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Velvet Jihad: Muslim Women’s Quiet Resistance to Islamic Fundamentalism

admin — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Central to Islamic scripturalist assertion, or "Islamic fundamentalism" as it is often referred to, is the notion of the ideal Muslim woman, whose status, roles and functions are defined by rules and norms deriving from a narrow, restrictive and patriarchal reading of the Islamic scripturalist tradition. The ‘ideal’ Muslim woman in Islamic ‘fundamentalist’ discourse is defined as being submissive to male authority, while being modest and virtuous in a patriarchally-defined sense. She is to be carefully controlled and monitored, at all times, by patriarchal authority. The spread of Islamic ‘fundamentalism’ throughout Muslim communities has had seriously negative consequences for Muslim women’s rights and status. Not surprisingly, groups of Muslim women across the world have begun mobilizing against Islamic ‘fundamentalism’, some on a secular basis, using secular human rights arguments, others, working within a broadly-defined Islamic tradition, employing Islamic arguments for achieving gender equality and challenging patriarchy and misogyny in the name of Islam.

Velvet Jihad provides a fascinating general picture of the status and conditions of women in Muslim communities around the world faced with the challenge of Islamic scripturalist assertion. Shirazi admits that patriarchy is, of course, not a Muslim-specific phenomenon, but argues that the forms that it takes in Muslim communities and Muslim-majority countries makes it particularly problematic and difficult to oppose in that it is generally sought to be legitimised in the name of religion. Hence, challenging such patriarchy is a particularly arduous task as it is easily branded as a challenge to religion itself. The book catalogues a long list of hurdles and restrictions that millions of Muslim women across the world are subjected to in the name of Islam.

With abysmal levels of education, and being economically heavily dependent on their men folk, it is not surprising that vast numbers Muslim women simply have no choice but to accept their lot. Many, as Shirazi tells us, even accept this as mandated by Islam itself. Yet, Shirazi tells us there is what she colourfully calls a "velvet jihad" astir in across numerous Muslim communities spearheaded by bold Muslim women who are now vocally and stridently challenging all forms of oppression in the name of Islam. She likens it to the "velvet revolution," a peaceful movement of resistance that brought down communist dictatorships in eastern Europe in the late 1980s.

What, then, are the means that assertive Muslim women (and there are many, as Shirazi documents) are today adopting to fight patriarchy and misogyny in the name of Islam? They fall into two broad categories. Some Muslim women, who may be defined as "Muslim feminists," are seeking to oppose patriarchal laws, rules, and practices using modern human rights arguments, such as secularism, freedom, justice, and democracy, linking up with reformers, both men and women, both within their communities and countries and at the international level, to highlight the oppression of women in the name of Islam. Shirazi describes numerous such Muslim women’s groups across the world which are using this approach, with varying degrees of success. This strategy might not, however, have much resonance with religious-minded Muslims, who could easily be made to be believe that such arguments for women’s rights are not just "un-Islamic," but, rather, represent, as it is often put, an "anti-Islamic, Western conspiracy." Indeed, that precisely is what Islamic conservatives and radicals never tire of arguing.

A more culturally-rooted, and, therefore, for many practising Muslims, perhaps a more acceptable way of shaping demands for gender equality and of critiquing misogyny and patriarchy in the name of Islam, Shirazi points out, is represented by the phenomenon often labeled as "Islamic feminism." Not all the women (and men) who are engaged in articulating an Islamic feminist discourse and politics might, however, identify with that label, given the political and ideological baggage associated with the term feminism. Be that as it may, Islamic feminism, Shirazi shows by drawing on empirical evidence from extensive fieldwork in Africa, Asia, Europe, and America as well as a massive corpus of literature available on the Internet, is today a growing challenge to the authoritarian, deeply-patriarchal versions of Islam zealously upheld both Islamic conservatives and ‘fundamentalists’, who, despite their differences, are almost unanimous on the "women’s question."

Citing the works—both literary as well as practical—of a vast number of Muslim women scholars and activists as they seek to counter patriarchy in the name of Islam, Shirazi concludes that their valiant efforts, derided and fiercely opposed by powerful patriarchal forces, truly herald the arrival of a velvet jihad, one that can play a key role in not just championing Muslim women’s rights but also in fashioning more compassionate and just understandings of Islam while critiquing and standing up to violent, authoritarian, patriarchal mullahs and Islamists who claim to represent Islamic authenticity. That, in short, is what this inspiring book is all about.

A longer, more in-depth version of this review can be found at CounterCurrents

Written by: Yoginder Sikand, August 19th 2010

Witnessing Suburbia: Conservatives and Christian Youth Culture

admin — Wed, 06 May 2009 16:51:00 +0000

By Eileen Luhr

University of California Press

The short disclaimer is this: I grew up in a family filled with the Holy Spirit. My grandfathers were, respectively, a theology professor and a youth and music minister. One of my uncles, after making his name founding a Phoenix-area megachurch in the '90s, currently works as a professional church-grower, teaching other pastors how to rapidly expand their soon-to-be behemoth congregations of believers. I have attended international youth conventions and camp meetings, and on family vacations, we used to visit landmarks like Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral and the Christian DisneyLand, Knott’s Berry Farm. Now agnostic and estranged from most of my family, I nevertheless find that studying my roots is both personally enlightening and a crucial component of understanding modern cultural warfare in the United States.

In Witnessing Suburbia, Eileen Luhr traces the suburbanization of modern evangelism, exploring how evangelical Christians have become increasingly consumption-oriented and have expertly engaged in a “Christianization” of popular culture. With the 1980's Christian exoduses to the suburbs came a two-part evolution of identity. In addition to staking their exurb areas as heathen-free, family-centric zones, suburban Christians also became focused on the individualization of living space. Believing piety for the larger world must first be learned at home, evangelical Christians became some of the strongest defenders of “homeowner rights.” Many Christians were among the first to adopt doctrines of self-reliance and personal responsibility. Value of the physical home and the values that existed in those homes became inextricably linked.

