A Postmodern Theorization of Islamic Feminism: Constructing Alternative Discourses of Difference and Plurality

Abstract

This article aims at studying how Islamic feminism has enriched and pluralized feminist research through underscoring its particularity and ability to address the Muslim woman’s quest for equality based on the Islamic referentiality and away from the Universalist feminist discourse. Thus, this paper argues that Islamic feminists draw their agency first from devising female-inclusive hermeneutics of the Islamic foundational texts which enables them to deconstruct the canonized dominant religious patriarchal discourses and second from manifesting the ability to depart from the mainstream Western feminism. I use the postmodernism ‒especially the features of the waning of affect and the weakening of the role of public history‒ to explore Islamic feminism’s heterogeneous alternative approaches to the sacred texts and the Muslim woman’s empowerment. This paper finds out that Islamic feminism is itself endowed with plurality and difference as it utilizes diversified approaches.