
According to Badran, secular feminism in the Muslim world focused on the enforcement of gender equality in public spaces while complying with the...