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Article No. 10
Equality and the Muslima:
Negotiating Gender Justice in the Online Muslim Public Sphere
Abstract
The emergence of the transnational
progressive Muslim movement was one of the major, yet largely
overlooked, consequences of the events of September 11, 2001. The
central element of this movement is a belief that the concepts of
peace, mercy, equality and justice must be crystallized through
meaningful communication among diverse interpreters of Muslim source
texts. The movement is adamant that gender justice should govern
Muslims’ daily lives. The role of the Internet has been critical in
enabling and mediating the growth of this nascent movement and in
facilitating its attempts to debate issues relating to social
justice for women. This paper examines the distinct ways in which
the progressive Muslim movement is using the Internet to sustain
itself and advance its views. Discourses on gender that the
Progressive Muslim Union (PMU) posts online were compared with
parallel texts published in the mainstream Muslim online magazine,
lviews. The results show that PMU is developing an active
online community and using the Internet to coalesce an offline
progressive Muslim discourse community.
Introduction
Since 9/11 violence associated with Muslims has raised questions
about Islam’s values and ideals. While the Western media daily
represent Islam as steeped in “fundamentalism” and “terrorism” many
Muslims and their allies have challenged the accurateness of these
claims. One of the foci of this discussion about Islam has been
Muslim women, their roles, their rights and their oppressions. Mass
media are replete with narratives that feature honor killings,
prohibitions against educating girls and women, and other instances
of women’s curtailed rights in Muslim-majority nations. This study
is not concerned with the veracity of these reports or how widely
practiced these atrocities are. Rather, it focuses on the role that
the Internet is playing in providing a platform for progressive
Muslims to discuss gender justice, which is one of their primary
concerns.
Engaging
in a sustained discourse is no easy matter for Muslims because they
reside in multiple areas of the world and, as a result, they are
immersed in cultural contexts that inhibit dialogue. In the
non-Muslim world the media is saturated by images of violent
Muslims, apologies for Muslims, and mainstream non-Muslim
explanations of Islam. In the Muslim world established organizations
do not encourage the progressive Muslim movement, whose views often
are at odds with tradition. As a result, the progressive Muslim
movement has turned to the Internet to carve out a space for itself
in the Muslim public sphere because the Internet offers the
movement’s proponents opportunities to articulate and share
perspectives that otherwise would be ostracized or ignored.
For example, the Progressive Muslim
Union (PMU), which is a network advocating for progressive Islam,
maintains an Internet site where its members discuss many issues,
especially gender justice. Comparing these postings with parallel
texts published in the mainstream Muslim online magazine, lviews,
reveals that the PMU strongly supports gender justice for Muslim
women.
Theory
Public Sphere
This study relies heavily on public sphere theory and its utility in
understanding political communication in the context of nascent
Muslim movements. In The Structural Transformation of the Public
Sphere (1991) Habermas conceives of the public sphere as a place
where individuals engage in reasoned discussion on subjects of
mutual interest. In so doing they cultivate a locale for rational
public deliberation.
The Internet offers progressive
Muslims a new venue for public deliberation; hence, the Internet can
be said to host an electronic public sphere. It provides a forum
where Muslim political and religious viewpoints can be debated:
“Situated outside formal state control, this distinctly Muslim
public sphere exists at the intersections of religious, political,
and social life” (Eickelman & Anderson, 2003, p. 1). Significantly
this new medium allows progressive Muslims to challenge conventional
exegesis of Islamic source texts and articulate new interpretations
of them.
New Media in the Muslim Public Sphere
The nature of the Internet is changing public sphere deliberations.
First, the traditional power asymmetry between orators (senders) and
audience (receivers) is breaking down as more individuals have
access to Internet spaces where they can publish their ideas with
little restriction. Second, the boundaries between public and
private communication are disappearing on the Internet. This allows
an influx of new opinions into the public sphere and transforms
audiences into participatory discourse communities (Eickleman &
Anderson, 2003). These characteristics of the Internet are
facilitating the emergence of a new class of Muslim exegetics who
are using it to establish like-minded, progressive discourse
communities and to introduce to the public sphere novel
understandings of Islam (Anderson, 2003).
September 11, 2001 provided the external impetus that spurred the
formation of this Muslim discourse community while other factors,
including an increase in mass education and the rapid evolution of
media technologies (Eickelman, 1999), were the internal impetus.
Initially this movement attempted to respond to questions about
Islam that arose after 9/11. Later the movement fostered an ongoing
effort to articulate a form of Islam that represents a vast, silent
majority of Muslims.
