After divorce or widowhood, women in the first Muslim societies married and remarried without the disparagement of social stigma. It was not until the Abbasid era, upon the conquering of immensely patriarchal cultures and the expansive harems that arose in consequence, that the contractual rights of monogamy enforced by women began to erode, and the …
Category: privilege
On the Compatibility of Islam and Feminism: A Response to the Goatmilk Debate
I received two emails yesterday inquiring as to what I thought about the Goatmilk debate on the compatibility of Islam and feminism. Seeing as the argument of the opposition was a collection of the usual pedestrian perspectives that conclude the two are irreconcilable, I hadn’t planned on writing about what I’ve already addressed over a …
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unfortunate.
A while ago in a forum a Muslim man attempted to construct an argument by announcing he “wouldn’t be surprised” if I were raped or abused and were blaming Islam (?) for this instead of those who had inflicted the injustices upon me (and thus obviously any interpretation I make is a result of hysteria). …
The Western Muslim Woman, Part III
The last installment. This little series has felt quite tentative, possibly because I’d attempted to discuss an expansive subject in three parts. An appreciative ‘thank you’ to anyone who tolerated the disorganized writing and disheveled thoughts between essays and finals. I hope that somewhere in the midst of it all I managed to make some …
The Western Muslim Woman, Part I: Constructions of Race and Appropriation
I’d like to say that finals are in a couple of weeks, and though the actual testing itself will not be keeping me from this blog (I can’t study even if I try) the number of research papers due by the end certainly will. Entries until mid-December may be uncharacteristically infrequent or brief. Lately I’ve …
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Internalization and Self-Sacrifice
Tragically, as many Muslim women both wordlessly comply and actively contribute to systems of oppression established by men i.e. choosing to stand behind barriers and believing that staying in an abusive relationship is a duty, the feminist is faced with what appears to be a conflict: because patriarchy dictates that one woman must represent all …
Islamic History and the Women You Never Hear About: The Rights of Girls
When Umm Salama, a woman famous for her intelligence and sound judgment and argumentative nature, asked the Prophet “Why are men mentioned in the Qur’an and why are we not?” she did not only challenge the pre-Islamic customs that were abrasive to women and had not yet been overturned by the unfinished Revelations, but almost …
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the fatal feminist 