American feminist and author Naomi Wolf has written for the Lebanon Daily Star:
"I was so sure that Muslim women should be allowed to speak for themselves because of the faces of Muslim feminism I encountered in recent travels – notably in Jordan, a country fascinatingly poised between tradition and innovation, developing under a forward-looking monarchy that is seeking to modernize and, to an extent, democratize. For those Westerners who worry about Islamic fundamentalism in the Arab world, surely Jordan is a worthy model to understand, support and engage.
The women leaders I met in Amman were not saying, “Please tell the West to save us.” They were too busy making egalitarian, modernist new worlds of their own, with an Arab, and often Islamic, imprimatur. These women are exactly the kind of leaders that everyone should be cultivating and supporting, rather than overlooking because of a belief that they cannot exist in the Middle East. We would do better to find out more about them than to waste our time on superficial debates about how they – and many others who are just as accomplished – should dress.
You can read the full article here.
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As-salaamu-alaykum Dear Sister
ReplyDeleteThis is brilliant, exactly the type of thing we need people to understand about Muslim women, thanks for posting it!