Beyond Feminism and Islamism

Gender and Equality in North Africa

Doris H. Gray

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780857735034
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Are women in North Africa and the Middle East 'feminist'? Or is being a Muslim incompatible with feminism? Is there such a thing as 'Islamic feminism'? Through interviews with Moroccan activists and jurists - both male and female - and by situating these interviews within their socio-political and economic contexts, Doris Gray addresses these questions. By doing so, she attempts to move beyond the simple bifurcation of 'feminist' and 'Islamist' to look at the many facets of internal gender discourse within one Muslim country, allowing for a more nuanced understanding of the discussion on women's rights in the Muslim world in general. By marking out a 'third way' that looks beyond 'feminism' and 'Islamism', Gray presents religion and faith not as blocking gender equality but as a source of inspiration to explore new ways of conceiving modernity. While Western models are taken into consideration, within Morocco the men and women involved in this 'third way' of understanding gender and equality inevitably negotiate internal tensions between what has been dubbed 'tradition' and 'modernity', thus incorporating national and cultural identity, post-colonialism and religious principles into their gender discourse. Examining issues such as gender equality, gender justice, abortion and gay rights, Gray explores the nexus of gender, religion and democracy in modern Morocco, and the ways in which different groups understand these ideas. Many of the world's pressing twenty-first century problems are embodied within Morocco's borders: tensions between the West and the Muslim world, minority rights, migration, the role of religion in a modern society and the issue this book is chiefly concerned with - women's rights. The status and the role of women is one of the most hotly debated topics throughout the Middle East and North Africa, and this is particularly visible through this discussion of what it means to engage with and promote feminist thought and actions in the region.

CHAPTER 1

AND GOD CREATED EVE . . .

The quest for women’s rights and equality is commonly associated with the West. In the United States, Germany, Great Britain, Nordic nations, and other countries around the world, human rights advocacy groups and feminist movements have pushed for the past 50 years to create gender-egalitarian societies. As a result, in the United States, for example, women now make up 50 per cent of the workforce. Women not only constitute the majority of university graduates, they also can expect to find jobs commensurate with their education. The British weekly The Economist called women’s empowerment ‘the biggest social change of our times’ and finds this societal transformation all the more remarkable because it ‘has been achieved with only a modicum of friction’.¹ Thus, relative gender equality has been accomplished in the West without causing any significant social unrest or resulting in an anarchic, disorderly society.² Today, whatever their religious, political, or ideological leanings, not many men or women would advocate turning back the clock and relegating women solely to their traditional roles of mother and/or housewife. The benefits of gender equality to society are obvious – with few exceptions – to all citizens.

There is one arena in Western countries that has successfully resisted gender equality, however. While anti-discrimination laws restrict blatant gender bias in the secular sphere, the same cannot be said of the religious domain. Despite laws that prohibit discrimination in the workplace, a woman has no legal grounds on which to sue the Catholic Church, for example, for denying her the right to become a priest. Secular civil rights laws do not apply within the confines of a religious denomination. Thus, churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques may – and do – discriminate based on gender, sexual orientation, and occasionally race, without the threat of legal sanctions. Exceptions also are extended to privately funded institutions affiliated with religious denominations. As recently as the year 2000, Bob Jones University, a Christian college and seminary located in Greenville, South Carolina, that seeks to ‘develop Christ-like character’ in its students, banned interracial dating. Bob Jones University does not receive federal funds and therefore is not required to adhere to civil rights laws.³

