2. Hidayet Tuksal

Turkish feminist theologist, Hidayet Tuksal, offers a unique and empowered perspective in today’s polarized Turkey.

Prompted by the misogyny of her male colleagues in school, Tuksal began to study Islamic theology as a way to combat the religious sexist speech and to liberate the religious text from the readings of the male gaze.

Tuksal has faced harsh criticism from both the left wing feminists and the right. Wearing a headscarf in a time where ultra-secular Turkey had banned it in universities and public offices, Tuksal was a walking paradox.

In a country where you are either a headscarf-wearing, docile, ultra-orthodox Muslim woman or a staunch secular opposing the headscarf, Tuksal created a public space for an alternative.

A space for women who found themselves in Islam and were liberated in its text and practices.

“There is no single feminism, just as there is no single Islam,” Tuskal stated in an interview.

“Given this diversity, I can say I feel close to feminism based on the common denominator of rejecting and fighting mentalities that view the male as the essential human being and secondarize the female”.

3. Asma Lamrabet

A physician by profession, Moroccan feminist Asma worked as a doctor in Central America where she was exposed to Liberation Theology that helped her revisit understandings of liberation in her religion, Islam.

Liberation Theology is derived from the practice inspired in Christian movements in Latin America that prioritize the liberation and justice for the oppressed and derives religious understanding from this foundation.

Lamrabet focuses on discussing certain practices, such as the hijab, through a Western colonialist context. She also looks at the ways the Quran has been historically interpreted to uphold patriarchy due to cultural and political realities of certain times. 

Lamrabet places emphasis on the violent history of Western colonialism and imperialism as a factor in the current gender and socio-political inequity found in many parts of the Muslim world.

In her rejection of Western feminism, Lamrabet states a belief that all women are in the same struggle against hegemonic patriarchy without any historical or geographical context. She attempts to dispel the idea that women are all unified unanimously in a struggle against patriarchy.

She states, “Concepts such as colonization, racism or slavery, are all absent in the hegemonic feminist thought, and as south feminists or “marginalized” feminists, we must have our own experience that allows us to develop our own strategy of resistance and mobilization.”

She considers herself a ‘third-way’ feminist. She describes a third way feminist as one that rejects the two sides presented currently in the mainstream understanding of gender practices: Western feminism and religious conservatism.

Her third-way belief finds her liberation through the rereading of the religious text away from patriarchal and Western influenced understandings of Islam.

Lamrabet has written five books about Islamic feminism and they are absolutely powerful, recommended reads!

I share these great women with you in hopes that you will push yourself to explore the diverse activist history of Muslim women.

Do all these women agree with each other? Probably not. Do all Muslim women support them? I don’t think so.

What we can say is that they open up spaces for themselves and others to explore their own understandings of their faith and provide them with tools for liberation.

Every Muslim woman has a unique relationship with her religion, herself, and her womanhood and they should all be recognized and uplifted.

Any liberation that relies on the oppression of others or causes injustice must be recognized as such. These women acknowledge this and advocate courageously in order to live out this truth.



Hadiya Abdelrahman is an Everyday Feminism Reporting Fellow. Hadiya graduated from Rutgers University with a double major in Women and Gender studies and Middle Eastern Studies. Hadiya currently works with refugees and asylees in NYC. When she’s not at work, Hadiya writes angry rants and poetry. She enjoys writing about topics that focus on refugees, intersectional feminism, and state violence against people of color.


http://everydayfeminism.com/2017/07/badass-muslim-feminists/?utm_content=bufferd...

how many clits among the five women?

Karnal wrote on Aug 4^th, 2017 at 11:05pm:

Er... all of them.

You left out Yassmin.

Dumb title for a topic...

https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/asia/100000004108808/the-killing-of-farkhund...