ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 provides the theoretical and conceptual framework for Islamic feminism. This chapter sets the scene for the discourses on religion, gender, and sexuality in contemporary Islam. Before tracing the historical development of Islamic feminist thought, I discuss the relevance and importance of religion as a social category for knowledge production. Not only did religion not disappear from our reality, thereby contradicting modernist predictions, it actually occupies a substantial space and plays an important role in public discourse. I engage with the theoretical frameworks that promote the de-essentialisation of religion and the revision of the constructed binaries of religion/rationality, tradition/modernity, and East/West—a task carried out later by Islamic feminism. Religion, Islam in this work, is analysed as a space for agency, subject formation, and knowledge production. After tracing the historical development of Islamic feminism, I locate this thought in the wider context of feminism, highlighting the tension between Islamic feminism and a particular form of white western feminism. This tension leads then to the disidentification of some scholars with the term “Islamic feminists.” The chapter discusses the politics of identification/disidentification of scholars whose work was labelled as Islamic feminism—a label that, in some cases, is imposed on them and their work. After engaging extensively with religion as a social category and the importance of its deconstruction and de-essentialisation, and after gaining an understanding of how Islamic feminism takes part in this deconstruction, the concepts of gender and sexuality are discussed. Through the three concepts of religion, gender, and sexuality, we learn about the diverse approaches and conceptualisations of Islamic feminism.
