1400 years on is Islam anti-Feminist?

Have you also had your muslim uncles and aunts ask you why you don’t wear a hijab ? Has it made you want to punch them ? Has it made you want to scream out loud and wish eternal sufferage on them ? Yeah, welcome to this post where we can collectively rage about this ish and rejoice in the company of like minded people !!!

I started wearing a hijab around four years ago and since then, the pressure to cover up has been ginormous on my mother and sister as well. WHICH IS SO POINTLESS. It’s never enough that one of my mom’s daughters decided to wear hijab, her younger one needs to wear one too ! What is this pressure ? Why does it exist ? You know what the worst part is ? THAT NONE OF THEM WEAR A HIJAB THEMSELVES !!!!!

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As I was growing, the idea of Feminism was catching on (yeah, that’s how young I am.) There was also another idea catching on… that Islam is Anti-feminism. THIS idea, unlike the first one, did not sit well with me. I belonged to a muslim family ! And my muslim parents had sent me alllll the way to the Land of the Free, while they chilled in Bahrain ! To study. All alone ! No questions asked, despite the worries of the society (we are Indians by birth) and despite knowing the crap that they would have to deal with, in the coming years.

I was at full liberty to do whatever I liked, dress however I wanted to, basically everything people claim muslim women can’t do. This is probably the MAIN reason I started Hijab. One fine day out of the library, I thought to myself… what must it be like to actively LOOK like a muslim in this post 9/11 world ? Is it time to conduct yet another social experiment ? Though what might have started as an experiment, stayed on because of the extensive research that went behind the idea, until I was convinced that this is how I want to look – like an educated MUSLIM woman, in everyday life. Leading a normal life, quite contrary to popular belief. Proving people wrong when they say “All muslims ever think about is world domination !” Hell yeah I think about World domination – excuse me if I want to be Beyonce (Who run this mother-?)

To me, Hijab was my own idea of Feminism. No woman in my family covered her hair when I started. I was deliberately making the choice of wearing the Hijab. Just like women everyday decide what to wear, what to do with their hair and how to accessorize every outfit. Hijab was going to be my accessory. If you really think about it, it IS just a scarf ! And I don’t even want to get into the whole ‘modesty’ debate. Or the whole candy wrapper and flies comparison.

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WHAT THE HELL DOES THIS EVEN MEAN ? How did this manage to make it to the list of top forwards by muslim uncles on whatsapp ? Why is this okay to propogate ? How dare you call women lollipops – covered or uncovered. In a normal situation, I would even protest calling men flies, but I mean just for this post… they deserve it !

Just as you have no right to tell a woman to not wear a headscarf, you have no rights telling her to wear one either ! This shouldn’t be so hard to understand ! Don’t believe me?  Maybe Prophet Mohammad will help convince you otherwise.

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Islam does not oppress women, muslims do. Islam, gives women the rights to education, work and even driving (I know right ?) Just to name a few of the things women are ‘allowed’ to do in Islam. Where has this regressive mentality come from ? Why are we, as a community, so hell bent onto proving to the world that we stand for anti feministic principles ? Where is the pride in that ?

We are a religion coming from a man who married his widowed boss, after she proposed to him, despite being 15 years older to him – if that doesn’t scream feminism, then I don’t know what does.

by Sharmeen Kidwai

Sharmeen is a 25 year old medical graduate, which makes her a doctor. She graduated in 2016 and has since moved to India, with her husband (2017). She is a Canadian by nationality, but was raised in the middle east for most of her life. She has always loved to write. Only recently though she has realised she can make a difference by choosing her words just right. She says she is “trying to do my bit for the world and those in it, little by little!” 

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6 thoughts on “1400 years on is Islam anti-Feminist?”

  1. Muslim Feminist are the puppets of their Colonial Master..Their Colonial Master Openly admitted their Agenda..
    To understand the liberal secularist and feminist project in the Muslim world, one needs to revisit the British colonization of Egypt.

    Everlyn Baring, better known as Lord Cromer, was the British Proconsul-General in occupied Egypt between 1877 and 1907. He wrote about his tenure in his book “Modern Egypt” (1916). Here are some conclusions from his book:

    1. The West will not tolerate an Islamic government. On page 565, he said that it would be “absurd” to assume that Europe would tolerate a “government based on purely Mohammedan principles and obsolete Oriental ideas.”

    2. Muslims must be forced to adopt the principles of Western civilization. On page 538, he said that Egypt had to be “forced into imbibing the true spirit of Western civilization.”

    3. Westernization must be introduced under the guise of women’s rights. Lord Cromer says that the “position of women” in Muslim countries was a “fatal obstacle” in the introduction of colonial values. (page 539)

    4. The West must educate a class of young secular Muslims to be the rulers. Cromer’s hope was that a Europeanized education system would cause an Egyptian to “lose his Islamism”, cause him to “no longer believe that he is always in the presence of his Creator”, and only hang onto “the least worthy portions of his nominal religion” for the sake of convenience. (page 230)

    5. The West must reform Islam. Cromer says that the goal should be to create “de-moslemized Moslems”, where people are Muslims-by-name, but in actuality, are “agnostic”. After all, Cromer says, “Islam cannot be reformed … reformed Islam is Islam no longer.” (pages 228-229)

    6. The Muslim reformer would hate Muslim scholarship more than Europeans do. The Westernized Muslim would consider the `alim to be a “social derelict”, use him in matters of convenience, but otherwise disrespect him. On the other hand, a European Christian intellectual would at least look at the `alim with sympathy and respect, as a “representative of an ancient faith”. (page 299-30) 7.

    Modernized Muslims will become Deists. “It is conceivable that, as time goes on, the Moslems will develop a religion, possibly a pure Deism, which will not be altogether the Islamism of the past and of the present, and which will cast aside much of the teaching of Mohammed, but which will establish a moral code sufficient to hold society together by bonds other than those of unalloyed self-interest.” (page 234) ———–

    We can see therefore that Islamic reform started as a colonial project. A project that has been devilishly designed by European intellectuals to undermine the clerics, introduce secular humanist institutions, and gradually and inconspicuously lead Muslims away from the central tenets of their tradition.

    They knew that this reformed, liberal Muslim would not be a Muslim at all, but just a Europeanized invertebrate (i.e. a spineless being) who would maneuver the religion to his needs. This seven-step process is exactly what is happening to Muslim youth in the West. They volunteer themselves to Western academia and pop culture, and are led away from a truly Islamic worldview and epistemology. And while they fool themselves into calling themselves “Muslim reformers”, or “Muslim feminists”, or “moderate Muslims”, or “liberal Muslims”, their puppet masters know that these are all contradictions in terms.

    Times change, but right remains right, and wrong remains wrong

  2. lol..”Muslim”?! just bcoz you born “muslim” family dont make you muslim..you are soooo ignorant about islam. People ignorant like you islam is just idendity politics. Why you get mad with your uncle, when they just told you to wear hijab? whats wrong with that? hijab is compulsory. as for prophet telling male not to look women..yes..but in quran afer the verse told women to cover up

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