H. Papanek and G. Minault (eds.), Separate worlds.
Studies of purdah in South Asia, Delhi 1982.
B. Ray, Early feminists of colonial India. Sarla Devi
Chaudhurani and Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, Delhi
2002.
A. Samiuddin and R. Khanam (eds.),Muslim feminism
and feminist movement. South Asia, ii, Pakistan, Delhi
2002.
A. M. Weiss, Implications of the Islamization program for
women, in A. M. Weiss (ed.), Islamic reassertion in
Pakistan, Syracuse, N.Y. 1986, 97–113.Archana ParasharSub-Saharan AfricaFor this entry, the authors have adopted Valen-
tine Moghadem’s definition of feminism: “feminism
is a theoretical perspective, and a practice that
criticizes social and gender inequalities, aims at
women’s empowerment, and seeks to transform
knowledge – and in some interpretations, to trans-
form socio-economic structures, political power
and international relations” (Moghadam 2002, 45).
Defined in this way, feminism may have different
specific objectives depending on the social, eco-
nomic, and political context in which it is function-
ing. In Muslim West Africa Islamic beliefs and
practices are not uniform, even in those countries
where more than 85 percent of the population is
Muslim. In this context, feminism wears many
faces. West African feminists define their own goals
in regard to what features of their society or polity
must be changed to give women a fair and just place,
and these goals differ depending on the context,
time, and circumstance. The following examples
are indicative of the extremes of the range of goals
and activities of Islamic West African feminist groups.
Since January 2000, twelve states in northern
Nigeria have adopted Sharì≠a law and Sharì≠a-based
penal codes under the leadership of fundamentalist
Muslim leaders. Married women are therefore
secluded during their child-bearing years, and
women do not go out alone. When they do go out,
they are covered from head to toe. In October
2001, Safiya Yakubu Hussaini was sentenced to
death by stoning after having been found guilty of
adultery by the Sharì≠a court in Sokoto, Nigeria.
Since that time, although Safiya Hussaini has been
acquitted by the Sharì≠a Court of Appeal, the cases
of two other women sentenced to death by stoning
by two other Sharì≠a courts in northern Nigeria
(one for conceiving a child out of wedlock and the
other for adultery) are wending their way through
the courts.
Muslim women leaders in Nigeria, working in
concert with the International Solidarity Network594 political-social movements: feminist
of Women Living Under Muslim Laws, have begun
to challenge aggressively the interpretations of
Islamic law that have sanctioned the imposition of
harsh sentences against women while the male per-
petrators of these crimes are not punished. In this
work, they stand on the ground first laid by Nana
Asma±u, daughter of the legendary Usman don
Fodio, leader of the Islamic Jihad in northern Nige-
ria in the mid-nineteenth century. Nana Asma±u
(1793–1864) remains to this day much revered as a
pious woman, as an important leader in the Jihad,
and indeed as the ultimate role model for a Muslim
woman (Mack and Boyd 1995). Educated by her
father in classic Islamic scholarship, Asma±u was
designated by him, when she was only 20 years old,
as the “leader of women.” She immediately began
to teach the Qur±àn to women whom she then sent
throughout the Caliphate to spread that teaching,
and, of more importance to contemporary Islamic
feminists, to teach women about their rights under
Islam. Nana Asma±u did not challenge the funda-
mental principles of her teachers or their under-
standings of the secondary position of women in
Islam. But she did create the space for women to
seek education and to be respected for their learn-
ing and revered in their own right as learned
Muslims. It is into this space that present day
Islamic feminist activists are stepping, challenging
the interpretation and application of Muslim law
by the Sharì≠a courts against women in northern
Nigeria.
In contrast to northern Nigeria, political power
in Senegal is not held by Muslim fundamentalists.
Both politics and policy are dominated by Western-
educated technocrats who have traditionally
turned to conservative rural Muslim leaders for
electoral support. Unlike the case in northern
Nigeria, women in Senegal are not veiled and not
secluded, but move about freely and fully partici-
pate in the economy. They do not have the same
access as do men to economic, social, and political
power, however. Women are less likely to be edu-
cated, less able to get higher paying jobs, and
distinctly less likely to hold political office or
manipulate political power than are Senegalese
men (Callaway and Creevey 1994, Creevey 1996).
In this context it is not surprising that Senegalese
feminism was represented in the 1990s by groups
that argued directly for governmental and societal
reform to allow social changes that would em-
power women (Sow 1997a, 54, 1997b, 1973,
1985). Yewwu Yewwi (a Wolof term meaning
“raise consciousness for liberation”) is one group
that has embodied this liberal feminist approach.
Led by educated Muslim Senegalese women, this