Asa feminist what do you think about the burkha/niqab, liberating or oppressive?

No Nailik, you don't need religion to marry or bank or speak or pray.

You may wish a religious person to bless your marriage but it isn't legally required and it's not legally required to divorce.

Like I said there's no place for Sharia here, we have a legal system.

You would stop Islamic marriages, finance and people dividing inheritance according to shariah

Islamic marriage should be registred under uk law (same as a civil wedding) and then if a divorcee is required then a divorce can be obtained under the existing uk civil laws which will deal with child custody, disposal of assests, maintance ect. Finance banks can offer which ever products the market demands and as it will be a civil contract any problems should then be deathwith under the existing civil laws relating to contracts. Inheritance well the english law already allows anybody to make a will and divide their estate as they see fit but i would like to see muslims treat their male and female children equally, rather than treating their female children as a possession who passes from the father to the son.

How would the disappearance of shariah courts benefit vulnerable Muslim women?

Under uk law men and women are equal and are protected by these laws. I would like to see Imans and community elders encouraging the vunerable women of their community to use these laws as and when needed rather trying to apply their own rules and laws written over 2000 years ago which are heavly loaded in favour of the man.

You only have to read a few of those replies on the sharia council of britains own website to see that all your lofty ideas of islam are not what is happening at grass roots level and if you accept this than you are leaving muslim women in the hands of misguided fools without any right of appeal or proper legal address.

Ok but what does that mean in practice? You are against shariah court but its ok if individuals who are unorganized follow shariah?

You would stop Islamic marriages, finance and people dividing inheritance according to shariah?

How would you implement this?

How would the disappearance of shariah courts benefit vulnerable Muslim women?

I can only speak for me but i am against any court, sharia or otherwise that puts itself in conflict with the existing legal system of criminal and civil law.
I am against any legal system that says as a woman my evidence is worth half that of a mans.
I am against a system that has different rules and laws placed upon me just because i dont have a penis.
I am against a system that cannot be changed or reformed just because someone who died over 2000 years ago said so. The law to me should be contining to evolve and change to suit the modern world and our more enlightened times.
i want a laws made and upheld that treat men and women as equals and are applied regardless of gender.

im confused, these acts are following shariah law, so you do not want to ban the following of shariah law, by banning islamic wedding ceremonies, that have no status in civil law, but you would want to ban the following of shariah law by banning islamic divorces through shariah council that have no basis in civil law?

even if a muslim has a civil cereminy as well as nikkah and civil divorce, they would still need a religious divorce in order to get re nikkahed, or to be islamicly considered as divorced, which is a seperate matter from civily being considered divorced.

and you are not opposed to a bank providing a product that follows shariah law,

and noone is even suggesting that we implement the criminal side of civil law,

so what exactly about the implementation of shariah law in regards to civil matters is anyone against?

An islamic marriage is a contract.
Sharia say 2 adult male witnesses or 1 adult male and 2 adult women ( nice bit of inequality going on there as well)
Nikah marriages are not reconsised in uk law and for it to be a lawful marriage then you would need to hold a civil cermony as well. If you hold a civil cermony then if you need to divorce then you can do so under exisiting uk divorce laws.

As to sharia compliant banking any bank can offer any type of banking product if they see a demand for it. You dont need a sharia law to do it, just a bank who is willing to offer a product that complies with the principles of sharia.

shariah law is not required for shariah law compliant banking? seriously?

the islamic marriage contract is just as much part of shariah law as the islamic divorce contract?

you still need two witnesses and a procedure of asking 3 times which is stated in shariah law?

so if you are not against islamic marriage but just against islamic divorce/khula?

Sharia law is not required for people to do any of those things.

PosiesOfPoison Thu 20-Oct-11 09:33:27
Sharia law has no place in Britain EVER about anything

so would you ban religious marriages? would that be for all religions? so you couldnt get married in a church/mosque/ synagogue?

would you ban shariah compliant banking and trust funds?

would you ban people from praying, fasting, ritual ablutions?

would you ban people from saying salaam?

messyisthenewtidy from my perspective, it's not about throwing the baby out with the bathwater, it's more a case of looking in the bath and realising there was no baby in there to start with. That's how I realised I was an atheist.

