Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Since the inception of the Islamic Republic in 1979, gender contestation has gained extra saliency and unprecedented intensity in Iranian society and polity. The current gender regime in Iran and the women's movement challenging it have complex, contradictory, and paradoxical characteristics. This chapter is an attempt to explain one aspect of this complexity concerning Iranian women's negotiation with the ruling patriarchy. Its focus is on one of the strategies used by many Muslim reformers, women as well as men, in dealing with the traditional Islamic discourse, particularly the patriarchal construct of sharī‘ah. As one of the various ways of women's struggle, this strategy – known in the West as “Islamic feminism” – represents a resistance and subversion from within the religious framework and Islamic institutions. It is an attempt by Muslim believers to reconcile their faith with modernity and gender egalitarianism.Though a very important factor, religion is only one determinant of women's status and rights and its impact is mediated or modified through socio-economic factors, state policy, the educational system, and other sociocultural institutions. However, the recent surge of Islamism and the political instrumentalization of religion have practically increased the significance of the role of Islam, especially sharī‘ah. Islam, like the other two Abrahamic religions, originated ... log in or subscribe to read full text