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

any progressive Muslim interpretation will be judged by the amount of change in gender equality it is able to produce in small and large communities. It is for this reason that I have placed “gender” as the lynchpin of our subtitle for the whole volume. Gender equality is a measuring stick of the broader concerns for social justice and pluralism.
    No doubt this heavy emphasis on issues of gender – issues that far too many Muslims would rather shove under the rug, or at least deal with in the happy and unhappy confines of their own communities – will strike some as unbalanced. We are mindful of the ways in which conversations about gender are at the center of group dynamics and politics in Muslim communities. But it is way past the time to be squeamish.
    There have of course been feminist movements in the Muslim world which have drawn inspiration largely from secular sources. Those movements have opened some doors, and we look to open still others. We strive for what should be legitimately recognized as Islamic feminism. If that strikes some people as an oxymoron, we unapologetically suggest that it is their definition of Islam that needs rethinking, not our linkage of Islam and feminism.

    Pluralism
    In 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr. published a monumental essay titled “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos Or Community?” Dr. King ended this essay by stating. “We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation.” 15 We too believe that as members of a single humanity, as people of faith, and as progressive Muslims, we have a choice, a choice we need to make today and every day.
    Pluralism is the great challenge of the day not just for Muslims, but for all of humanity: can we find a way to celebrate our common humanity not in spite of our differences but because of them, through them, and beyond them? Can we learn to grow to the point where ultimately “we” refers not to an exclusivist grouping, but to what the Qur’an calls the Bani Adam , the totality of humanity? 16 Challenging, undermining, and overthrowing the pre-Islamic tribal custom of narrowly identifying oneself with those who trace themselves to the
    eponymous founder of a tribe, the Qur’an here describes all of humanity as members of one super-tribe, the human tribe. This is a great challenge, and yet what choice do we have but to rise up to meet it?
    Can we live up to the challenge issued to us by the Prophet Muhammad, and rephrased so beautifully by the Persian poet Sa‘di? Can we envision each other as members of one body, to feel the pain of another as our own? Only then will we be worthy of the name “human being.”
    Human beings are like members of one body created from one and the same essence.
    When one member feels pain, the rest are distraught.
    You, unmoved by the suffering of others, are unworthy of the name human! 17
    These days, of course, a lack of pluralism goes far beyond simple disagreement. All too often, fanatic bigotry finds expression in brutal violence. At times, this violence is deployed by paramilitary terrorist groups. At other times, it is unleashed by nation-states and their armies. Along with the overwhelming majority of Muslims, progressive Muslims stand firmly against all attacks on civilians, whether that violence comes from a terrorist group or a nation-state. Does it matter to those who have lost loved ones whether the instrument of death was held by a terrorist or a state-sponsored army? The twentieth century was by far the bloodiest in the history of humanity. May it be that in the twenty- first century – admittedly already off to a rocky start – we find a path to pluralism and a peace rooted in justice. I am often inspired by the courageous words of Martin Luther King, Jr., who stated:
    The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.
    Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. . . Through violence you may murder