Without the words in the religious books one would not have a language for God, therefore how can any God not be unfair toward women? If there really was a divine being wouldn't she have ensured that all followers would have access to an equal and just life? Not that men become the gift givers to allow women freedom, the kindness of one's husband is to be relied upon for a women to live in happiness?

Catherine "It would just mean rejecting a whole load of male patriarchal theology."

In the end I found it so hard to fight against all that male patriarchal theology that I rejected Christianity altogether. It just seemed so much easier.

I'm really not against Muslims, but I think the patterns of culture need examining. this may also be the same for all faith (I'm not saying it's not). But Christian countries have a few moderate and better places for women...still a looooooooooooong old way to go though.

No place is equal for a woman, yet.

Last night I looked through countries by dominant religion, Aside from The Congo the ones that stuck out as hideous to women were majority Muslim. So I though that this is far too convenient for my argument and sifted through in more detail. China, awful to women starting with baby girls, no religion, but every (please correct me if I'm wrong) majority Muslim country is an awful place for a woman to be born. I'm pretty sure this horror is not exclusive to Islam, but it is inevitable for some reason, or many reasons. It may be that Islam only dominates in particularly impoverished nations? Or that those nations are way behind for women? It may be that Islam slows progression for women?

I have struggled with the question of religion in the past since it appears to me that most of those I have encountered appear to be set up along and defined by patriarchal society. I am not religious in any way, although I did dabble with "born again" Christianity in my teens.

However, I have come to understand thanks to many of the fabulous religious people on MN and other parts of the web, that many feminist women believers separate and distinguish between the god they worship and the institutionalised structure and/or some its theology. I have heard it argue that patriarchy has deformed and manipulated their religion and they see their goal as overcoming this.

It makes a lot of sense to me in that I have always been interested in the messages attributed to Jesus in the bible. I find I agree with much of what he appears to say. However, I dislike intensely how the Christian Church evolved and formed into a patriarchal institution which systematically erased and denied female participation and overlooked and/or rewrote much of what Jesus appeared to have said in order to make it fit in with their worldview. If I were to believe that Jesus was infact divine (which I don't) I think it would be perfectly possible to be the same feminist I am and be a Christian, iyswim. It would just mean rejecting a whole load of male patriarchal theology.

I have no such insight into Islam, but I would venture to think that this situation is equally possible. For that reason I don't think that it is necessary to be an atheist to be feminist.

Finally I think that the comparison between religious attire and stripping and prostitution is not valid. It's the difference between clothes and behaviour again. I think it is important not to mix the two.

Yes I reject any attempt to dissemble about sharia law. I just can't 'hear'.

Goth, I am not saying 'a few Muslim men are bad hence all are bad'.

I am saying ENTIRE COUNTRIES are run according to a system that discriminates against and degrades women.

Sometimes you have to draw a line and say - here but no further.

Surely it's about not throwing out the baby with the bathwater so to speak - keeping the good bits of a religion/culture/institution and separating it from all the patriarchal crap that surrounds it.

True, that our current religions are so deeply entwined with misogyny because they have been interpreted by misogynists from day 1, but if men have managed to twist faith round to put us down then surely we can twist it round again to fight back, just like the fatalfeminist is doing with Islam. There's a lot of feminism in Islam if you take her point of view just as there's a lot of socialism in Christianity.

I do understand though that some feminists might be worried about the "spread" of the patriarchal aspects Islam in the UK, as awful as that sounds. We have a new set of ideologies which are part of our culture now and as such affect us and how we think, particularly as women because we are reminded of the attitudes and ideas that we have just escaped from. Therefore I think it's fair that people think critically about it, just as we do about Christianity, but whilst taking care to remember that there is a load of hyperbolic hatred spurted out by the tabloids intended to incite fear and rile people up.

Perhaps you should do an MN search.