Scholars who study this phenomenon say that it incorporates ordinary
Muslims worldwide in discussions of the fundamentals of Muslim faith
and practice (Eickelman, 1999). This departs from conventions of
religious authority that subordinate the masses to one or more
individual leaders. In contrast to tradition, the new Muslim
electronic public sphere permits much greater interpretive agency
among individuals. The Internet, because of its porousness—its
ability to sidestep information blocking and censorship—also admits
more, newly literate, ideologically diverse participants into
current debates (Eickelman, 1999). This tends to put Muslims
dispersed around the world into direct contact with each other and
confounds the global/local divide that previously inhibited the free
flow of information among them.
The growth of the electronic Muslim public sphere began when early
users posted Quranic texts and traditions of the prophet online.
They also started discussion forums (Anderson, 1999). Many of these
posters and visitors to their sites were expatriates in search of a
community. However, as the technology of web production has become
increasingly accessible, the Internet has become home to “web pages
for traditional schools and modern universities, transnational Sufi
networks and national religious movements, traditional missionary
organizations, and for nationwide organizations of Muslims in
Western countries” (Anderson, 1999, p. 896).
As content on Muslim web sites diversified so have the numbers of
online Muslim spokespeople, opinions and dialogs. Consequently two
schools of thought, liberal and progressive Islam, have initiated
sustained discussions of their values on the Internet. Of these
two, liberal Muslims have been accorded more coverage in the Western
media. This is because liberal Muslims identify themselves as
western, meaning that they are Muslims who believe in capitalism,
secular values and the separation of church and state. They also
argue that terrorism is the most significant problem facing their
community (Qamar-ul Huda, 2002). Progressive Muslims have different
points of view. They are more concerned with challenging the status
quo and achieving justice for the disenfranchised than with
assimilating into non-Muslim cultures.
The Progressive
Muslim Movement
This study focuses primarily on progressive Muslims because of their
insistence on changing Islam from within. Another reason for
focusing on the progressive Muslim movement is that it makes gender
justice a cornerstone of their philosophy (Safi, 2003).
Irfani first popularized the label “progressive Islam” in his book,
Revolutionary Islam in Iran (1982). This term’s
meaning was standardized by the Progressive Muslim Network (PMN), an
aggregate of activists and scholars from around the globe who used
electronic media to facilitate conversations that led to the
creation of a document entitled “Progressive Islam: A Definition
and Declaration.” This document established the criteria for PMN
membership. It is also formed a framework for discussions among
progressive Muslims (Esack, 2002).
One of the major constitutive elements of this framework is the
progressive Muslim view of justice: “An
important part of being a progressive Muslim is the determination to
hold Muslim societies accountable for being fair and open. It means
resisting and overthrowing injustice. It means contesting gender
apartheid” (Safi, 2003, p. 15). Hence, for progressive Muslims
justice includes the core values of
social justice, pluralism, and gender justice.
Progressive Muslims emphasize that gender injustice is a
manifestation of broader problems of social justice and pluralism.
Pursuing gender justice, writes Safi (2003), is a binding
responsibility, as is contesting gender apartheid. Significantly,
progressives believe that gender injustice oppresses both individual
women and societies that tolerate such injustice.
Method
This study compares discourses on gender and women on PMU’s website,
pmuna.org, and on Islamicity.com, a popular mainstream site, in
order to determine 1) how the PMU’s conception of gender justice
differs from mainstream Muslim beliefs, and 2) how PMU is using the
Internet to stimulate discussion on gender justice in the Muslim
public sphere.
Data were collected from pmuna.org and Islamicity.com because they
represent different segments of the online Muslim community.
Islamicity.com is one of the most popular Muslim destinations on the
Internet (Lawrence, 2002, p. 242); hence, it is a suitable source of
sample opinions among mainstream Muslims. PMU’s website was selected
because it is the online locus for an active community of
self-proclaimed progressive Muslims.
These websites also were selected for study because their content is
comparable. Each of the sites carries an online magazine. The
magazine associated with Islamicity.com is lviews (Iviews.com)
and PMU produces a magazine called Muslim Wake Up! (Muslimwakeup.com).
One feature shared by these magazines is that independent
contributors write all the articles. Consequently both magazines
constitute an open online Muslim space.
Archived sections of each magazine were tapped for samples.
Iviews.com’s archives were searched using keywords “woman” and
“women.” This produced 36 results from which 5 articles were chosen
randomly. These articles were compared with 5 articles randomly
selected from Muslimwakeup.com’s “Gender Issues” section (the site
does not have a search tool).
