Islam, Modernity and the Politics of Gender 93of canonical texts and of the early history of Islam. Ziba Mir-Hosseini (1999)
makes a useful distinction in this respect between ‘sharia-based’ texts (usually
written in local languages), whose primary aim is to provide an apologia for
‘orthodox’ Islam, and ‘feminism-based’ texts penned by women of Muslim
background, written in English or French, that attempt a progressive reading of
Islamic sources and practices.^5
This engagement rests on the premise that Islamic law and history are the
only legitimate terrain upon which a discourse of rights (and by extension of
women’s rights) can be based. Fatima Mernissi (1996: 92) was among the fi rst
to articulate this point of view: ‘progressive persons of both sexes in the Muslim
world know that the only weapon they can use to fi ght for human rights in
general, and women’s rights in particular, in those countries where religion
is not separate from the state, is to base political claims on religious history.’
This sentiment is echoed by Asma Barlas (2002: 3): ‘Even if such readings do
not succeed in affecting radical change in Muslim societies, it is safe to say
that no meaningful change can occur in these societies that does not derive its
legitimacy from the Quran’s teachings, a lesson secular Muslims are every-
where having to learn to their own detriment.’ Reformists point to the political
urgency of exegetical reform and of renewal within the framework of Islamic
legal thought. Not surprisingly, the Iranian debate has been the most heated,
with positions concerning the potential for articulating a feminist agenda within
an Islamic framework ranging from the guardedly optimistic to the unambigu-
ously pessimistic.^6 With a strong focus on Islam as a normative framework, these
contributions form the contours of a lively internal debate.
A second strand of more sociological approaches, which often draw upon
cross-national comparisons, routinely points to signifi cant defi cits in Muslim-
majority countries with respect to key indicators of development such as women’s
educational attainment, labour-force participation, political representation and
general attitudes towards gender equality.^7 Accounts of these discrepancies
vary. Moghadam (2003), who works from a political-economy perspective,
refrains from presenting Islam as uniquely patriarchal but focuses, instead, on
the complex range of economic, socio-demographic and political factors that
condition these outcomes. She evaluates modernising states and state-led legal
reforms in a broadly positive light, acknowledging their role in combating social
conservatism and expanding women’s choices. She argues, furthermore, that
new constituencies of educated, professional women have mobilised in defence
of their rights to greater equality in education, employment, political represen-
tation and the family.
Critics of state-led modernisation, on the other hand, point to the fact that
reformist legislation affecting women was frequently sponsored by authoritarian
and dirigiste regimes whose ultimate aim was to harness them more effectively to
national developmental goals rather than empower them as civil society actors.