Is there a problem with Islam?

[LeafBud7]

My answer to this has always been, no, even if there are problematic elements within Islam especially for women, you can say the same about any culture or ideology, or religion.
I have been reading and thinking more about this recently, and i'm going round in circles. My brother in law is Muslim, and I am going to ask him what he thinks when I next get the chance for a proper chat, also a female colleague who I think would be open to talking about this..
In the meantime, what do you think? Is it as I have always thought, above, or is there something potentially within the religion what makes it more problematic, or is it not the religion itself, but more how things evolve in some communities? Is it all just a imaginary "problem" used by racists to whip up a storm?
One thing is for sure, it seems one is not really allowed to ask these questions in some circles, without being accused of being racist, which I find really unhelpful.

I pointed out before that Khadija was an extremely wealthy merchant with business interest and wide networks all over the place. Now how oh how did she do that with zero rights over property etc? This one really annoys me, women were not given enhanced rights they already had rights otherwise she would have been unable to accumulate such power and influence. I think theres some rewriting of history there.

Some Muslim women do protest against the oppression of women in Islamic countries. Here's one example. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/maryam-namazie-islamic-mahsa-amini-trafalgar-square-iran-b2213535.html

I don't know if there are a lot of other examples, or not.

Maryam Namazie is definitely not a muslim. In fact, she's the spokesperson for the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain and a leading activist warning of the dangers of islam, particularly its negative impact on women and girls. She is extremely pro-secularism, extremely anti-sharia - and is often accused of islamophobia.

About Maryam – Maryam Namazie

No is the answer to your question. I'll let this powerful speech from Nahid Fattahi answer.

https://x.com/NahidFattahi/status/1829581460044681300?s=19&t=s36ocVnuVaMMKJdUS278oA

Islamic countries, Muslim men, Muslim women, people of Afghanistan and specially Afghan men: Your silence is a betrayal. By allowing the Taliban’s gender apartheid and brutality to go unchallenged, you let them hijack Islam. This is not our faith. Stand up now—reclaim Islam’s true essence of peace and justice. The world is watching. Silence is no longer an option.
#EndGenderApartheid #Afghanistan #StandwithWomenOfAfghanistan
I'm still waiting for the outrage from politicians and religious leaders. I'm so sick of the accusations of apartheid levelled at Israel when this actual real gender apartheid passes unnoticed.

That's such an excellent point, @Imnobody4 .
I wish there were huge marches against gender apartheid. There won't be.

She's absolutely awesome. If you ever get the chance to hear her speak, do.

She sounds absolutely amazing! What a brave woman.

Absolutely - an incredible woman, and extremely brave... but not a good example of a muslim protesting against islamic oppression of women!

Probably some people on the march were Muslim though? She definitely sounds very brave, and so does Nahid Fattahi.
I don't know much about this, but one thing I wonder is whether the situation where sometimes fairly recent Muslim immigrants here becoming v extreme is similar to something

I read once about Chinese immigrants in the US. The theory was that the way Chinese parents raise their children in the US can sometimes be much stricter than the way they are raised in China, as sometimes immigrants cling to their birth country's culture the way it was when they left, & therefore aren't affected much by changes back there after their departure, or by the culture of their adopted country.

In Sue Lloyd -Roberts' book The War on Women, which discusses these issues a lot, one imam says that often imams are chosen more for their supposed 'piety' than their learning, and end up promoting stuff like FGM that isn't in the Quran at all! Ofc often immigrants families may not speak much English, & are dependent at first on the immediate immigrant community, so vulnerable to malign imams.

BTW, on the other thread I got answers to some qs that weren't answered here.
On the modesty issue, one poster said that no woman should ever be judged as asking for sexual harassment, no matter whether she's dressed Islamically or not, or whether she's Muslim or not.

On the issue of gay/bi people & temptation in the mosque, one poster said that she had a bi friend & the friend saw resisting temptation as 'part of her own test in that situation', but that there's far less temptation in a mosque w fellow Muslim women at prayer than when walking in the park, for example.