In Western countries, the system of separation of church and state makes it possible for officially recognized religious organizations to be shielded from laws that apply to the public sphere, and has led to the view that religion is a private matter. Religious affiliation or identity is seen as a matter of choice; if one does not like the discriminatory practices of the Catholic Church, for instance, one can leave it and join another religious denomination. The separation of church and state gives the state limited legal influence over religious matters and vice versa, leaving individuals with the freedom to practise their faith in most any way they choose. This does not mean that the interests of church and state do not overlap and intersect. Perennial disputes arise as to how the US Constitution applies to matters closely linked to religious convictions, such as abortion, school prayer, or more recently gay marriage – none of which are explicitly addressed in that founding document. Because legislation on such issues cannot be based on religious teachings, proponents seek justification for their respective positions in the Constitution. Naturally, there are distinct differences among Western countries. Although in the United States explicit pronouncements of faith are generally frowned upon in the workplace, among strangers, and in the classroom, religion is still a topic addressed with much greater ease there than in Western Europe.

In the United States, the Jeffersonian principle of separation of church and state has enabled feminists to promote a women’s rights agenda without having to defer to religious dogma and practices. According to the First Amendment of the US Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Conversely, religious institutions and authorities may hold little sway in legal discourse on women’s rights, since gender equality generally is conceptualized within the framework of human and civil rights. In Morocco, however, religion and the state are more closely intertwined.

Islam as state religion

In much of the Muslim world, the demarcation between religion and state is either non-existent or much less obvious than in Western countries. Changes to laws and societal norms must be consistent with religious doctrine in most Muslim-majority nations. In Morocco, Islam is the state religion, and the Moroccan monarch has the dual function of head of state and Amir al-Mu’minin, or ‘Commander of the Faithful’, making him both the political ruler and the highest religious authority in the land.⁴ In addition, he carries the title of sherif, meaning descendant of the Prophet Mohammed. His rulings are taken as sacred and he is believed to enjoy special baraka (divine blessing and grace) by virtue of his lineage and office. Thus, religion, the state, and the law are officially connected in Morocco. In the absence of a central authority figure for all Muslims worldwide, the Moroccan king has the right to proclaim new religious interpretations of sacred texts for his country.

The importance of Islam for national cohesion in Morocco is paramount because religion is a central marker of national distinction. Though religion, culture, and customs are closely intertwined in any country, in Morocco there is an official link between religion, the state, and the law. This link makes Morocco different from countries with separation of religion and state where religious beliefs may influence matters of state but cannot be their explicit basis. The absence of a barrier between state and religion in Morocco is also reflected in daily life, where religion is anything but a private matter.

In most of the Western world it is unseemly for a stranger to inquire about a person’s religious convictions, while in Morocco this is quite common. Foreigners from Europe or the United States often find it unsettling that a Moroccan would ask – within moments of becoming acquainted – about their faith. In Morocco, religion is not a highly private topic; to the contrary, it is one of the most common themes in daily conversation. Religion plays an important role in national discourse, in private and in public life, and is probably the single biggest factor in defining Morocco’s national identity. This is not to say that religion does not play a major role in other parts of the world, but the degree to which there is consensus in Morocco on the importance of Islam, as a marker of both personal and national identity, cannot be overstated.

Though there is no separation of religion and state in Morocco, however, one can identify a demarcation between the public and the private spheres of people’s lives. Whereas one’s private life is conducted according to clear codes and norms and within well-defined relationships, male–female interaction in the public sphere is marked by an absence of particular norms and rules. In general, then, the public sphere is considered a male domain, the private sphere a female one. Sons show respect to their mothers, aunts, female cousins, and sisters within the home, yet once out in the street those same men may whistle, harass, and affront women. Similarly, women may defer or even submit to their husbands, brothers, or fathers in the private domain, but once out in public, where unrelated men and women mingle freely, these same women can become ferocious negotiators with male vendors in the market, or vigorously push and shove their way to the front of the line (more of a clump, really) at a post office, bank, or bus stop. Conceptualizing the Muslim world through the binary lens of the public versus private sphere actually reflects more the Western tendency to categorize than the reality of life in a Muslim-majority country, where gender-related behaviour is fluid and depends on context. Still, flawed as they are, categories do provide a useful tool for the purpose of analysis.

