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Summary of Minutes—Islam & Feminism Discussion (16 June 2012) On Saturday, June 16th, PASSIA hosted a workshop at the Best Eastern Hotel in Ramallah to discuss “Islam and Feminism.” It was a vivacious event attended by a range of participants including men, women, college students, professors, Palestinians and internationals. The diversity of the audience highlights the importance of this topic to all genders, age groups, nationalities and religions. The first speaker, Dr. Mustafa Abu Sway, lecturer of Islamic Studies at Al-Quds University, presented a paper on Islam as a liberation movement for women. He discussed the Quran and Hadith and demonstrated, by way of these sources, the lack of discrimination against women in Islam. He showed specifically how Islam liberated women from socioeconomic and theological burdens of pre-Islamic cultures and religions. He noted that the Quran and Hadith should be considered as the main sources of feminism in Islam, although the implications may change with different exegeses. To substantiate his argument, Abu Sway discussed gender equality in Islam in terms of material achievement, the creation story, the relation between prophecy and culture, guardianship, inheritance, testimony, and house chores. He concluded with a discussion of the political significance of women’s role in shura, or consultation. Following a transitory discussion of shura which Dr. Mahdi Abdul Hadi, head of PASSIA, opened to the audience, Dr. Islah Jad, Professor of Gender and Development and Director of the Insitute of Women’s Studies at Birzeit University, spoke generally about the role of women in political life in the Islamic world. She noted the substantial participation of females in the Islamist political movements of the 20th Century, but questioned the significance of women’s roles in the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions of the Arab Spring. She inquired as to whether Islam was the problem or the solution for gender inequality in the Arab world. Regarding the relationship between Islamic feminism and the human rights regime, Dr. Islah drew a distinction between western legal theory, which centers on individual duties and obligations, and Islamic society, which is built around the family as the fundamental unit. She concluded with a discussion of feminism and nationalism, in which she noted a direct correlation between the relative strength and weakness of feminist and nationalist movements, observing that they tended to rise and fall together. The next speaker was Aseel Fatafteh, a senior researcher at PASSIA, who discussed the relationship between feminism, Islam and liberalism. She recounted that the liberal feminism of the Arab world began as a top-down movement among the elite, and remained disconnected from the grassroots over the course of its development. As a result, liberal feminist movements—despite their great achievements in the field of health, education, and employment—failed tremendously to alter social consciousness concerning the status of women in the Arab world. This problem cannot be solved, she argued, unless we first address one of the most significant obstacles in the way of Muslim women’s emancipation, which is the traditional school of Islam that justifies discrimination against women and bestows a divine nature upon it. Her conclusion was that Islam must reform its patriarchal religious institution in order to reclaim the voice and agency of Muslim women in matters of religious, social, and political concern. Hanadi Qawasmi, a Palestinian blogger and journalist, shared her findings from an extensive study of an online blog called Kolna Leila (“We are all Leila”), which is devoted to the discussion of women’s issues. Upon review of the contents of the blog, Qawasmi took interest in the observation that most of the contributors tended to preface their blog posts with the disclaimer, “I am not a feminist.” She noted that all of the arguments and cases put forth by blog users about women’s issues were substantiated by Islamic sources. The blog posts could be divided roughly into two main schools of thought: The first group believed that Islamic teachings contain the solution to women’s issues, and that Islam should be applied “as is.” The opposing side demanded a reformed reading of Islamic sources such as the Qur’an and the Sunnah, in order to improve the status of women in Islam. Professor Rosemary Hollis, Director of the Olive Tree Scholarship Programme at City University London and a prominent scholar of Middle East Policy, addressed the question Dr. Islah posed as to whether Islam was the problem or the solution for gender inequality in the Arab world. Professor Hollis asserted that Islam is not the problem, although some of the people who speak in the name of Islam may be the problem. For some feminists, she claimed, Islam can be the solution. She recounted that feminism was championed in the Palestinian Territories during the First Intifada, and then it retracted due to a change in the tactics of Israel. Similarly to Dr. Islah, Professor Hollis made the distinction between the individualism of Western society and the fundamentality of the family unit in the Arab and Muslim world. She claimed that feminism was necessary to support this family structure, and that conflict jeopardizes the family by undermining pride, causing humiliation and generating economic pressure.