Muslim women have been outspoken in the past about their rights and have achieved a measure of success, author and professor Leila Ahmed argued in a Feb. 4 talk at the Library of Congress.
Mary-Jane Deeb, Arab world specialist, right, and Harvard professor Leila Ahmed field questions about conditions for Muslim women.
But because the West is now using Muslim women's criticisms against their own countries, the women are keeping quiet. Muslim women have stopped talking about gender issues since 9/11, because they feel that in the highly politicized environment in which they are now living, they may be doing more harm than good by speaking up for their own rights, Ahmed said. She added that women fear their criticisms may backfire on their own communities.
Ahmed gave her views during a talk at the Library titled "Women in Islam and America: Reflections on Where We Are Today." A book-signing followed the event, which was sponsored by the African and Middle Eastern Division, the Library's John W. Kluge Center, and American University's Center for Global Peace and its Mohammed Said Farsi Chair of Islamic Peace.
The Victor S. Thomas Professor of Divinity at Harvard University, Ahmed is the first person to hold this professorship in women's studies in religion, which was established at Harvard in 1999. Prior to her appointment, she taught at the University of Massachusetts, where she was director of the women's studies program and the Near Eastern studies program. She has published extensively, and her widely acclaimed autobiography, "A Border Passage: From Cairo to America, a Woman's Journey," was on the New York Times best seller list for many weeks.
In her talk, Ahmed noted that Western politicians and the media describe women in the Muslim world as acquiescent about their fates and in need of being saved by the West. However, she pointed out, a few years ago there were four Muslim women who were heads of state (Tansu Ciller in Turkey, Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, Khaleda Zia in Bangladesh and Megawati Sukarnoputri in Indonesia).
Many Muslim women spoke out against the customs, traditions and policies that subordinated women in their own countries. She said she was one of these critics, and there were others, including Fatima Mernissi in Morocco and Nawal Sa'dawi in Egypt.
However, Ahmed said, those female voices, including her own, have fallen silent in the past two years. She explained that Muslim women feel their so-called plight has become politicized and is being used to justify going to war (as in the case of Afghanistan), discriminating against women who choose to wear the veil (in France), and criticizing Islam as a religion and as a civilization.
