What Might an Islamist Gender Discourse Look Like?

Authors

  • Roxanne D. Marcotte University of Queensland

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/arsr.2006.19.2.141

Keywords:

Egyptian Islamasists, Ezzat, gender and Islam, Islam and modernity

Abstract

This paper attempts to review some of the arguments that lie beneath the gender discourse of Egyptian Islamists and argues that, contrary to common perceptions, and in spite of their fundamentalist understanding of Islam, modernity is influencing Islamist discourses on gender. Egyptian Heba Raouf Ezzat’s gender discourse, for example, is indebted to new feminist critiques of the Islamic tradition. The Islamist discourse on gender becomes, therefore, a modern construct that tries to bridge the gap between tradition and modernity and to reconcile two sets of principles: the traditional and patriarchal religious conception of women’s nature, role, and rights, and the new modern understanding of Muslim women’s social and political roles. In what follows, we will present Ezzat’s criticism of feminism and her own Islamic feminist project, which is best illustrated with her own understanding of Islamic methods of reformation in Islam and of religious interpretations, and her understanding of a non-binary gendered space.

Author Biography

  • Roxanne D. Marcotte, University of Queensland
    Dr Roxanne D. Marcotte is Lecturer in Arabic and Islamic Studies in the School of History, Philosophy, Religion, and Classics at The University of Queensland. She has a BA in Philosophy from the Université du Québec à Montréal, an MA and a PhD in Islamic Studies from the Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University; she has published articles on medieval Arabic and Persian Islamic Philosophy and on contemporary Muslim thinkers from Syria, Morocco, Iran, Egypt, and on women in Islam; she lived for more than five years in Tunisia, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, and Iran. For a full list of publications, cf. School HPRC website: http://www.uq.edu. au/hprc/index.html?page=21281.

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Published

2006-02-25

How to Cite

Marcotte, R. D. (2006). What Might an Islamist Gender Discourse Look Like?. Journal for the Academic Study of Religion, 19(2), 141-167. https://doi.org/10.1558/arsr.2006.19.2.141