Islamism and feminism are diametrically opposed worldviews. Arguably, Islamism is accused of sabotaging women’s emancipation, while feminism strives to liberate women from the constraints of patriarchy. Although both have gender at the heart of their activism and projects, being an Islamist and being a feminist are different matters. Many believe a combination of the two is implausible, but it is, however, possible if one is prepared to accept that there are multiple feminisms and Islamisms in the world today.
Feminism, a movement with its origins in the struggle of women in the West for political, economic and social equality, has today fractured into multiple camps. There are, for example, the older feminists with roots in radical feminism who wanted to free women not only from entrenched religious, legal and political constraints, but also from the newer exploitation associated with capitalism, hyper-neoliberalism and the consumer femininity of cosmetic surgery and shopping. This position is now giving way to a kind of liberal feminism in which women are drawn into liberal economic precincts as a show of fulfilling themselves.
When Western feminists looked toward their sisters in other cultures, they were baffled by the persistent exclusion of women, their covered bodies and their inability to challenge masculine domination. They vowed to liberate these women in ways that would put them on similar footing with their counterparts in the West. That project was rather dubious to start with, given its association with older colonial discourses, Orientalist positions and messianic undertones targeting women, especially in the Muslim world.
A few feminists came to the realization that women are not an undifferentiated homogenous mass, but the products of class, race, ethnicity and other hierarchies and affiliations. They acknowledged that a universal globalized feminism associated with international domination and inequality between nations might not solve the problem of exclusion across cultures and deliver the desired equality.
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