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Parvin Paidar and Post-patriarchal Islam.

October 1, 2019 by Exangel

by Brian Griffith.

In most countries or cultures around the world, women show more interest in religion than men. Women are more likely to follow a spiritual path, pray every day, or visit churches, mosques, and shrines. We may assume they are blindly following the directions of male religious leaders, but more likely they have goals and values of their own. I want to tell about one of the many Muslims who have promoted women’s values in Islam, namely Parvin Paidar, who died in 2005.

Paidar was a pioneering scholar who explored pro-feminist interpretations of Islamic teaching. After growing up in Tehran, she went to Britain in 1973, took a B.Sc. in sociology, and then a Ph.D. in political sociology. Shortly after the Iranian revolution she collaborated with Afsaneh Najmabadi to write The Shadow of Islam (1982), where she examined the views of female Muslim activists for human rights. In that period of war and violent resistance to the Iranian regime, anyone who expressed critical views toward the government risked imprisonment or assassination. Paidar and Najmabadi therefore decided to publish their research using pseudonyms (namely Parvin Yeganeh and Azar of Tabari). In the more peaceful 1990s, Paidar felt able to use her real name in publishing her influential work, Women and the Political Process in Twentieth-Century Iran.

Paidar saw the need for working across the secular/religious divide. She hoped to affirm both religious and secular women in their shared concerns for women’s welfare. At a time when secular women grew hostile toward all traditional religion, and religious women increasingly viewed hatred for religion as high treason, Paidar produced scholarly work on the humanitarian traditions that had always been most popular among women. At a time when hardline fundamentalist men claimed to define Islam, she defined a popular Islam of women, which had always put compassion before legalism and authority. She treated feminism, not as a Western ideology for the rejection of Iran’s religious heritage, but as an affirmation of Iranian women’s concerns and dreams. In negotiating for mutual respect between women of different backgrounds, she displayed remarkable patience, willingness to listen, and ability to challenge preconceptions without appearing self-righteous.

In addition to her academic research, Paidar took on work with the British Refugee Council and the World University Service. From 2000 to 2002 she served as a program director for Save the Children in Central Asia, and then as program director for Voluntary Services Overseas in Pakistan. She also worked as an inter-agency coordinator for the Bosnia Programme, and as a director of the United Nations Development Fund for Women in Afghanistan. In the last years of her life she developed stage 4 cancer, and was informed that her case was hopeless. Giving up on treatment, she went on a dream holiday to Hawaii. In her last days, she told her friends that “I don’t know what I have done to deserve feeling so trouble-free when my life is under threat, but am extremely thankful for it” (Afshar).

Paidar was just one among many Muslim women who envision a “post-patriarchal” Islam, much as Christian scholars have done for Christianity (i.e., Rosemary Radford Ruether’s Sexism and God-Talk), Buddhist women have done for Buddhism (Buddhism After Patriarchy, by Rita Gross), or Jewish women have done for Judaism (On Being a Jewish Feminist, by Susannah Heschel). In a similar way, Fatima Mernissi wrote The Veil and the Male Elite (1991), Asma Barlas wrote “Believing Women” in Islam: Un-reading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur’an (2002), and Amina Wadud wrote Inside the Gender Jihad: Women’s Reform in Islam (2006). Wadud argued that “patriarchy is a kind of shirk [or idolatry] … stemming from the Satanic notion of istikbar (thinking of oneself as better than another) …” (p. 102).

Over the past several decades, organizations of pro-feminist Muslim women such as Sisters in Islam, Musawah, the Women’s Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality, or Women Living Under Muslim Laws have formed and spread across the world. In Morocco, female religious leaders organized a nationwide campaign that collected a million signatures calling for the legal equality of men and women. The campaign resulted in a new family law code, which in 2004 officially recognized “dual headship” of the family. Turkey enacted a similar reform in 2001. Tunisia abolished polygamy and equalized the legal rights of men and women in divorce and child custody. By 2007, Margot Badran felt she could report,
“The past twenty years—the life-span of Islamic feminism—has seen a significant dent in the patriarchal narrative of ‘Islam,’ as the egalitarian version of Islam steadily takes wider hold. At the core of Islamic feminism … is a stringent Qur’an-backed doctrine of gender equality … across the public-private spectrum … [an equality] of all insan or humankind transcending tribe, class, ethnicity, and race.” (2008, 32–33)