As many suburban Christians staked their physical territory, large groups of those believers also became engaged in cultural activism to widely promote their home-grown ideals. In order to reclaim public space for sacred values, a number of Christian groups decided to take an anthropological missions-based approach: by investigating and becoming one with secular culture, it would be possible to infiltrate and influence. One aspect of this political campaigning took root in deconstructing rock and heavy metal music. Convinced of music’s duality—weapon of the devil or of Jesus, never neutral—a number of evangelical Christians believed they had found the ultimate battleground on which to wage war for the souls of the unsaved.

The most fascinating part of Luhr’s analysis—which is difficult to quantify, as there are many enthralling subsections within deeply researched chapters of multilayered histories—is the contradiction between how evangelical adults relate to their youthful counterparts. Seen both as needing protection and also as active leaders in religious reformation, an enormous spiritual burden has long been placed on young people. Perhaps this alone explains why religious teens have at times turned to heavy metal, albeit Christian in nature.

Throughout her deconstruction of religious heavy metal, Luhr details many Christian activist mainstream successes of the past three decades, including the rise of Focus on the Family and the anti-porn 7-Eleven boycotts of the mid-1980s. (Ever wonder why you can’t get Hustler at an American 7-Eleven? Thank an evangelical Christian.) Both positioning themselves as cultural saviors and persecuted martyrs, evangelicals were able to balance a number of contradictions in their public campaigns. Anything that served to set them further apart from the mainstream reinforced their outsider status; in reality, major Christian organizations and networks were growing rapidly and gaining immense cultural power. Yet within these larger contexts, alternative Christian culture warriors were also engaged in their own rebranding of their message. You can love Jesus and also love to rock.

From Christian zines of the '80s to the success of metal bands like Stryper, Luhr expertly explores this specific counterculture within the dominant Christian activism of the past twenty-five years. Academic in content and tone, Luhr’s writing is captivating in its intellectual scope and in the ways it ties together complex concepts. Particularly engaging for reformed believers, Witnessing Suburbia is a fascinating and informative page-turner.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, May 6th 2009

Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the Heartland

admin — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 17:09:00 +0000

Edited by Joshua Frank, Jeffrey St. Clair

AK Press

As we enter the final countdown to the 2008 U.S. Presidential election, we will hear political pundits talk in red- and blue-state terms. The shorthand goes like this: blue states are progressive and urban, while red states are conservative and rural. And those purple states? Well, forget about those states; they're the bisexuals of electoral politics. We just don't know what to do with them. (wink)

As someone who has spent most of her life participating in radical social movements in the red states I call home, I was hoping Joshua Frank and Jeffrey St. Clair's edited volume, Red State Rebels, would dispel the myth that activism is something that only exists on the coasts. To this end, the authors were successful. Within these 300+ pages, short, easy-to-read essays reveal that resistance to American hegemony comes in many forms.

For almost a hundred years, the farmers of North Dakota have been engaging in non-corporate models of doing business. From buying gasoline from cooperative gas stations to selling their agricultural products to producer cooperatives, the farmers of North Dakota have been sticking it to "the corporate man" for some time. And now, in the twenty-first century, these farmers are winning the fight against Monsanto's genetically-engineered (GE) seed and corporate greed - not for environmental reasons, but for economic ones! When Monsanto started punishing farmers for brown-bagging (replanting seed from their own harvest, rather than buying new seed), farmers organized and offered Monsanto the first anti-GE wheat campaign organized by American farmers. Because farmers were the organizers of the movement, Monsanto was forced out of the state's wheat production, teaching us all an important lesson in corporate resistance: kill the demand for a product, and the corporations will leave.

This issue of farmers resisting corporate greed is just one of the issues presented to us in this forty-three essay volume. Written in an accessible, investigative journalism style, these essays educate readers about all sorts of issues affecting rural America: the depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer, the cost of using your First Amendment rights in front of conservative police, polluted land left from industry long gone, and resistance to upscale resorts attempting to destroy nature in order to bring city-folk out into the former wilderness. Many essays focus on individuals who experience repression for being the "opinionated weirdo" in town—a common target for rural law enforcement.

Except occasionally, most of the essays focus on environmental and land issues. And while this is not overly surprising considering the environmentalist backgrounds of both of the co-editors, it unfortunately upholds the idea that red states are entirely rural, which they are not. Not a single essay looks at activist organizing efforts in college towns, a place where many red state rebels find solace and build communities of support to resist becoming the lone weirdo target. Instead red state rebels are painted as solitary fighters, taking on "the man" or law enforcement with a rugged individualist fervor.

Also, with the exception of one article on rebuilding New Orleans, this volume skips over activist struggles in urban cities. Unfortunately, even when these articles deal with rural issues faced by people of color, the authors fail to embed their stories within a critical race or anti-racist framework. Few articles speak about gender issues and none even begin to touch on queer issues. Yes, there are articles that include people of color, women, and GLBTQ people, but there is no critical analysis of race, gender, and sexuality.

Despite these flaws, this edited volume is a must-read for those interested in buffing up their knowledge of grassroots resistance across the Heartland. Though the book too narrowly focuses on rural land and environmental issues, this content is especially thought-provoking and offers many new ideas for activist tactics. Since it's not written from an over-the-top radical or single ideological perspective, and since nowhere does the volume pretend that Democrats are all good and Republicans are all not good, this book would make an excellent gift for a friend or family member you feel needs to hear about resistance to the status quo.

Written by: Ailecia Ruscin, October 15th 2008