Encounter with American Feminism: A Muslim Woman's View of Two Conferences

Author(s): Leila Ahmed

Source: Women's Studies Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 1/2, Looking Back, Moving Forward: 25 Years
of Women's Studies History (Spring - Summer, 1997), pp. 268-270
Published by: The Feminist Press at the City University of New York
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40005439
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Encounter with American
Feminism: A Muslim Woman's
View of Two Conferences
Leila Ahmed Summer 1980

April 1980. TheBarnard Conference."TheScholarand theFeminist"- my

first direct as opposed to page-mediatedencounter with American
feminism.And then it came home to me: how simple the one-dimen-
sional experience of reading: how easy,ordered, and amenable to
order it makesthings seem- coherent and amenable to coherence.
Sittingin that hall, listening to papersthat often clearlydrewon the
rhetoricalstrategiesof an oral tradition,quite differentfrom those in
scholarlywriting, even in that feminist scholarshipself-consciously
dismantlingthe rigiditiesof tradition;being awareof the responsesof
a highly- and diversely - responsiveaudience;strainingto catchverbal
shortcuts; sometimes clearlymissingnuancesthatreliedon a depth of
Americanexperience: all this makesit impossibleto respond to the
conferenceas a coherent event- not because zYwas incoherent,obvi-
but
ously, precisely because there wassuch a sense of vitality,ferment,
such a richnessand generalmanifoldnessto it- and a sense too of the
manifoldnessof feministstancesin America.
Myown interest being ThirdWorldwomen, I attended the work-
shop on "Classand Race Issuesin Women'sStudies."AngelaJorge,
treatingthe topic experientially,describedexperiences of the Black
Hispaniccommunityand related them to PuertoRicanculture,and
FlorenceHowethen outlinedrelevantdevelopmentsin women'sstud-
ies. Offeredconcurrentlywas"Perspectives on the Blackand Hispanic
Family," and, another I wassorry to miss,"Definingthe Erotic"from a
lesbianperspective.
Of courseit is only in the academy,formally,that the discussionof
such topics, relationsbetweenwomen, the erotic betweenwomen, is
new.Womenhavebeen discussingsuchtopicsamongthemselvesdown
through the ages, discussingthem at least in that vast arrayof non-
verbalwaysthat we have of "discussing"things (gestural language
being only the most obvious). I have a particularlyvividsense of this
becausein the societyin whichI grewup- in Cairo- elaborateunder-

268
Women'sStudiesQuarterly1997: 1 & 2 269

standings, "statements"about how women related to women, were

nevermade verballybut were signaledin an infinite numberof ways:
by silence sometimes,or by the kind of languagewith which we sur-
round a subject.Mysense too is thatmuch of whatwasthus conveyed
wasobliviousto, disregardingof, even running counter to the domi-
nantculture.Thus,it remainedinarticulate,"hidden,"not dangerous.
ThentheNWSASecondNational Conventionat Bloomington.Here too
I headedfor sessionson ThirdWorldwomen."TeachingaboutAfrican
Women":BrendaBerrian(Universityof Pittsburgh)showedthatcom-
parisonscould be made between women in Africaand ThirdWorld
womenin Americabylookingatwomenin parallelsituations - moving
from ruralto urbansettings.SusanRogers(Universityof Minnesota)
sharedoutlinesof her courses,notably"Comparative Studyof Women:
Womenin LiberationStruggles,China,Cuba,Mozambique,Guinea
Bissau."In anothersession,"Womenand Development:ThirdWorld,"
SureshtR. Bald (Universityof California/SantaCruz), not focusing
on particularsocietiesbut aiming at a theoreticaloverview,analyzed
consequences of political change for women in terms of a grid of
variables(typesof revolution,natureof struggle,ensuing economies,
culturalmatrices).Irene Thompson (Universityof Florida)spoke on
women in China.
Americaninterestin ThirdWorldwomen.Well, one thing had become
clearto me, readingthroughwomen'sstudiesmaterialsand attending
the conferences:I wasn'ta ThirdWorldwoman,or didn'tcount- was
invisible."ThirdWorldwomen"I nowcameto understand,couldmean
one of three things:first,it could mean minoritywomenin the United
States;second,it couldmeanPuertoRicanor Africanwomen (butwith
an excludingnotionof Africa,a funny-shaped shrunkencontinent- no
Egypt,Morocco,Sudan);third, it could mean a ThirdWorldthat had
achievedvisibilitythroughrevolution,as in Chinaor Cuba.
The women who seem to be excluded by these definitionsare the
Muslimwomen of the ThirdWorld- these are most particularlythe
invisibleones. Whenwe are seen, it is alwaysas Other,althoughno cul-
ture is more directlycontinuous with the Judeo-Christianthan the
Islamic,no partof the worldcloser to the (older) Westernworld.We
all knowthatJerusalemis sacredto Christian,Jew,Muslim.But do we
allowourselvesto become awareof the culturalimplicationsof this?
Thatif one could laythe blueprintsof culturalideologiesone overthe
Judaism,Islam- the lineswouldmostoftenmerge?
other- Christianity,
Is it this submerged resemblance, I wonder, this mirroringback in
differentculturalidiom of all the inbuiltinjusticesto women institu-
tionalizedin theirownsocieties,internalizedin themselves,thatmakes
it so necessaryfor us to be Other- makes difficult, such an uneasy
270 Women'sStudiesQuarterly1997: 1 & 2