The boundary between public and private becomes even more blurred when the state interferes in previously unheard-of ways on private matters, such as when it enacts new laws regulating private behaviour, like those that render domestic violence a crime. Domestic violence legislation undermines the established patriarchy and traditional hierarchies in a country, as it eliminates a man’s right to behave violently towards his wife, thus narrowing the range of acceptable behaviour of the men in a family. In Morocco today, criminalizing domestic violence is a hot topic and one of critical importance in expanding women’s rights.

Patriarchy

A central feature in the quest for gender equality and justice is the dismantling of patriarchal structures. Most female Moroccan activists across the spectrum, from Islamists to secular or liberal women’s rights advocates, embrace this pursuit because patriarchy is seen as the major stumbling bloc to the advancement of women’s rights. When using the term patriarchy in this book, I refer to the work of Allan Johnson, who described four principal aspects of patriarchy:

1. Male domination: Most prestigious and powerful roles are held by men.

2. Obsession with control: Women are devalued and subjected to physical and psychological control. Violence or fear of violence is present in women’s everyday life because of ideological need for men’s control, supervision and protection.

3. Male identified: Most aspects of society that are highly valued and rewarded are associated with men and identified with male characteristics. Any other attributes that are less valued and rewarded are associated with women.

4. Male-centricity: Public attention (e.g. media, public spaces) is often granted to men and women are placed in the background and on the margins.⁵

At issue here is the superior social status associated with maleness and the abuses such superior status allows. As the name suggests, patriarchy (from the Latin word patriarch, meaning father) is experienced in the smallest unit of society, the family, and extends outwards to the larger society. Patriarchal structures also hinder genuine solidarity among women, and are reinforced through an educational system in which boys and girls are taught gendered rules for acceptable behaviour. Nedjma Plantade, an anthropologist of Maghrebi descent, described the aims of traditional North African education with regard to gender roles:

It is clear that educational rules have the following goals: for a boy to become a man endowed with three fundamental qualities: honesty, family values and disinterest in women and sexuality, for girls to become obedient women, submissive, polite, respectful and self-effacing.⁶

Plantade also argued that in North African societies, because a woman’s standing in the community is under constant scrutiny and observation and her value derives from approval by men, women tend to view other women as rivals rather than as potential allies.⁷ Such competition between women is evident in contemporary rivalries between the leaders of various Moroccan women’s associations, be they Islamist, secular, or in-between. Across the board, disagreement often exists based not on some larger philosophical outlook on gender but on conflicts of personality both within and between secular and religious activist groups. Regardless of such differences, however, the gender discourse is always situated within the context of Morocco’s Muslim identity. Though secular women’s rights associations were instrumental in passing the landmark 2004 Personal Status Code reform – a topic to which we shall return later in this chapter – today they often find themselves at odds with an increasingly popular performance of religious observance among women.

Secular associations refer to organizations that use universal human rights as their guiding principle in advocating for women’s rights. This is not to say that the Moroccan women who lead such associations do not value or practise their religion. When speaking of Islamists in this book, I mean individuals, both male and female, and organizations that use the religion of Islam as their primary reference point. Islamists in Morocco are not a uniform group; instead, different Islamist organizations hold widely differing views depending on their particular interpretation of the sacred scriptures. In Morocco, Islamist pertains primarily to non-violent religious activists. Though there are small criminal groups that have appropriated Islam to justify their actions, these are rejected by the vast majority of Moroccans, non-violent Islamists included. Where appropriate, I use the terms Muslim culture and Muslim-majority countries instead of Islamic culture or Islamic countries because it is humans who create cultural patterns and states, and their views and practices change according to eras and to societies. Modern challenges are posed to and by Muslims and not to Islam as a faith.⁸

