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Issue 235, Friday 28 November 2008 - 30 Dhu al-Qa'dah 1429

Women and Islamic resistance

By Dr Maria Holt

Wafa works as a university lecturer in Beirut. She is also a supporter of the Islamic resistance. When I interviewed Wafa (not her real name) last year, she told me that she believes all Lebanese should respect the resistance because it protects the honour and dignity of Lebanon. She added that it is a woman’s job to work as hard as she can to bridge the gap between women in different societies. In Wafa’s opinion, Europeans know nothing about Muslim women in Lebanon; they think they are ignorant, confined women. But in Islam, women are very active, she said, in society, the economy, and also the jihad; women are the backbone of society. The testimonies of Wafa, and many other women in Lebanon and the occupied Palestinian territories, formed the starting point for a conference on women and Islamic resistance which took place at the University of Westminster on November 7.
The conference brought together a diversity of perspectives on the contentious question of how Muslim women confront situations of violent conflict.
Opening the conference, which was organised under the auspices of the Democracy and Islam Programme, Fadwa Al-Labadi from Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, spoke about Islamic feminism in Palestine. In her view, Palestinian Islamist feminists are seeking to transform “tradition” into a “modern” new language in order to make religious laws and doctrine accord with women’s demands for liberty and equality. She referred to the Palestinian national elections of 2006 in which the Islamist party Hamas, to the surprise of many outsiders, won a resounding victory. Hamas, as Dr Al-Labadi explained, were able to attract widespread support by offering social welfare programmes to disadvantaged members of the community; many women responded positively to such activities. I then spoke about my own research project; in 2007, I interviewed a broad range of women in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories with a view to finding out how they have been affected by Islamic resistance movements. My research revealed that many women actively support the Islamist groups Hizbullah and Hamas in the sense that they provide feelings of dignity for populations who otherwise feel powerless against Israeli invasion and occupation.
Taking a somewhat broader perspective, Dina Melham from the Westminster Foundation for Democracy considered the question of women’s rights and equality on an individual and national level. Dr Melham asked to what extent women, who are the victims of discriminatory practices, are able to transcend traditional obstacles in order to represent their national values. The final speaker in this panel, Elaheh Rostami-Povey from School of Oriental and African Studies, London, spoke movingly about the struggle of Afghan women during the Taliban period and the present invasion. She challenged the stereotype in the west of the Afghan woman as a passive victim awaiting liberation and argued that western perceptions of women’s liberation, which advocate the adoption of “superior” western models, are inappropriate.
Based at the Carnegie Middle East Centre in Beirut, Omayma Abdel-Latif has carried out research into the experiences of women associated with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Many Islamist women, she argued, are pushing for greater representation and a wider role. In September 2007, the Muslim Brotherhood released its first political party draft, which included a ban on women becoming the head of state in Egypt; this has proved controversial and throws into question previous statements by the Brotherhood in relation to women. In order to gain a more complete picture of women’s resistance in the Arab world, two speakers addressed the situation of women in Iraq. Haifaa Jawad from the University of Birmingham provided a historical overview of Iraqi women’s struggles, arguing that, as early as the 1950s, the Iraqi state ensured that the constitution guaranteed not only the dignity of women but also their legal, social, economic, educational and political rights. These rights, she suggested, were regarded as progressive at the time and continued to be protected under successive regimes. The situation of women has changed drastically since the American-led invasion of 2003. This theme was taken up by Nadje Al-Ali from SOAS who discussed how Iraqi women’s rights activists have been positioning themselves vis-à-vis the occupation, the Government and the Islamist resistance. By exploring the activities of the women’s movement, she argued that, for women’s rights activists, the militias linked to the resistance as well as Islamist militant groups pose an equal danger.
After lunch, Roschanack Shaeri-Eisenlohr from the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern world (ISIM) in the Netherlands discussed Shi’a radicalism in Lebanon and argued that scholars need to develop a more nuanced approach to the presentation and activities of Hizbullah, rather than romanticizing the group as a model of “modernity”. The discussion then moved to Lina Khatib’s presentation on women “as public diplomacy tools”. Dr Khatib, who is based at Royal Holloway, examined the work of the Museum of Martyrs in Tehran and suggested that the Iranian regime uses women, including Lebanese and Palestinian women, as public diplomacy tools to promote a positive image of itself as an Islamic democracy. In the final paper of the conference, PhD candidate Sara Ababneh from Oxford University discussed the role of women in Hamas and argued that, through Islamic political work, women activists are able to use “the emancipatory language of the Qur’an” to challenge the oppressive conditions of their daily lives.
The conference was warmly received by an audience that included academics, journalists, diplomats and government officials. It provided a welcome contribution to the debate on the role of women in Islam and challenged western perceptions of female powerlessness in Muslim societies. There was an acknowledgement that the topic urgently needs more in-depth research.

Dr Maria Holt is Lecturer in Democracy & Islam Programme, Centre for the Study of Democracy at the University of Westminster.