Women's rights through Islam, not feminism:

Women's rights with out feminism:
-Ustadha Fatima Barkatulla (UK)

I care about the rights of women (and men). I also care about the responsibilities of women (and men).
Had a discussion yesterday with someone about why I choose not to use the language of feminism to discuss women's rights. Feminism is an ideology: a system of ideas and ideals. Feminism has its architects, ideologues and its own language. Words such as 'patriarchy', 'misogyny', 'toxic masculinity', etc are ideological words and are loaded.

Some Muslim women use them and add their own meanings to them, but they are part of an ideology outside of Islam.

Psychoanalyst Carl Jung said something along the lines of: "People don’t have ideas; ideas have people."

Question is: which set of ideas do you as a Muslim belong to? Which ideals? What is the source of our ideals and our values? It is Islam and the sources of Islam.

Islam has its own framework for correcting oppression, it has its own ideals regarding men and women and the best way for them to live in this world. And therefore Islam contains within it, all that we need to correct any oppression that exists within the Muslim community.

Feminism - on the other hand is a set of ideals that originated in the minds of a few human ideologues. Many of those ideologues ended up regretting/changing their minds about things they held as facts and truths. They were/are fallible and limited and frankly make mistakes.

Feminism will never be happy with the fact that God chose male prophets, that the majority of the most influential scholars of Islam were men, that the man is the head of the family, that a woman requires a Wali to get married...because it is intrinsically suspicious of men. It cannot accept that men and women are different and not the same. God doesn't come into the picture when it comes to feminism.

For the Muslim, God is everything. God is the source of our understanding regarding the rights and responsibilities of men and women.

So as my friend Zara Faris points out: Feminism is one response out of many, to the question of women's rights, just as capitalism or communism are responses to the question of the economy.

Islam is our response to the question of women's rights.

So even when we see injustice in our communities, as Muslims we need not invoke feminism and its idols to fight that injustice.

We need to invoke the Qur'an and Sunnah. We need to be knowledgeable and win arguments through correct thinking, educating and reasoning with others.

This is what the sahabiyat - the female companions - did! When Umar RA was trying to limit Mehr amounts a lady stood up and quoted the Quran to him - that he had no right to limit dowries...

As Muslims we rectify each other via the authority of the Qur’an and Sunnah, not via mere social pressures & attitudes dictated to us by ideologies outside of the guidance of Islam.

Issues with feminist terms like 'patriarchy': Its definition according to Oxford Dictionary: "A system of society or government in which the father or eldest male is head of the family and descent is reckoned through the male line."

By that definition Feminists would regard Islam as patriarchal.
As Muslims we do not accept the premise that 'patriarchal' or men being in charge or in positions of leadership and power is intrinsically bad. Prophets who were chosen by God as leaders and guides for humanity were men. Men are the protectors of women, guardians of women.

The Prophets came to establish the guidance of Allah and justice in society, not to remove so-called 'patriarchy' per se. Some or much of that guidance would never be accepted by feminist ideologues as being in line with feminism.