Islamic Feminism School and Its Challenges

In contrast to the first and second waves of feminism, the third wave is more flexible than what is happening in religious societies and developing countries. This wave understands the attitudes towards women in a distinct way, possibly due to the development of social thinking in modernity. Despite such changes in the type of social thought, some theoretical schools, including Islamic feminism schools, still have to cope with many challenges. The confrontation with radical Islam, in one hand, and opposition to secular feminism, on the other hand, have brought specific challenges for this intellectual view, as we will interpret in this article.

Generally known as radicals or fundamentalists, some traditional Islamic thinkers argue that the basis of this viewpoint is a notion of an Islamic reformism and leads to a kind of religious elimination, even though they cannot escape from the most important critic of Islam: women’s rights.

On the other hand, as many critics agree, the feminism school itself is a secular school with a libertarian foundation seeking for the rights of white middle-class women in a modern world, which will never match with religious roots.

The thinkers of Islamic feminism must address these two contradictory attitudes while considering the context of a society where traditional Muslim women are still trying to get acquainted with the most elementary concepts of women's rights.