Alex, perhaps you have a point about perceptions. One person may see an institution as inherently patriarchal so of no value to them while another may either not see it as inherently patriarchal or that it is more complex than that, and what they value in that institution (for example here, faith) is important enough to them to work to address the sexist aspects (or other aspects they don't agree with.) So for example, feminists worked hard for the ordination of women priests in the C of E and this did change. There are still sexist aspects of that institution. Some women have left because they couldn't reconcile this with their feminist beliefs while others stay in there, continuing to work for change.

Posie, I would certainly hope members here would not insult or have a pop at strippers or prostitutes if they came into a discussion. It's one thing to disagree and present evidenced counter arguments, but quite another to insist that someone doesn't meet an arbitrary set of indicators to call themselves a genuine feminist.

Without wanting to insult religion of any brand/system I just think of how we react to strippers and prostitutes on these boards. Do we ever just sit back and allow the individual to think she is making her own free choice? That the hidden and overwhelming influence of the patriarchy is molding and shaping her choices, do we ever afford her that freedom?

Kritiq While of course I do realise that faith is very important for some people, I admit that yes, I struggle to understand it, and a condition such as you describe is totally alien to me. I don't think that faith per se prevents you from being a feminist - it's the behaviour that faith can lead to that could be anti-feminist. Obviously not all people of faith are anti-feminist.

However, I also wonder how a feminist can support a patriarchal religion and misogynist practices and what leads a woman to believe in it, accept it as the truth. Perhaps it is because they don't believe it to be patriarchal? Perhaps they believe it is all a matter of interpretation? I don't know. I have been trying to understand, but frankly I don't 'get' it.

I'm going to delurk to admit that I am finding this thread is a bit weird; especially in as it is the feminist section. I think I agree with almost everything Kritique has said so far. It started out very interesting and informative in the sense that many posters who do wear some kind of covering shared their perspectives on the question, but has seemed to degenerate into a discussion about if you can be a feminist and wear such a thing. I find it most disturbing that in the light of the first section of the thread, posters can take it upon themselves to decide how other peoples' wardrobe defines their feminism in a manner which suggests that they have not read or just not taken in what has been said before. Since when is policing what women wear acceptable behaviour? Let's leave that to the patriarchy shall we; that generally does a much better line in blaming women for all oppression they suffer than we can ever manage.

Personally I think we all live in a patriarchy that oppresses women in a myriad of interesting ways and forms. If feminism is anything at all, it exists to challenge this. I don't think there is any one way to do it, or any one uniform to wear in which to do it. I certainly don't think criticising what feminists wear is the way to do it. It's not what people wear but how they behave that defines their feminism.....

Cantspel - I've done some searching and found that bit you copied and pasted. I am very disappointed with that website's usage of the hadith particularly in response to the circumstances described. Islam does give both sexes the right to sexual intimacy within marriage but this right is not to be taken with force or coercion.

What these discussions often lack is an awareness of how culture and other factors intermingle. Just as people in the UK and even still on this website used to struggle with the concept of marital rape, so people from different cultural backgrounds do and this needs to be challenged.

Nailak made a very good point upthread about wondering who these people are and how they got to set up an sharia council. This is a sound practical consideration and is why I would like to regulation of these and similar bodies.

There is good practice out there (one mediation organisation tries to balance gender by ensuring that if the religious representative is male, the legal representative is female). The UK Sharia council does not request that witnesses must be male or female, just that one of them is a person of good standing (Mosque leader, G.P or solicitor).

Thank you KRITIQ for your excellent post.

I do struggle with the whole thing, I try not to, I try to pretend it isn't happening. But then, unlike other oppressors, faith and it's unaltering word and wisdom cannot change without the word of God and his message having to alter. Aside from another Prophet (preferably female) how could this happen?

alexpolismum that is why i struggle with understanding islam and feminist women giving it any support and i am not even sure i would view myself as a feminist.

The text i copied is taken from the sharia councils own website so therefore written by respected members of the council with a greater knowledge of islam than maybe your average muslim and it reads like something from the dark ages.