"Gender Jihad:" Islam's Feminism

Western feminism is a double-edge sword, and the edge that attacks healthy societal norms is much more sharply honed than the edge that simply advances fairness, respect and equality.

In the new and emerging world of Islamic feminism, it's a double opposite. The societal norms are not healthy in Islam -- it's a religion of descrimination, honor killings, forced marriages, clitorectomies and repression -- and both edges of the sword are equally sharp ... thin, flimsy, at risk of breaking, but equally sharp.

Writing in today's WaPo opinion section, Asra Nomani, a leader of the movement, writes hopefully that feminism will moderate, not radicalize, Islam:

To conservative Muslims, [Islamic feminism] is an insult to Islam. But to many moderate Muslims -- and I count myself among them -- an Islamic feminist movement fits with the religion's early teachings and offers one of our best hopes for countering extremism. Indeed, those of us who have joined the movement since it emerged in the 1990s have come to understand that Islam needs to go back to its progressive 7th-century roots if it is to move forward into the 21st century.

Christianity had to do the same thing when feminists attacked it for being anti-woman. When people went back to the teachings, and more importantly, the actions of Christ and the early church, they saw a movement revolutionary in its positive treatment of women.

Women were leaders of the early church. Christ spoke to women as equals in an era where no one, especially religious leaders, would do that. He stood beside the aldultress and defied anyone to stone her to death, and in doing so, He broke the religious tradition of the day, which was similar in many ways to the Sharia laws of today.

The best offenses against jihad are democratization of Islamic countries and liberalization of Islam. Not surprisingly, women are a force for positive change in at least the second of these two tactics.