Contemporary Islamic views support reform in favor of women
The religious feminist movement has succeeded in improving the status of women in some parts of the Muslim world, while in others, there is resistance to any change regarding women’s rights.
In the 20th century and until its peak in the 1970s, religious feminist movements based on nonpatriarchal interpretations of holy texts started appearing in the world. These movements were different from the prevalent secular female currents in the West in that they opted for a religious discourse founded on the texts of clerics, using religious reasoning within the framework of theological and jurisprudential discourse.
This phenomenon, which was not limited to Muslims but included Christian and Jewish communities, among others, came to be known as feminist theology.
In the Muslim world particularly, although feminist theology remained controversial and dubious to secularists, it has left a positive impact on society in the past decades. The religious feminist movement's internal convictions and changes come from within Islamic thought and are not influenced by the West, which would stir sensitivities in non-Western societies. Some religious governments, like Iran's, adopted many reforms that stemmed from the religious vision of feminist movements for women’s rights; while other religious governments, like that of Saudi Arabia, showed strict resistance to any sort of reform to improve women’s position in society.
Islamic feminism aims to fulfill three objectives. First, it seeks to criticize the masculine discourse that dominates Islamic theology and literature in general. Second, it aims to present a suitable interpretation and explanation of the equal rights of women from the Quran and Islamic traditions. Third, it works to criticize and rectify Sharia interpretations that persecute women and undermine their rights.
