Abstract
Fatima Mernissi is an analyst of Islamic Feminism, whose presentation is an argument regarding the situation of Islamic women, the problems they face and possible solutions on to common problems. The hitches they face concerns issues regarding sexuality, politics and evaluation of the current approaches of major laws. What is the current view of Muslim women by others?
Introduction
Various critiques especially from modernized countries have very different view of Islam, with numerous misunderstanding of the culture and hence heavy criticism. Fatima aims at gaining an outside perspective of Islam as a benchmark to evaluate and expound various aspects that assist in evaluation of Muslim women.
She provides a better indulgence of the religion as a measure of fighting for women rights especially in connection to the Moroccan Law. Her overview raises concerns from a generally orthodox position thus portraying her as a liberal feminist who has to face challenges from the Muslim fraternity and other contrasting religious movements.
Although various writers and fellow feminists such as Katherine Bullock criticize Fatima’s approach for failing to contextualize disappointments regarding endorsement of Islam at different times and places, they still acknowledge her efforts to depict cultural, religious and political rights of Women in Islam.
Due to the challenges experienced in Harem, Mernissi finds the motivation to search for reason regarding powerlessness of women particularly in Morocco. This paper therefore presents a critical point of reference for analysis of religious, political and global impact on Muslim women.
Religious effects on Muslim Women
In line with Fatima Mernissi, women feel venerable to fear and powerlessness and will seek spiritual guidance by ensuring they follow the Islamic practices and gain the honour of patronage from the religious faith. Their fear subdivides into that of shame, powerlessness against transcendent powers and fear of rejection by the male counterparts.
Most Islamic women bear a common focus on emotions and respond to them as spiritual prerequisites. There is a major role of prayer among Islam women and therefore evangelism within provides them with an ultimate relief. Dependence on the folk Islam is equally common among Muslim women since they believe in relationships with the supernatural beings, as worldly mediators especially during powerlessness.
According to Mernissi, the association of Muslim women with supernatural being acts as a therapeutic procedure to overcome emotional impact. From a Christian point of view, the practiced rites control women in Islam and they base their fears mainly upon lack of proper practice of the faith.
These women therefore lack awareness to direct anger to its challenge. The source of challenges is mainly the injustice from the worldly situations. They antique religious practices by embracing formal control through modernization.
The magnificence experience of affection among Muslim women allows them to express each other’s feelings with kindness and concern such that they are able to consider a number of emotionally related actions. Islamic faith is therefore an ambiguous ubiquitous relation, that binding these women together in different formats.
They are able to expressed faith in various ways. Fatima Mernissi found out that everything and everyone has the ability to expresses spiritual love if there is an ability or concern to nurture feelings.
Political effects on Women in Islam
There are various political effects on Muslim Women but the main ones have a link to Laws and customs. Considering various states around the world, a Muslim woman must remain suppressed by the male authoritarian status. This situation compromises human rights that fight for equality in marriage.
The traditional Muslim law also referred to as “Sharia”, fails to govern such rights of equality and therefore modern demands are in conflict with the traditional religious practices. People in developing countries have a negative view of modernization as a way of adopting westernization.
Unless feminists initiate proper enlightening programs or strategies, the reaffirmation of the traditional status of women in Islam as an important step of realistic laws might fail to occur. Mernissi points out the negative impression created by colonialism, and thus the undesirable psychological responses that foreign powers get when they try intervening Muslim legislature.
The “sharia” is a symbolic identity of Muslim and therefore women political or social struggle to enact changes faces a negative response due to the assertion that, there engage plans to change Islamic distinctiveness to modern world enactments. She constantly advocates for revision or legitimate transformation of these medieval system of governance implemented within the estimate of seventeenth century.
Conflicts with Globalization
There is a significant change in the modern working environment. More women as men are within the Arab countries and civilization at the workplaces remains balanced. However, men’s attitudes towards women engagement at the work force remain governed by the traditional medieval standards and laws.
Men lack to consider women as viable assets to the economy and therefore masculine jobs are strictly a monopoly for men. According to them, a woman who works outside the home setting is a potential marriage charlatan or causes the husband to appear as an economic failure to others. The Islam law therefore compromises globalization due to these Islamic ideologies that hinder acceptance of reality.
Globalization depends on knowledge gain and self-sufficiency. The advancement of women educationally causes a reduction on birth rates, development of more effective micro-enterprises and lower mortality rate especially among children.
This is because modernization enables women to consider viable projects in support of life sustainability. As Fatima Mernissi would put it, there is need to consider the Islamic woman as an equal party and liable person. Women in Islam are important resources to develop and nurture as key elements of the economic growth.