The Secular Feminism Of The Middle East Essay

One of the major issues the world has been dealing with for years and years is the oppression of women. A lot of women have been mistaken for their rights, and gender stereotypes are hard to break. The oppression of women showcased in many different ways such as jobs and their right to education. Many girls have had their education stripped away from them due to the fact that they are being sold to men.

A common misconception is that Muslim women are oppressed all around the world, but this is a fallacy created through the use of propaganda and misinformation. The so-called "oppression of women" is not a characteristic of Islam at all and to say otherwise would be out of ignorance. Reza Aslan (2015), a scholar of all religions, makes it clear that oppression of women is not related to Islam but to particular countries. A common propaganda technique is to use Saudi Arabia as the standard of Islam. This could not be further from the truth, as many Muslim countries view women equally if not beyond that. There are dozens of Muslim countries who have had more female heads of state than the US; Algeria, Turkey, Sudan, Senegal. There are a handful of Muslim countries around the world, who mention women's equal rights in their constitution, whereas the U.S is one of 32 countries who does not include an explicit gender equality guarantee (Ravitz, 2015). Using an uneducated generalization, that holds no merit, causes inconsistencies and mistaken impressions of a particular

In middle eastern society Many may claim that the women in the middle east are being oppressed but the same may be said about women living in the west. Until quite recently in time women here in the United States received an equal status to men. Whereas these traditions and

In the Middle East there are many restrictions against women. However there are people who are fighting to support women or others who just do care about the women well beings. We might not see that there are many injustices committed every day and every time, because we just do not hear about it or we do not take the time to realize what is really surrounding us. People had various reactions against the government. For example we saw many who had solidarity for women, and others who decided to only complain about why women should be treated as second class. I believe that we actually need to take the time to learn about what is really happening in the world. Personally, I say this because I also had no idea what was injustices

The term sociological imagination was a concept constructed by the American Sociologist C. Wright Mills in 1959 to describe the ability to understand how our lives are affected by the historical and sociological changes around us. In order to possess the knowledge of sociological imagination, we should be able to pull away from the current situation and be able to look and think from a different perspective. C. Wright Mills defined his concept of sociological imagination as “...the vivid awareness of the relationship between experience and the wider society”. We need to be able to grasp the connection between the society which is shaped by the historical events and how our personal biography is affected by these events take place everyday. To further reiterate this concept, I will attempt to discuss how social issues surrounding my gender and my religion as a Muslim woman living in the United States have changed my sociological imagination and I how I was able to shift my perspective by thinking from a different point of view thus applying the C. Wright Mills’ concept of sociological imagination in my personal life. by making references to articles, “Gender as Structure” (Ferguson, 291) and “Muslims in America” (Ferguson, 519). I will also attempt to explain the how knower and known is related to the social issues of gender and religion.

Have you ever wondered how people around the world live? If so, then at some point in time in your life you thought like a Cultural Anthropologist. But have you ever thought about how the way people in the Middle East live? Probably not right? Islam and Middle Eastern culture, might be the most misunderstood culture from around the world. It is especially difficult to understand by those in western societies. People who live in western societies tend to have this stigma towards people from the Middle East that they’re bad people and they’re all terrorist when in fact they’re not. They are a regular society, deeply rooted in tradition and culture. Westerners sometimes don’t understand that because it’s western ideology to be civilized and conform to what those with social power say what’s right. For many years, the people of the Middle East have been targeted by western imperialism to try and change who they are and what they believe in, but most countries put up a fight. The role of women in the Middle East has been especially difficult to understand by those outside of the culture. Contrary to what many people might believe, women play a major role in their society and are not as oppressed as many people may think. They contribute highly to education, the economy, and other social and cultural factors such as religion, family, and the social status of women in the Middle East.

