Is Western Feminism for White Middle Class Women? ISLAM

Western feminism, on the premise of its universality, in general does not believe Islam and feminism can coexist. Islamic feminism is involved in empowering women through and with their faith. Western feminism sees only the binary nature of religion and feminism and fails to see how feminism is integral and present in Muslim countries today. Another way to analyse western feminism and Islam is by looking at how western feminists in general are concerned with ‘giving’ feminism to Muslim women as opposed to cooperating in the already existing frameworks. In the 1950s and 1960s there was a new wave of Islamic feminism in Egypt which brought an influx of women attending universities and obtaining jobs (Gallup, 2008).

Western feminism is constructed on the premise of global feminist concerns and the success and existence of Islamic feminism would undermine that notion. The concerns of western feminists can be seen as being based on “saving” these women from their culture, men and themselves. This is termed the “white savior complex”, often also referred to in colonial times (Al-Sibai, N, 2015). Western feminism often ignores the fact that, “Muslim feminists created theoretical frameworks to provide in depth analysis of the Quran and Hadith and sought to situate the cause of women’s oppression not just in culture and religion but in capitalism, imperialism and patriarchy” (Povery & Rostami-Povey, 2012, p. 172).

Western feminism is concerned with giving agency to Islamic women without acknowledging the fact that many of these women already have this agency. Agency according to Mahomood (2011), is “the capacity to realize one’s own interests against the weight of custom, tradition or other obstacles.” Agency according to western feminism is something that should be given. An example of this was the use of the veil, and how the veil is not merely the vocation of the agency of many women but also a symbol of resistance to the western commodification of women’s bodies (Mahmood, 2011). Western feminism needs to coexist and cooperate with Islamic feminism as well as other feminisms in order to broaden its impact and analyse agency as opposed to assuming it.