thing, this looking at Islam?

One sessionat the NWSAConventiondid focus on Islam;the room
waspacked.The sessionitselfI foundbizarre."IslamandFeminism": no
dearthof topicsto whicha sessionwithsucha titlemightaddressitself-
fromthe law-reforms relatingto maritallife that"conservative"
Muslim
feministsare fightingfor,piecemeal,againstentrenchedresistance,to
the stanceof radicalfeministswho see Islamicideologyas fundamen-
tallyinimicalto women,believethatno mere reformcan be adequate,
and see resolutiononlyin radicalsocialchangeand the rejectionof that
ideology.Expectingthe panel to addresstopicswithinthatspectrum,I
waswhollynonplussedto find that the general thrustof the presenta-
tion wasthe mind-bogglingassertionthatIslamwasa feministreligion.
The panelistswere three Muslimwomen. The firstbegan by point-
ing out that Muslimwomen had had rights (to own property) only
recentlygainedbyWesternwomen- thus attemptingto establishthat
the Muslimworldhasn'talwaysbeen backwardcomparedto the West.
Butfrom then on the claimsmade for Islamand whata generallynice
"feminist" religionit wasseemedto me to growmore and more absurd.
Divorce, they said, had had to be bitterlyfought for in the West;in
Islamit has alwaysbeen available.(Availablefor men, theyshouldhave
said, since it depriveswomen of their childrenand can deprivethem
of shelter.Divorceis stillbitterlyfoughtfor,for women- in those coun-
trieswhere Islamis not too implacableeven to permita fight.)
Panelists also said that in Islam women and men are equal. But
womeninherithalfwhatmen do; twowomenmusttestifyfor everyone
man;men can havefour wives- the list of inequitiesis interminable.
TheysaidIslamwasa feministreligionbecauseit bannedthe murderof
girl-infants and,in permittingfourwives,it wasactuallybeingrestrictive,
previous custom allowingmore.All thisis standardMuslimapologetics
that we Muslimsgrew up with. What'salwaysleft out when we hear
"howit improved the condition of women"is that it improved it in
Arabia.Howcan I, howcan anyEgyptianwithanynotion of Egypt'spre-
Islamichistory,regardas anythingbut,for women,constrictiveand dis-
astrousin termsof lostrightsandfreedoms,the comingof monotheisms,
the conquestof Egyptby the Arabs,and its Islamicization? And yet all
this is not to denyIslam'svisionof dignity,justice, and equalityfor all,
though this vision has not been realized in the letter of its laws. . . .

Leila Ahmed studiedEnglish at CambridgeUniversityand is a teacherand

writer.