Muslim Feminism in the Third Wave: A Reflective Inquiry

Abstract

Pam Alldred and Sarah Dennison argue that the first wave of feminism represented the ‘struggle for equality and integration,’ the second wave criticised ‘dominant values and sometimes inverted value-hierarchies to revalue qualities associated with the feminine,’ while feminism in its third wave transgresses boundaries through ‘deconstructing the presumption of a gender binary or the conventional ways of doing politics’ (126). Does third wave feminism provide a space for Muslim feminism? Certainly, the pluralities embraced under third wave feminism offer a more welcoming space than previous feminisms. Patricia McFadden, referring to African feminist consciousness, refutes the claim that the notions of gender, feminism and woman are necessarily Western, arguing that the problem with this theoretical model is that it regards ‘ “women” as a construct [as] also western When gender and women disappear from the conceptual landscape, then feminist resistance politics is also displaced, leaving us without a political means of responding to patriarchal exclusion’ (61; emphasis added). This has allowed an oppositional strategy to emerge, pitting West against East, one feminism against another. Susan Muaddi Darraj sums up the apparent tensions for the West in the terms ‘Arab’ and ‘feminist’:

Indeed, it comes as a surprise to many Western women and Western feminists to learn that there is, and has been, a strong Arab feminist movement in the Middle East at least since the beginning of the twentieth century. Whenever I use the terms “Arab feminism,” it generally elicits such comments from American feminists as “That sounds like an oxymoron!” and questions such as “Can you be a feminist if you’re still veiled?” and “How can a Muslim woman be a feminist if she shares her husband with three other wives?” (190)