Sources
Afshar, Haleh (2005) “Iranian Writer and Campaigner Intent on Combining Feminism with Islam.” The Guardian, Obituaries, October 27.
Badran, Margot (2008) “Engaging Islamic Feminism.” In Kynsilehto, Anitta (ed.). Islamic Feminism: Current Perspectives. Tampere Peace Institute, University of Tempere, Finland.
Wadud, Amina (2009) “Islam Beyond Patriarchy Through Gender Inclusive Qur’anic Analysis.” In Anwar, Zainah (ed.), Wanted: Equality and Justice in the Muslim Family. Musawah, Selangor, Malaysia.

From the upcoming book Mother Persia: Praise for Great Iranian Women, by Brian Griffith (Exterminating Angel Press, Fall/Winter 2020)

Filed Under: EAP: The Magazine, Fall 2019: Heavens Revealed., Uncategorized

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In The News.

That cult classic pirate/sci fi mash up GREENBEARD, by Richard James Bentley, is now a rollicking audiobook, available from Audible.com. Narrated and acted by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio, you’ll be overwhelmed by the riches and hilarity within.

“Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges is your typical seventeenth-century Cambridge-educated lawyer turned Caribbean pirate, as comfortable debating the virtues of William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, and compound interest as he is wielding a cutlass, needling archrival Henry Morgan, and parsing rum-soaked gossip for his next target. When a pepper monger’s loose tongue lets out a rumor about a fleet loaded with silver, the Captain sets sail only to find himself in a close encounter of a very different kind.

After escaping with his sanity barely intact and his beard transformed an alarming bright green, Greybagges rallies The Ark de Triomphe crew for a revenge-fueled, thrill-a-minute adventure to the ends of the earth and beyond.

This frolicsome tale of skullduggery, jiggery-pokery, and chicanery upon Ye High Seas is brimming with hilarious puns, masterful historical allusions, and nonstop literary hijinks. Including sly references to Thomas Pynchon, Treasure Island, 1940s cinema, and notable historical figures, this mélange of delights will captivate readers with its rollicking adventure, rich descriptions of food and fashion, and learned asides into scientific, philosophical, and colonial history.”

THE SUPERGIRLS is back, revised and updated!

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In The News.

Newport Public Library hosted a three part Zoom series on Visionary Fiction, led by Tod.  

And we love them for it, too.

The first discussion was a lively blast. You can watch it here. The second, Looking Back to Look Forward can be seen here.

The third was the best of all. Visions of the Future, with a cast of characters including poets, audiobook artists, historians, Starhawk, and Mary Shelley. Among others. Link is here.

In the News.

SNOTTY SAVES THE DAY is now an audiobook, narrated by Last Word Audio’s mellifluous Colby Elliott. It launched May 10th, but for a limited time, you can listen for free with an Audible trial membership. So what are you waiting for? Start listening to the wonders of how Arcadia was born from the worst section of the worst neighborhood in the worst empire of all the worlds since the universe began.

In The News.

If you love audio books, don’t miss the new release of REPORT TO MEGALOPOLIS, by Tod Davies, narrated by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio. The tortured Aspern Grayling tries to rise above the truth of his own story, fighting with reality every step of the way, and Colby’s voice is the perfect match for our modern day Dr. Frankenstein.

In The News.

Mike Madrid dishes on Miss Fury to the BBC . . .

Tod on the Importance of Visionary Fiction

Check out this video of “Beyond Utopia: The Importance of Fantasy,” Tod’s recent talk at the tenth World-Ecology Research Network Conference, June 2019, in San Francisco. She covers everything from Wind in the Willows to the work of Kim Stanley Robinson, with a look at The History of Arcadia along the way. As usual, she’s going on about how visionary fiction has an important place in the formation of a world we want and need to have.

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