But he wouldn't say much more about the specific freedoms that women and girls would have under the group's rule. Pashtana Durrani had been helping to educate girls in Kandahar, but she went into hiding when the Taliban seized the southern city. She told CBS News this week that she didn't want to just assume the Taliban were "going to come and murder me, but I would really like for them to accept for a fact that we are just the same people from the same country, right?
I just have different views when it comes to girls' education. The Taliban continues to insist that it will ensure the rights of women and girls, and even said it wants women to join the new government. But recent days have brought a number of announcements of appointments to the new regime, and not a single position has been filled by a woman yet. Many analysts believe the group is merely running an early public relations campaign to win support from both Afghans and the international community now that it controls the country.
But how long will this apparent PR campaign last? It's still too early to know what the Taliban really means when it says it will govern "within the framework of Islamic law.
Activists I met tried to put an end to these harmful practices by sharing harrowing stories in workshops with religious leaders. One activist told me that in one such workshop she had related the tragic story of a young girl whose pelvis shattered during childbirth. Another shared the story of a child who drank bleach to avoid a forced marriage.
These women wanted religious leaders to share these stories with others. They argued that Sharia could not be used to permit child marriage and female genital mutilation. Sign up. Religious leaders in these countries have, however, been reluctant to speak publicly on these issues. But many of the Somali women I met were reviving a centuries-old tradition — of women teaching and interpreting Sharia. Not just in Somalia and Somaliland, but in many parts of the world, Muslim women are reclaiming their rights by studying and sharing Quranic verses and prophetic teachings.
Genuine attempts to protect Muslim women from discrimination through the international models of gender equality and empowerment programs end up alienating local contexts and will be likely unsuccessful without giving the local communities proactive and independent roles. Evidently, the issue of women in Islam is complex and multifaceted.
What remains constant, though, is that Muslim women emerge as the victims in all these accounts. In contrast to these mainstream narratives and the popular traditional interpretations of Islamic text, a solid although still peripheral feminist Islamic perspective has emerged. The less known narrative is that of Islamic jurisprudence female scholars who provide contextual readings and alternative interpretations of Islamic text.
These Muslim women, who are also practicing believers, dispute the misogynistic Islamic interpretations that subordinate women in Muslim societies, and demonstrate -in the name of their faith- that the popular prejudiced readings of Islam are not inherent in the text but are products of their time and place. The issue of women in Islam is very intricate and requires a great level of theological, linguistic and historic expertise and skills to understand and analyze.
In addition, the Sunnah the hadith and the example of the prophet is used as a secondary source for further clarification and guidance. Naturally, scholars from different communities and schools of thought disagree in their ijtihad , which is unobjectionable as long as these scholarships are based on religious and linguistic knowledge and are conducted piously and in good faith.
While Muslims are free to choose the interpretations most convincing to them, it is inevitable that these individual ijtihads are influenced by the patriarchal customs and beliefs of their surroundings.
According to Dr. Aziza al-Hibri, professor emerita of Law at the University of Richmond and one of the leading scholars in Islamic law and human rights; medieval Islamic jurisprudence and the dominant schools in ijtihad adopted today, are largely influenced by the patriarchal traditions of their times.
In addition, the free practice of ijtihad was restricted by authoritarian political establishments in order to preserve their political interests. As a result, the subsequent mainstream interpretations became based on authoritarian patriarchal interests and imposed by nation states.
As such, these ijtihads are a product of their times and patriarchal circumstances, and need to be addressed and re-evaluated. In the words of Dr. God created men and women from the same soul, as guardians of each other in a relationship of cooperation not domination. However, while some specific verses at face value seems to be promoting male dominance, alternative interpretations are important to consider.
The popular interpretation understood in light of patriarchal hierarchal traditions, as al-Hibri demonstrates, can be completely different once patriarchal assumptions are eliminated. Based on the rules of Islamic jurisprudence, when one verse is specific to certain circumstances, the more general principle of equality outlined above is to be taken as the general rule while the particular instance as the exception.
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