PMU’s online and offline strategies, articulated in materials
published on pmuna.org and Muslimwakeup.com, were examined to
determine how PMU is using the Internet to stimulate discussion on
gender justice in the Muslim public sphere. Furthermore, the
researcher attended, in the role of participant observer, 5 of PMU’s
monthly meetings in New York City.
Results and Discussion
The first research question, how the PMU’s conception of gender
justice differs from mainstream Muslim beliefs, seeks to understand
what is distinctive about PMU’s discourse on gender justice.
Articles from Iviews and Muslim Wake Up! were compared
to reveal traditional and progressive Muslim perspectives on gender
and equality. The analysis shows that the sources uses three broad
themes to discuss women’s issues: hijab, women and politics, and
women and society.
The most significant discovery was that while the magazines and
their contributors have different perspectives on gender justice,
their discussion topics are the same: Contributors to both
magazines focus on hijab, women and relationships, and women and
political rights. There is not much attention to literacy, economic
opportunity, or healthcare. This topical parallelism probably occurs
because the primary participants in these online discussions share
bourgeois class status. Hence, the magazines’ themes are similar.
Nevertheless, PMU remains true to its vow to contest and
problematize accepted social norms, especially when gender is
involved. For example, Muslimwakeup.com’s articles discuss hijab in
terms of women’s liberty. Requiring women to wear hijab is depicted
as a form of oppression and dialog centers on the validity of claims
that hijab is a religious imperative. In contrast, Iviews.com’s
articles support hijab, representing it as good Muslim women’s
responsibility and a source of their empowerment.
An example of the second common theme, “women and politics,” is
present in articles on Saudi women and their activism. Both
magazines discuss Saudi Arabian women’s attempts to organize and
address their lack of freedom of association, political liberty, and
equal rights. However, while the article, “Saudi Women Talk Rights,”
(Ambah, 2004) on Iviews.com focuses on the logistics of women’s
activism, such as their venues for organizing, little is written
about their motivation. In contrast, Muslimwakeup.com’s article,
“For Saudi Women, Votes are Keys to the Kingdom” (Eltahawy, 2004)
highlights the lack of gender justice in Muslim societies and
emphasizes the curtailment of women’s liberty in Saudi Arabia. This
discussion subsequently is situated within a broader examination of
the religious sources—Islamic religious texts and traditions—of
gender justice and equal rights for women.
The magazines’ differing perspectives are most obvious in the “women
and society” category. Here the magazines focus on different topics
altogether. An Iviews.com article features the awarding of the Nobel
Peace Prize to Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian Muslim, and the implications
this has for Muslim women (Iviews.com, 2003). This article exploits
the honor bestowed on Ebadi to highlight rights and freedom
available to women living in Islamic majority societies.
Muslimwakeup.com takes a different approach to women and society.
“Let Them be Scandalized” (Rauf, 2005) is an article about
Hind el-Hinnawy’s paternity suit against Ahmed el-Fishawy, an
Egyptian film celebrity. Hinnawy and Fishawy contracted an Urfi
marriage, a clandestine, temporary civil marriage often used to lend
religious legitimacy to otherwise prohibited sexual relations.
Although Hinnawy’s and Fishawy’s relationship was brief, Hinnawy
became pregnant and gave birth after the Urfi marriage’s
dissolution. Even though Urfi relationships and pregnancy among
single women are viewed with disdain in Egypt, the Muslimwakeup.com
article praises Hinnawy for being courageous enough to acknowledge
the relationship and for opposing an unjust social practice.
Significantly, there is not much crosspollination between the two
online Muslim communities. The contributors to and audiences of each
magazine seem oblivious to the existence of the other. This raises
questions about the efficacy of these online discourses, since each
magazine seems to be preaching to the converted. However, such
“preaching” is not an entirely futile process if, using Dewey’s
theories, we are willing to expand our notion of the public
sphere.
Dewey wrote that a multiplicity of publics exist simultaneously and
he suggested that it is possible if not necessary to coordinate
these spheres and “improve” interactions among them through (inter)dialog.
Moreover, in perhaps the most significant development of public
sphere theory since Habermas, Dewey lends communication a central
role in his theory of the public sphere when he “insisted that the
discovery of solutions to pressing social problems would not aid the
public’s recovery unless this knowledge was disseminated through the
art of communication” (Asen, 2003, p. 182).