Countries in the middle east claim that they are applying the Islamic guidelines as their legislation system. They take the orders from God’s book the (Quran) and what is stated in Islam. As for women, they have been promoted their rights as stated in the Quran referring to some big heads in the Islamic world. Middle eastern women around the world are considered to be pressed, oppressed and persecuted by eastern men and their religion because of how women are being treated due to their sexuality and body image that differ from men. They are

In the past, Islamic women were not granted the right to vote or join in politics, but over the years the legal status of women in Islam has relaxed and changed. Muslim women in the Middle East have the right to vote, and may join in politics. Along with this, they are permitted to have vital government jobs. (Braswell, p.155) A woman 's status , however, is not as high as a man 's is in society. They still must follow many traditional customs. An example of one custom is that women are encouraged to do is dress modestly, by wearing veils in public. (Lippman, p.38) Although Muslim men and women are not looked upon as equals in every sense, there has been a lot of improvement and many changes have been made in the women 's favor.

Western feminist secularism is fairly keen on suppressing the voices of religious minorities – regardless of the fact that many women find

Although they bear some superficial difference, the similarities between Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn story, "Is Islam Misogynistic?" and Anna Vanzan, "The Women of Allah: A Personal Journey Through Islamic Feminisms " are clear, both reveal issues concerning Muslim’s cultural and religion norms depriving women of their equality.

From the beginning of time, women all around the world have been fighting to escape oppression. Women everywhere are living under the control of men and are often looked over; it has been an ongoing issue for years. Much too often women are treated as lesser human beings just because of their gender. Women and men both have the same capability to do great things in the world; it is just a matter of making it known. Throughout the years, many women have found their voice, but many have not. More specifically, women in Middle Eastern countries have fought to have education, jobs, and even basic human rights. Today in the United States it is common for women to be as in control and educated as men, but women in the Middle East are still fighting for that right. The women from these countries fear for their lives every time they attend school. Oppressed women in the Middle East are denied access to education that they must seek due to the negative economic, political, and cultural expectations placed on them.

For example, after the overthrow of the Shah of Iran and the rise of an Islamic republic in 1979, Iranian women’s rights declined drastically, as can be seen in the political cartoon from The Minneapolis Star. In this cartoon, a wilted flower represents Iranian women’s rights, and a devious Muslim man is seen in the background, which presumably symbolizes the new Islamic government led by the Ayatollah Khomeini. Thus, the creation of this new government has greatly diminished whatever women’s rights were previously established in Iran (Doc 9). This source, an American newspaper, may not be as accurate as, for example, a Muslim source because of a general American unfamiliarity with Islam. Princess Ashraf Pahlavi, a high-class Islamic woman, described her experiences as a Muslim female during this period in her memoir Faces in a Mirror: Memoirs from Exile. This specific excerpt depicts the immediate obedience of high-class Islamic women to their male superiors, despite their own intentions (Doc 10). Thus, although there were sparse attempts to reform the status of Islamic women in the 20th century, in general, the role of women remained the same, or in some cases it was even worse than before.

Women in Islam are free and have same or equivalent rights as any other woman. As Souhelia states in her article, many women that come from Islamic upbringing are free and others are working on bringing more change into their lifestyles (Souhelia, 2006). Although the process of change does not measure up to how far Western women got, cultural differences and geographical positioning and distribution of Islam law - better known as sharia - studies have shown that education, political participation and social reforms made considerable

Although Western feminism started in the 1900s, yet, it didn’t reach the Islamic world until most recently, a couple of hundred years later than the West. Despite the fact that both of the feminism movements come from totally different back grounds, and they are affected by different history and culture, still, both of them aimed for women’s best interests. Muslim women were profoundly feeling aggrieved by the discrimination they have against them. They stereotypical reputation about them in the West, and their presentation in the Western media didn’t help either. They started and supported a new fight to regain themselves the equal status they were granted by Islam centuries ago. Muslim women didn’t like to be looked at as being backward and oppressed by men in a male-dominant world. According to the feminist historian Margot Badran, “Islamic feminism is a feminist discourse and practice articulated within an Islamic paradigm. Islamic feminism, which derives its understanding and mandate from the Qur 'an, seeks rights and justice for women, and for men, in the totality of their existence.” (Badran, 2001)

It is ironical that all of them claim that Islam liberated women 1400 years ago. They claim that Islam gave women the right to equal education and civil and economic rights, but at the end of their analysis they come to the conclusion that a woman's place is in her husband's home and that she should be obedient to him and the male elite.