Technology as the new form of Burqa

Growing up, family gatherings were the best part of Ramadan for most, food was for some, but for me it was Taraweeh prayer. I used to love going to the mosque down the street with Mom or with neighbors. The united voices of so many people, mostly men, chanting "Amen" in every Rak'ah never ceased to send shivers down my spine.

With the constant competition of daily obligations and endless to-dos, Taraweeh prayer has not been getting a worthy share of my time for the last few Ramadans. Not with a toddler anyway! I did manage to go once so far this month. I tried not to let the ignorant old man who hushed my son and husband (along with other men and their children) out of the mosque ruin it for me. "No children here" he bellowed. "Children go outside or to the room downstairs."

The room downstairs makes me claustrophobic. It's a small room with no windows or healthy ventilation where women with children pray to keep the noise away. Women without children pray upstairs in the section separated from men's by movable board walls. The one thing in common between the two women's spaces: monitors showing live webcast of the men's section.

Through those monitors, we can see the men, or at least the imam or speaker. They remind me of Mariam, the main character in Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns, and her burqa.

And the burqa, she learned to her surprise, was also comforting. It was like a one-way window. Inside it, she was an observer, buffered from the scrutinizing eyes of strangers.

Technology has facilitated and reinforced the gender-based separation at many a mosque these days. If the justification for those monitors is to make women have a sense of inclusion and presence in prayers or events, then how are we supposed to raise questions, participate in discussions, or object to rules or roaring old men? How did the woman who objected to Omar bin Al-Khattab's direction to lower dowries do it if she was cast behind a wall or caring for a baby in the basement? All I know is that monitors did not exist when we were growing up, just like fake walls did not exist in the Golden years of Islam.

"Faith and feminism" go hand in hand

Almost every word in this column resonates with my own thoughts and lived experiences. It's so true, I felt like Zohra Moosa, the author of this week's "Faith and feminism" column on the New Statesman, could be my twin sister. Here is what she says:

I am often probed about how I reconcile my faith with my feminism. Sometimes it comes as an explicit question, as happened when I was interviewed earlier this year for a book on Islam and feminism. I was asked directly whether I found it difficult to reconcile the two, whether there were inherent tensions I had to navigate and how did I square my religion and my belief (the two were conflated in the question) with my feminist convictions.

I was there too:

More often, it is an implied critique, a suggestion that I suffer from some combination of any of: false consciousness, limited agency/choice (where my family, ‘community’ and/or ‘culture’ is presumed to be oppressing me), insufficiently robust or analytical intellectual capacities (no one has actually called me ‘stupid’ yet though), political defensiveness about being Muslim (i.e. refusing to engage in critiques of Islam within the current political/security climate), political or social naiveté, opportunism (some people think it’s a good time to peddle being a ‘Muslim woman feminist’), and/or a misreading of feminism and/or Islam.

Sexist text?

Having grown up with both faith and feminism and never really not had either, I continue to find the suggestion that they are anything other than complementary in my life a bit alien. Intellectually I understand the confusion that prompts the question; I’ve had enough people quote parts of the Qu’ran at me to have received the message that they would like to tell me: ‘your primary text is sexist don’t you know’. But to equate a spiritual practice with some people’s literal, and historically and politically vacuous, interpretations of a text is to miss the point in a pretty profound way.

My feminism is informed by my faith and vice-versa because of how I live both. Just as my feminism is more than the job I do at the Fawcett Society, so too is my faith more than the prayers I say.

I couldn't agree more:

I came to the feminist movement from religious teachings about empathy, peace, social justice, and the need to work for the betterment of others and the world. I was schooled, in religious contexts, to have a healthy intolerance of exploitation, abuse, marginalization, and dis-empowerment. In addition, there were particular religiously-sourced stories about the importance of respecting women, the righteousness of treating women with dignity and fairness, the value in educating girl children over boy children that reinforced feminist principles for me from an early age.

They reinforce each other:

Over time, feminism has become the natural extension of the moral framework that I was inculcated into from birth. There need not have been anything particularly ‘Muslim’ about my feminist awakenings, but the reality is that in my case there was. In turn, I come to my faith, every day, with a sense of purpose and direction because of my feminist ethics. My spiritual journey is intimately connected with my ideas about humanity and life. As these ideas evolve over time, so too does my spiritual path change, which then affects my politics.

Who wouldn't want a richer life?

My life is richer for having both faith and feminism in it. So that’s how I reconcile the two.

Muslim Women and the “War on Terror”

The “War on Terror,” which was initially waged to retaliate against Al-Qaeda’s 9/11, was also controversially declared a war to “liberate” Afghan women. Moreover, the promise of democracy and freedom for Iraqi people has become a nightmare of endless occupation and violence, and further inferiority for Iraqi women in their extremely turbulent environment. Subsequently, Muslim women’s lives have shifted from the shadows of invisibility and silence to the spotlights of vulnerability for some and power for others. The so called “War on Terror” has created an opportunity structure wherein Muslim feminist activists working on the grassroots level have successfully mobilized feminist support and political action transnationally.

I am writing a paper that chronicles the emergence of a new type of feminism in the Muslim world that is characterized by its postcolonial perspective and its transnational sphere. Using postcolonial feminist theory and transnational social movement literature, this paper examines the dimensions of the “double-burden” that Muslim feminist activists face as they mobilize on two fronts: internal – against patriarchy and women’s rights violations – and external – against Western imperialism and neoliberal capitalism, two of the factors fueling the “War on Terror.” Examples and testimonies are derived from writings of Muslim feminist activists in war zones as well as from documents and programs of women’s organizations like RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan), which have been powerful entities in defining and driving women’s efforts to effect change in times of war and upheaval.