Hadn’t been here for a day or so. What you say requires a lot of consideration. Will get back to you, after I’ve got my little brain around what you had to say!

i suspect there is really a multitude of questions/complexities in what you ask.

firstly there’s so much confusion about terminology, people mean different things by similar terms, feminist islam ( would mean different things to different people) are we talking about ‘Islam’ or are we talking about feminists. are we talking about people wanting to reform Islam ( like say..Irshad Manji or someone) or are we talking about wanting to change social practices that may be bound up with religious belief. And if we’re talking about changing what actually passes as ‘religion’ - well that’s a whole different topic altogether with its own sub-questions. What we mean by “religion” - lots of people are there to protect orthodoxy, are we talking about looking at new religious interpretation etc. And what do most people thinkof when they think ‘religion’ anyway? Something abstract or something real. i think its always linked to why religion is important to people. i’m a bit post-modern ( and wussy and soppy and very un- “stern -enlightenment-Modernist-” in my wanting to have people happy, if religion is a comfort blanket, i think we need to work with that, not necessarily against it ( of course this doesn’t mean one can’t go on being critical at the same time)
or is the whole thing about comparing different kinds of feminisms in a competitive kind of way ( which for some people, there seems to be some big competition out there, frankly its a bit spiteful and meow! so i dont find it very interesting.) we should be critical of anything and any -ism we find!

personally i think women who are religious who are going to pass it on to their kids are the ones with lots of responsibility in passing things on, how they bring up their sons and daughters, and that is a big thing, so i think its great so many women are thinking about feminism and their religion together, how they can fit, etc. they’re more likely to make a difference to the lives of the kids being brought up Muslim. in the end people obviously have the freedom ( and have done in many ways) to make religion into what they want ( the evolution of Christianity and what it means to people is interesting)

i think its useful speaking out our minds too, so that people realise they’re not the only ones with questions in their heads. we can only share our thought processes. I dont know if im right or not about god or the lack thereof, i find religion to be not useful for me, but clearly that is not necessarily the case for the vast majority of people who are born in the indian subcontinent ( for example) and for whom, faith of some kind or other will be a big part of their lives and their social spheres. so id rather people infused a bit of ‘feminism’ into that, so slowly religious customs over time become less problematic for women. (e.g. FGM being practices by muslim women who say its to do with religious requirements)

Overall i do find intellectually interesting people whose thinking lead them to look for an explanation of what appear to be contradictions between what is believed to be good intent in religion and the disparity between real practice, and often what is actually written in text. this of course opens up the business of religious interpretation. asma barlas is is very interesting person to read on this, no doubt amongst others. {’unreading’ patriarchal interpretations} i dont know very much about it but its generally about working out how much of what is religious canon is due to subjective interpretation etc. Of course there is a big battle with orthodox thinkers trying to protect those who have that monopoly pretty much sown up tight, but again, its about how widely these ideas get disseminated and spark people’s own questions, and through that, eventually, social practices. So i am interestedly looking on.

but at the end of the day, we as people need to work out for ourselves- on the world, earthly level, im not talking about metaphysics here, or the deity or not thing, the reality of our social practices- obviously being connected to how what we think and behave, how we teach children and pass memes on. if we can’t be critical enough to work out how its all interconnected, phooey, but well then its our responsibility to accept our agency in that too, can’t be going off and shoving it ‘off’ onto ’someone else’. ‘he did it!’…

I’d hazard that you do not see women as inferior to men? My own position.

I’d guess that you’d reject any religion that thought so? My own position.

It is, thus, difficult to understand a feminist Islam. Does it exist? And if it does, does it have the power to make a difference?