So much hilarity is found herein (My bolding, and my comments within are italicized):
Dr. Amina Wadud suggests "Gender Jihad" within IslamThis past week, Whitman College received the visit of Dr. Amina Wadud, a Qur'anic scholar and leader in Islamic feminism. Dr. Wadud visited classes, lectured and led a workshop on exploring Islamic texts with a gender focus. Wadud's main message was this: In order to create justice in gender in Islam,
there is no need to stray from Islam (
yeah because if you do, well you'll get killed here or at least roast in hell, according to Islam). Rather, there needs to be a reevaluation of what Islam is, and a realization that unfair gender practices come from culture and world events, not what the Islamic religion actually entails.
In her lecture on Wednesday, Wadud outlined the woman's movement in Islam and her work aiding these efforts. Beginning with a traditional Dua'a that serves to remember the presence of Allah in all actions, Wadud proceeded to briefly describe her life before becoming the scholar that she is today.
Wadud was born to Christian parents. She and her family were active in the Civil Rights Movement, and referenced her experience marching in D.C. with Martin Luther King. Later in her young adult life, she became a practicing Buddhist. From this eclectic background prefacing her conversion to Islam, Wadud said she took away the important notion that God and spirituality is manifested in many diverse ways. She also warned of the miscommunications in discussion of religion: different people saying the same words can mean very different things. Wadud provided her definition of Islam: "God is one." All creation is harmonious, regardless of gender.
Wadud then began to discuss the tenets of feminism in Islam. There are, of course, many things that are key to this movement that people don't see on the surface. She underlined the importance of understanding the multiple areas and perspectives that broad topic includes: one must distinguish between Muslim culture, Islamic texts, and Islamic law; there is also a difference between Muslim secular feminism, Islamism, and Islamic feminism, which she deemed the three categories of the women's movement in Islam.
She also spoke about the generally misguided understanding of Islam,
even within the Muslim community itself (
don't you LOVE it when converts tell born and raised Muslims how much we just don't understand Islam??). What people think of normally when they conceptualize Islam is
conservative Islam: a strict and rigid idea of the Islamic religion that doesn't have much room to change (
Hmm actually that would be called Islam, itself a strict and rigid idea that is not open to change in itself, read its founding scriptures will ya?). Wadud emphasizes that people need to leave this idea of Islam behind to unhinge themselves from these static notions and allow for change in Islam
not in the raw religion (
gee, what is the "raw religion"? And wtf does changing Islam mean if not the "raw religion"??), but of
what has come to be considered Islam (
Yeah by Islamic texts, scholars, clerics, preachers, and Muslims, that's all). This underlines the need to distinguish between evolved culture and
what Islam itself originally entailed in its texts and laws (
Yeah, only let's just pretend those original texts fell perfectly in line with modern, secular notions of gender equality and other liberal things first).
This is where her work as a Qur'anic scholar and her dedication to feminism in Islam overlap. Wadud argues that within Islamic text are the tools to break definitions and confinements of Islam, and work towards progress in the women's movement.
Wadud explained that
within Islamic texts, women are certainly not second to men (
Well, except for in all the Quranic verses and Hadiths where they are deemed to be so).
Directly from the text, Wadud showed that woman are defined as the moral agents of Allah; they have a direct relation to God (
I'm guessing she cherry picked that... it's okay for Muslims to take the Quran "out of context" you see, when trying to promote the super wonderful awesomeness of Islam). In the Qur'an's ultimate objective, she explained,
women and men were both (equally) addressed (
). In her evaluation of Tawhid, a tenet of Islam that embodies the whole realm of living, Wadud finds gender equality, and the inherent right to reform, something that allows the deviation from conservative Islam that she says has been holding the progression of Islam back.
So if gender inequality didn't originate from Islam itself, where did it begin? Wadud explains that this is largely
due to the absence of women in the rise of Islam and in the creation of the Islamic canon (Yes, nothing is wrong with Islam except for everything about it). This began the subdued role of women in all of Islamic culture. Then,
when colonialism breached Islamic nations (
For the hundreds of years before European colonialism, when Islamic colonialism was being waged across South Asia, South East Asia and Northern Africa, I am sure that did not count as "colonialism"), women didn't receive the same concessions as men. This inequality from an outside force served as a rude awakening,
triggering Islam's women's movement (Hahahah what?? WHERE?? 
). The global awareness that emerged in this period of history showed realities other than their own, underlining the inequalities women were suffering from, and how their position in society could be better. It also provided people with a pluralism that allowed the capacity to understand people different from themselves, which entails an ability to evaluate one's own ideas as well, and realize their flaws. This self-reflection and new understanding of possibilities in other parts of the world caused women in Islamic society to begin standing up for change.
Now the women's movement faces the challenge of getting people to break from the constricting idea of Islam that people share. Wadud argues, then, for a "Gender Jihad", a fresh, reevaluated look at gender within Islam, and a reformation of what Islam is in itself.
Islamic feminists (
I get "Muslim feminists" sure: women who want to work towards women's rights who also happen to be Muslim, but Islamic feminism is a joke) are now working on acquiring their own feminism, breaking from
the term's possession by the West (
Yes because "The West" has been keeping the idea of women having equal rights under lock and chain, and people everywhere are interrogating what it means to be a Muslim. Wadud's work enables Muslims to begin to distinguish between constructed Islamic culture and Islam as an entity in itself, as people begin to reform what Islam really means for women.
It is this kind of blatant revisionism and hypocrisy that is the most pathetic thing about certain types of Muslim "reformists". Sure, try and change Islam, but be honest, at least, and stop fucking pretending that the rest of us are illiterate or stupid and can't look up shit for ourselves and find out exactly what is in the Islamic texts.
Topic: Dr. Amina Wadud suggests "Gender Jihad" within Islam