If we expand our concept of the Muslim public sphere to include the
elements and functions that Dewey attributed to the modern public
sphere, it’s clear that both magazines contribute to civic
deliberation on gender equality even though their readers do not
interact. Moreover, the two magazines represent separate audiences
and the Internet allows them to circulate their respective points of
view publicly. This facilitates the expression of interpretations
and opinions that otherwise would be shut out of public debate. PMU,
moreover, uses the media to foster interactions among isolated
progressive Muslims dispersed throughout the world by bringing these
individuals together in a virtual community.
The second research question, how PMU is using the Internet to
stimulate discussion on gender justice in the Muslim public sphere,
considers the processes through which PMU creates the conditions of
debate, discussion and persuasion conducive to their notions of
gender justice. Longitudinal analysis of PMU’s presence on the
World Wide Web shows that initially PMU members identified
themselves and their objectives on their website: “The Progressive
Muslim Union of North America (PMU) aims
to provide a forum, voice and organizing mechanism for those in the
Muslim community who wish to pursue a progressive religious,
intellectual, social and political agenda” (pmuna.org). This
online declaration led to a process of defining the issues that PMU
members wished to introduce into discussion in the Muslim public
sphere.
PMU’s Muslimwakeup.com also contributes to defining the progressive
Muslim agenda by introducing to the public sphere points of view
that contest mainstream Muslim conceptions of gender justice. To
this end the magazine invites and publishes articles from a
diversity of authors, inserting new voices into public debate on
what constitutes gender justice in Islamic society:
Through online
and offline media, events, and community activities, Muslim Wake
Up! champions an interpretation of Islam that celebrates the
Oneness of God and the Unity of God’s creation through the
encouragement of the human creative spirit and the free exchange of
ideas, in an atmosphere that is filled with compassion and free of
intimidation, authoritarianism, and dogmatism. In all its
activities, Muslim Wake Up! attempts to reflect a deep belief
in justice and against all forms of oppression, bigotry, sexism, and
racism. (Muslimwakeup.com/info)
Importantly, a discussion forum allows audiences to respond to the
magazines’ articles. This enables the audience to engage in
conversation with the author and other audience members, which also
fosters public deliberation.
In an effort to create momentum for the movement PMU also uses its
Internet platform to build networks among geographically proximate
progressives. For example, PMU directs visitors from its website to
its space on meetup.com, a website that permits individuals to
organize regular meetings of special interest groups.
Using the meetup.com mechanism PMU has been organizing the
Progressive Muslim Meetup in New York City since February 2004.
Monthly meetings move public deliberation out of the cyber world
into the real world. Organizers describe them as “monthly
informal get-together[s] of progressive Muslims in the New York area
to get to know each other and share our ideas about whatever comes
to mind: politics, culture, the arts, spirituality, life in general”
(Progressive Muslim Meetup Group).
In recent months these meetings have spread to other North American
cities, including Toronto, Washington, San Francisco, and Santa
Monica.
PMU also has been successful in introducing its agenda into the
broader public sphere, particularly in the U.S. PMU board members
have been invited to give talks in different academic settings
including Occidental College and Harvard University. Additionally,
PMU has garnered national press attention. Articles about PMU have
been published in Newsday, the Minneapolis Star Tribune,
the New York Times and the Financial Times.
Thus, we can see the progressive Muslim movement move offline, at
least in the West, where members find a more hospitable environment.
Conclusion
This study seeks to examine the current Muslim discourse on gender
justice online, particularly as it is being shaped by PMU. In so
doing, the project has explored differing views on gender justice
introduced into the Muslim public sphere through the associated
online magazines of islamicity.com and PMU. In addition, this paper
considers the processes through which PMU is negotiating ideas about
gender justice in Islam by using the Internet. The results show
that PMU, in addition to cultivating an online community, is using
its online presence to foster an offline progressive Muslim
discourse community that engages in public deliberation on gender
justice.
Keywords:
Progressive Muslim, women, Islam, gender, justice, Internet, public
sphere, Muslim.
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About the Author
Saman Talib currently is a Ph.D. candidate at Rutgers University,
New Brunswick, NJ. Her professional background spans the entire
range of mass media. She has worked at publishing houses, broadcast
networks, radio stations, and digital news organizations. Her
scholarship considers the conjunctions of media and politics. She
is particularly interested in researching the effective use of new
media to foster knowledge, literacy and participation in civil
society. She has presented this work at conferences and has been
invited to contribute articles to the forthcoming Routledge
Encyclopedia of American Journalism History. Her e-mail address
is
stalib@eden.rutgers.edu.
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