Islamists and Women in the Arab World From Reaction to Reform?

Abstract

Introduction
Broadly speaking, contemporary discourse assumes that Islamists are
bad for women. Any gain in Islamist political influence is considered a
disastrous regression in women’s human rights. At a time when the movement
to put women’s rights on the international human rights agenda-a
valuable movement indeed-seems on the brink of joining the group of
world and regional powers targeting Islamists as the next great threat to
humanity, it is urgent that Islamists formulate a strong and just analysis
of the gender issue.
While the stereotypical view of Islamists, like most stereotypes, has
some basis, it is, as are all stereotypes, completely inadequate for understanding
the issue. The fact that one can locate a Saudi shaykh, an
Egyptian imam, or a young Algerian militiaman who is unmistakably
misogynistic does not provide the key to understanding the entire range
of Islamist views on gender roles or the implications for women of rising
Islamist influence. The indictment of Islamists as oppressive to women
emerges from the context of western hegemonic power in the world and
deploys the language of women’s liberation to justify political and economic
assaults against contemporary Islamist states and political forces.
The problem is that women do face oppressive conditions in the Muslim
world, as do their counterparts in the West, but these are different from
the oppressive conditions imagined and constructed for Muslim women
from a western frame of reference ...