Women and Islam - A reformist vision

It is clear today that the topic of women in Islam is still subject to a highly restrictive, binary vision. Between the traditionalist Islamic perspective that rejects reform for fear of losing excessively idealised values relating to identity and the “modernist” perspective that blames all evils on religion and Islam in particular, it is primarily the views of a large majority of Muslim women that are being marginalised.

A genuine third way cherished by a certain movement of Muslim women is already being taken today and favours, among other things, routes to emancipation based on a feminine or even feminist and reformist re-reading of the Muslim canon. Both in Muslim societies and Muslim communities in the west, this reformist third way is now one of the rare channels that contributes significantly to a dynamic of reconciliation between Islam, human rights and the challenges of modernity in the age of globalisation.

This paper was written by Asma Lamrabet, a physician, writer and head of the women’s Islamic study and research centre (Cerfi) at the Mohammadia League of Scholars institution in Morocco.

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