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?

You said:

I would say i definitely have a different angle i’m approaching all this stuff with, i’ve been talking mostly about the wider context of my own journey through religion - and about one specific aspect. so i think ive been approaching it from the lens of my own personal background and story. WHIch is after all - what blogs are for - aren’t they!

Absolutely!

It has frankly been an education for me, reading these threads.

i definitely intend to look up Omar’s recommended texts. I just noticed though he said

There are many Western scholars who have invested their time to explain Islam in a way people with a Western background can comprehend it.
..Since it has to make sense. Religions don’t spread solely by and for power.)

i wonder if he perhaps thinks i haven’t a Muslim background , and that i grew up in the ‘West’? and not in the “Global South”? certainly it seems like perhaps he assumes i didnt spend most of my formative growing up years in the Middle East? I have of course - through my own experience - of being a ‘born’ Muslim - an idea of what keeps most of us as Muslims, (most of whom dont know jack about dimensions, vertical or otherwise, and couldn’t care less one way or the other i feel) even those of us who might wish to not be really, and again i dont think this very different to other religions elsewhere. and i think the experience of Muslims in majority muslim countries is different to Muslims living in non-majority countries, for example, in the US or UK etc. So i don’t have any personal experience of the Western Muslim persepctive - e.g. the ‘British Muslim’ experience, or the American Muslim experience.

And i know very little about what drives those who convert to Islam in the West, ( and elsewhere) - so hence reading blogs of folks like Umar Lee very anthropologically interesting for me. ( the way its tied up with notions of race and what appear to be cultural superiority/inferiority complexes - i find thoroughly fascinating! I wonder what the reaction to Islam’s history of imperialism is, these guys seem to be generally obsessed with ‘white imperialism’ and appear to see Islam as some sort of ‘antidote’. Which of course it may offer now to them , but in the same way the “West” has its negative history, so too does the history of Islam and its expansion around the world, i’m interested to see how objective people can be about these things, there’s a little bit of ‘hero worship’ going on it seems..again very interesting sociologically)

To sum up, i think i used to know very little about what people seem to refer to as a “Western” conception of Islam - whether of non-Muslims -and Muslims who grew up in the “West”. Obviously given the hoo-ha since 9/11 its been very interesting to follow the way this whole thing is framed.

I would say i definitely have a different angle i’m approaching all this stuff with, i’ve been talking mostly about the wider context of my own journey through religion - and about one specific aspect.  so i think ive been approaching it from the lens of my own personal background and story. WHIch is after all - what blogs are for - aren’t they!

Bloody hell! That might go down in history as the faux pas of the year. So it might.

Becoming. That was what I meant. This wee Freudian chap at the back of my brain is currently being exorcised by professionals. But he is damn slippery.

How was your holiday?

As far as i can see, group identity and the historical dimension are really the main facets of what Islam is to most Muslims. And of course people are free - and should be - to believe in what they like, for reasons which they deem fit and correct. I do think that the morality element should be made much clearer though, if for reasons of honesty if nothing else.

‘So, as it ever was, as it ever was’, to quote the God like David Byrne of Talking Heads.

There is absolutely nothing unique about Muslims in that respect, most religions view ‘the other’ as some sort of alien. To do with what they like.

Which, is, of course, ridiculous.

I do not know whether you and Omar are coming good mates or something?

Omar asks a legitimate question:

I mean, the Koran says “kill the idolaters wherever you find them”. Does that mean I should go out on a pagan killing spree?

Well it might, but you’d have to be a damn fool to try it.

Which is the difference between secular, or human, law and biblical or Koranic law. You are unlikely to get off lightly at the Old Bailey for saying you were acting on the instructions of some ancient text or another. Now would you? Whether that would be inadmissable in a biblical or Koranic Court is, frankly, moot. Chances are, a wee bit here, a wee bit there, you’d have a chance of getting off.

Sonia, you run a very libertarian web site, so can I conclude by saying:

fuck that!

I had forgotten to respond to your point about norms about sexual morality varying between cultures - which is of course often the case, to different degrees. However there are many shared aspects. And i think with what i am discussing here - its pretty obvious that my assumption is that - in all our human cultures, capture and rape by victor - however justified/’normalized’ it may be to the victor/(or people who see the victor’s side of things) , it is certainly universal that the victims - or victim’s families, would also feel traumatized by it, and find it unacceptable.

you may feel free to disagree with that, for whatever reason, or on the grounds of moral relativity, or lack of knowledge about people in those situations throughout history. (i would say it has been a very common situation. most recently we have the bangladesh and pakistan situation and the ‘disputes’ about women being raped).

and yes, you can call me a fundmentalist for having such an opinion. ( i do feel it is a pretty fundamental facet of being human -empathy - and recognising what your “victim” is going to be going through, because you damn well ought to know that you’d feel the same yourself. without that empathy, we’d all be sociopaths. not connecting how we feel when something is done to us, with doing that same thing to someone else. but perhaps that’s the point, we humans are probably more sociopathic than we realise.)

but i digress. I am operating on the principle that if your wife was raped tomorrow by some enemy soldier, you wouldn’t like it, regardless of any justification that may be proffered, and that that would be a perfectly normal human reaction, and that is something i strongly empathize with.
If the Muslim men’s wives had been similarly captured and ‘used’ ( if you dont want to use the term ‘rape’) by some Mecca men, for example, i feel pretty sure the Muslims would have had some objections. ( Which is also tied up with doing it to the other side first, so you are victor, and not the victim and have it done to you)

Would you disagree with that?

Or would you suggest that if the Muslim’s men’s wives had been captured by their enemy after victory over the Muslim men - and did the same sort of thing - “married” them - or had sexual relations with them which they claimed were legitimate - that the victims would not have an issue? Would not dispute that the Meccans had no ‘legitimate’ claim to having sex with the Muslim wives conquered, or even worse! having sex with the Prophet’s wives. yes - why dont’ you think about that - are you suggesting you wouldn’t find it offensive - why you’d find it blasphemous wouldn’t you. And if he were an ordinary man - you think he wouldn’t mind having his wife taken by some conquering soldier?

That suggest to me that they knew full well how the ‘other’ side would be feeling. I think we all know that for centuries - in the desert - and elsewhere - conquerors taking the local women has always been a way at getting at the local men. As it still is now unfortunately in many conflicts, and also in peacetime - ordering the rape of a woman to humiliate her tribe, her men -we all know many instances of this. Certainly in Bedouin desert tribal customs which were around before and at the time of Mohammed.

But perhaps religion - like war - exhibits sociopathy?

I am less concerned with any notion of the divine or the lack thereof - i am more concerned with human behaviour - ( and the excuses we provide ourselves) perhaps i should make that clearer. I am only interested in religion as a good case-study on human beings and our behaviour, and our beliefs.