Inside the Gender Jihad: Women's Reform in Islam Read Online Free PDF Page A

also because those who struggle for gender justice are continually confronted with contested meanings. Indeed, just as Americans were presented with a horrible affront to their sense of integrity and security by the events of September 11, 2001, when a dozen or so Muslim men laid claim to “Islam” as justification for their vehemence and violence, so too are babies born and women and men surrender in peace and harmony to a claim of “Islam.” Which is the true picture, the face of evil and destruction or the face of love and life? How does any one author, believer, or audience negotiate between complex and contradictory meanings of Islam?
    Recently, I have acknowledged intellectually that full honesty in strug- gling with the girth of possible meanings and uses of the term Islam is crucial to the development of my personal identity as a Muslim. For while I do not identify with suicide bombers or acts of violence, I cannot ignore that they occur within the ranks of that vast community of Islam. Despite their presence amongst us, I still care deeply to be Muslim. Multiple, contested, and coexisting meanings of Islam are integral to the struggles for justice in Islamic reform today, which is one of the main points that this book will demonstrate.
    Early after my transition into Islam, I held an ideal of perfect Islam as both a utopian aspiration and a potential reality. This aspiration shielded me from the discordance between the utopian ideal and the realities of

    Introduction 5

    experience across the Muslim world and sometimes developed historically within the Islamic intellectual legacy. I reduced these to errors of interpre- tation or incompetent practices influenced by the diversity of cultures that make up the Muslim world. It is just as easy for liberal Muslims to dismiss Muslim terrorists by saying they are not “true” to Islam. When I engaged in such oversimplification and reductionist claims, I inadvertently implied I actually had the power to express and possess the “true” Islam. The arrogance of this claim allowed me to remove myself from the responsibility of standing against certain evils performed in the name of Islam. A painful
    experience at the Second International Muslim Leaders , Consultation on
    H.I.V./A.I.D.S. 5 resulted in an important transformation in this reductionist tendency. Some Muslims in the audience vehemently disagreed with the ideas and beliefs I presented in an effort to help fulfill the quest for justice for those most vulnerable to the spread of the pandemic: women and children. Those who opposed my analysis boisterously hurled their opposition directly in my face, claimed certain of my comments were blasphemous, according to their interpretations of Islam, and eventually
    named me a “devil in hijab ” (head covering). 6 At the time I was utterly
    stunned in the presence of such insolence from other Muslims. Since that experience, however, I have moved toward a new, albeit uncomfortable, reflection: neither their “Islam” nor my “Islam” has ultimate privilege. We are all part of a complex whole, in constant motion and manifestation throughout the history of multifaceted but totally human constructions of “Islam.” I will discuss at length some of these constructions in the next chapter and give justification within an Islamic framework for
    Muslims to struggle toward an egalitarian for the future.
    humanistic, pluralistic Islam
    Curiously enough, relinquishing the idea that there exists a perfect thing called Islam devoid of the consequences of human interactions allowed me to relinquish my own self-agonizing expectation that I could one day become a perfect Muslim. This book is also born out of recent transforma- tions in my life as a Muslim, thinker, activist, and woman, allowing me to accept my flaws without sacrificing my dreams and aspirations. Indeed upon the pages that follow is a lifelong battle with my own identity as a Muslim seeking to reflect the beauty