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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.
A Muslim woman reads the Koran before Iftar, when Muslims break their fast, during the holy month of Ramadan at the historic Umayyad Mosque in Old Damascus August 26, 2009. Muslims around the world abstain from eating, drinking and conducting sexual relations from sunrise to sunset during Ramadan, the holiest month in the Islamic calendar. REUTERS/Khaled al-Hariri   (SYRIA SOCIETY RELIGION) - RTR274NK

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.

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