But that’s a bit obvious isn’t it, no reasonable person would say otherwise.The difference is between people who practise their faith from the perspective of being a moderate Muslim with a good heart as to opposed to those who practise their faith from an interpretation of Islam that is not moderate….or, to be honest, an interpretation that is more in line with historic interpretations and practises. I have friends who are primary school teachers working in an area of my city that draws a percentage of pupils from a particular immigrant group, those teachers are regularly told by their young , male pupils that they “don’t have to listen to you because you are a woman”. Do you have any confidence that male children being raised in a household like that will have western ideals of respect towards women when they grow up ?

So why can't heterosexual men and women resist temptation? Why do they have to be separated?

psifreeze, I agree in theory. But tbh recent events make me agree more & more that a lot of men don't care about making women feel uncomfortable, or much worse, if it serves their libido. The onus should be on them to change this, obviously!
The majority of people on Muslim MNetters seem quite Liberal. See the recent thread on gay children, for instance. Bc of this, I think probs the anti-Muslim prejudice caused by recent events w Israel-Palestine probs has more of an effect on their day-to-day lives than the treatment of women in more Conservative Muslim sections of the UK ddoes.To be clear, I don't agree w all the dangerously ill-informed people throwing around words like genocide & colonisers at Israel, & saying Zionism is automatically racist.
But that's partly why I think there has been more upset on Muslim Mumsnetters about that than the situation of women in Islamic countries. Also, the Palestine situation has been far more heavily reported than the other ones.

In my opinion, it's very difficult for Muslims to criticise it as it would be blasphemous. I could be wrong, but these human rights abuses are said to have a basis in either the Qur'an or other texts, therefore criticising them is haram.

A poster here spoke of Muslim feminists working within Sharia, not against it. As Sharia is often used to oppress and discriminate against women, then there's little progress to be made.

That's just my understanding.

@username101010 i would agree with that, I would think it rarer for a practising Muslim to publicly criticise the Quran than for a practising Christian or a Jew to criticise their religious texts . I think there are perhaps practises such as not being allowed to touch the Quran if you are menstruating that are considered normal….even though as a western woman I would say, even if it doesn’t harm anyone, it still underlines the fact that women are considered impure or unclean in certain states. The fact that culturally women are kept apart/ physically covered from single men also means that (as I discussed earlier in my thread) a group of men wouldn’t try to hide the fact they are openly ogling my young daughter even though a group of similarly aged westernised men would be able to tell she was well underage and wouldn’t do the same behaviour .

That's the power of religion though. God's word is law and priests et al are speaking as God intended so can't be challenged.

That's how come the Church became so powerful and was able to commit so many atrocities. People didn't feel they could criticise it as priests were held in such high esteem in communities and countries.

You can't argue with God's word. That's why it's so important that faith is private and separated from the state. It's also crucial to be able to criticise it.

Dr Haqqani has done a really interesting piece on Sharia here https://orbala.wordpress.com/2017/07/30/the-liberating-difference-between-sharia-and-fiqh/
She & plenty of other liberal Muslims clearly don't see criticising it as blasphemous. But I agree many would...
I could be wrong, I think in Orthodox Judaism women have to take a ritual bath every month after menstruating. Obvs lots of Jews don't agree w this.

until, that's awful about your daughter. Western men do perve, or worse on underage girls, but I agree that they usually do so more covertly. Would you say that the covering tradition means sometimes Muslim men see a girl as fair game (ugh) if she's not coveted? I didn't quite follow, sorry(pretty tired).

@AliasGrace47 This thread is not about Jews. It gets really tedious when posters start doing the "But Jews do this!" dance on threads or discussions about Islam.

@25milesfromhome I agree. Too much comparison (in a negative way) about Jewish practices. That's not what this thread is about.

In a nutshell, yes.

25, I agree that it's a very different situation as Orthodox Jews are a v small community compared to Muslims, & Jewish people generally haven't fallen into fundamentalism.
I wanted to point out that that particular sexist custom isn't unique to Islam. I agree the implications for it being so widespread are v different, compared to its practice within Judaism.

Why compare to Jewish customs, though?