Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender and Pluralism Read Online Free PDF

humanity, and to take the life of one human being is to have taken the life of all humanity. That which you do to my fellow human beings, you do to me.
    And yet again we recall that ours is a multiple critique, one of engaging and challenging all the ideologies and institutions of injustice and inequality in the various communities in which we find ourselves. This means standing up to those who support and benefit from the Western hegemony over the rest of the world. The time has come for us to stand up to those who look at the world not as a single human family, but as “us” versus “them.” The time has come to stand up to those who look down at others through an imperialist lens, those who favor a “globalization” that works to the exclusive benefit of multi-national corporations at the detriment of ordinary citizens. The time has come to stand up to those who proliferate the structures whereby five percent of the world’s population consumes twenty-five percent of its resources, while tens of millions perish in agonizing starvation. The time has come to stand up to drug companies who clutch their patents of HIV drugs while untold millions die of AIDS in Africa and elsewhere. The time has come to stand up to those who are rightly outraged at the murder of innocent civilians in the U.S.A. and allied countries, but easily dismiss the murder of innocent civilians in other countries as “unfortunate collateral damage.” To all of them, we say: not in my name will you commit these acts of violence that result in the death of so many innocents. That which you do to my fellow human beings you do to me.
    The time has come, and that time is now. We cannot start committing to social justice tomorrow, because the tomorrow of social justice is the tomorrow of “I will lose fifteen pounds”: it will never come. There is only today. We are, as the Sufis say, children of the present moment ( ibn al-waqt ). It is in this present moment we live, and in this present moment we have the choice to be fully human. It is for our decisions in this very present that we are held cosmically accountable, and will answer to God Almighty. Justice starts now, starts at this present moment, and it starts with each of us.

    Gender Justice
    Progressive Muslims begin with a simple yet radical stance: the Muslim community as a whole cannot achieve justice unless justice is guaranteed for Muslim women. In short, there can be no progressive interpretation of Islam without gender justice.
    Let us be clear that by “gender” we are not just talking about women. Far too often Muslims forget that gender injustice is not just something that oppresses
    women, it also debases and dehumanizes the Muslim males who participate in the system.
    Let us be clear that by “gender” we don’t mean to focus exclusively on the hijab
    (head covering worn by some Muslim women). The hijab is, no doubt, one important marker of identity for many Muslim women who choose either to wear or not to wear it. It is also an important marker of social regulations when many Muslim women are forced to wear it. But it is futile to engage in conversations about gender that reduce all of women’s religiosity and existence to the hijab . There are many more fundamental issues at stake in the social constructions that affect the lives of both men and women, and we aim here to engage many of them. Some of the essays in this volume probe exactly what we mean by gender justice. The essays by Sa‘diyya Shaikh, Zoharah Simmons, Scott Kugle, and Kecia Ali break new ground here. Muslim feminism is the radical notion that Muslim women are full human beings. The human and religious rights of Muslim women cannot be “granted,” “given back,” or “restored” because they were never ours to give – or take – in the first place. Muslim women own their God-given
    rights by the simple virtue of being human.
    Gender justice is crucial, indispensable, and essential. In the long run,