The West’s obsession with Muslim women

One of the main challenges faced by Moroccan society is the status and role of women. Today, the most intense discourse about ‘the woman question’ actually occurs within Muslim-majority countries like Morocco. Such discussion often revolves around the role of individual agency versus the importance of maintaining collective cohesion. Significant differences on this issue exist among such Muslim-majority countries as Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Turkey, Mauritania, Mali, and Indonesia. Even within the North African region, attitudes about women’s rights differ from Tunisia to Algeria to Morocco and are manifest in vibrant debates within each country. The Muslim world is not a monolithic bloc, nor is there a general consensus within a given country. In fact, the discourse on gender is probably one of the most divisive and controversial in Morocco. Not a week goes by that issues related to women are not discussed in the media, at one academic conference or another, in a mosque, in parliament, or on the street. The current internal discourse within Morocco has much to offer the Western world, where the debate about Muslim women is often conducted with a kind of tunnel vision.

Westerners often see the West and the Muslim world as having irreconcilable differences concerning the status and role of women. They view the Orient as propagating submission and conferring the status of second-class citizenship, and the Occident as offering liberties, freedom, and equal rights. (Yet even in the West, women’s emancipation is a relatively recent achievement.) Dating back to the colonial period, Western Europe in particular has had something akin to an obsession with Muslim women. While the American public was propelled to acknowledge the existence of Muslims in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 World Trade Center attacks in New York City and in the course of the two subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Europe has had historical interactions with the Muslim world for centuries. In fact, the sometimes contentious relationships between colonial powers and previously subjugated countries have resulted in sporadic terrorist attacks on European soil for decades. This has been the case especially in France. The Algerian civil strife of the 1990s between government forces, militias, and armed Islamist extremists spilled over into the hexagon, as metropolitan France is often called, resulting in a string of terrorist assaults. Since the 1960s Europe has been home to a significant and steadily increasing Muslim population. In 2009, nearly 10 per cent of the French population was of Muslim immigrant background, followed by Germany, Great Britain, and Italy.⁹

Within the last several years, there has been a shift in the European discourse about these minorities. While in the past, immigrants were identified by region or country of origin – North African, West African, Asian, Turk, and so on – today they are jointly referred to as Muslims, connoting a false sense of homogeneity and unified otherness. As a result, Islam has inserted itself into Western European public debate, with religion and women a central theme. Indicative of the real or perceived conflict between Western and Muslim mores are the fervent debates about women’s dress, in particular the headscarf and the full-face veil. In 2004, France banned in public schools the ‘wearing of ostentatious religious symbols’, which, for all intents and purposes, refers to the Muslim headscarf. Six years on, parliaments from liberal Netherlands to Belgium and Germany are back at debating Muslim women’s attire, only this time questioning the wearing in public of the full-face veil, be it the Afghan style burqa, or the piece of clothing that covers everything but the eyes, the niqab. In April 2011 France became the first European country to ban the full-face veil and make wearing it a punishable offense. Women seen covering their face in public are to be fined the equivalent of $217 and required to receive instruction in citizenship. Further, anyone found forcing a woman to cover her face risks a fine as large as the equivalent of $43,400. Even Muslim-majority countries such as Egypt and Tunisia have implemented laws banning this form of dress in certain places. Muslim women have become central to domestic discussions on national identity, integration, and Leitkultur, the German term for the Judeo-Christian primary or lead culture. The acrimonious climate between majority populations and minority Muslim populations in the West reverberates throughout the Muslim world and fuels the momentum of their own gender discourse.

One may wonder why it is that ‘women’ have to bear the burden of discussions on economic development, unemployment, the process of democratization, integration, assimilation, and questions of national and religious identity. Certainly the issue of religion and women, or more specifically women in Islam,...

Table of contents

• Author Biography
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Note on Transliteration
• Preface to the Paperback Edition
• Introduction
• 1. And God Created Eve...
• 2. Feminism and Its Discontents
• 3. A Third Way
• 4. The Way Forward
• Glossary of Arabic Terms
• Notes
• Bibliography