Andres Martinez

POSC 130 Introduction to International Relations

Dr. Todd Myers

13 December 2011

Paradise Beneath Her Feet: How Women Are Transforming the Middle East

Throughout the years, women have fought for equality and legal rights. In Paradise

Beneath Her Feet, Isobel Coleman, The director of the Council on Foreign Relations' Women

and Foreign Policy program, argues how women’s empowerment is not only a moral issue but

also a vital economic one. It is necessary to give women better opportunities to realize their

social, economic, and political roles in order for reducing poverty and improving governance,

especially in developing countries. Women’s struggle for justice around the world is also

centered to other pressing foreign policies such as: “alleviating poverty, promoting economic

development, improving global health, and ultimately building a civil society”. (Introduction).

Societies that educate women become "richer, more stable, better governed and less prone to

fanaticism," while those that restrain women's rights "are poorer, more fragile, have higher levels

of corruption and are more prone to extremism." (8). The core problem being that Islamic

fundamentalism suppresses women in the name of religious purity. Coleman shows facts such as:

90% of the Afghan population support women’s education, yet among the 10% who oppose it

are extremists willing to use violence to enforce their conservative views. These groups of

aggressors enforce extreme interpretations of Islamic Law, condemning women for not wearing

an all-encompassing burqa, being on the streets without a male guardian, and even laughing in

public. Coleman voyages through the Middle East, revealing how women activists are working

within the principles of Islam to create economic, political, and educational opportunities for

women. These activists include: Sakena Yacoobi, who runs more than forty women’s centers

across Afghanistan, providing thousands of women with literacy and health classes and teaching

them about their rights within Islam. Salama al-Khafaji, a devout dentist-turned-politician, she

relies on moderate interpretations of Islam to promote opportunities for women in Iraq’s

religiously charged environment. These women practice what is known as Islamic feminism,

being the advancement of women’s rights through Islam.

These Islamic feminists are supporters of ijtihad, "the process of arriving at new

interpretations of Islamic law through critical reasoning, rather than blindly following the views

of past scholars." (Introduction). In the early stages of Islam, whenever the Quran and Sunnah

did not clearly address an issue, a competent scholar would use independent reasoning to come

up with a solution that he believed was right. Some critics argue that by emphasizing the parts of

the Quran that are reformist for women, and minimizing the parts that are harder to relate to

equality, Islamic feminists simply eschew the important issues. Women’s rights have been

known to weaken with revolution and restrictive religious trends. In Iraq, for example, women in

the early secular years of Baathist rule enjoyed some of the region's highest levels of female

literacy and workforce engagement, after Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, women's

rights were threatened. “The UN estimates that while female literacy had reached 75 percent by

the late 1980s, it declined to less than 25 percent by 2000.” (250). I believe Islamic feminism is a

rising movement that facilitates the process of cultural change for Muslims everywhere; they do

so by fighting for growth while respecting religious beliefs. It is important to keep in mind that

cultural change is a slow process. What is happening now is just the beginning of what will

undoubtedly be a long process of change; mainly intergenerational change. The process will be

uneven, and the outcomes from place to place will no doubt differ. It is necessary to remove

religious interpretations from politics, only then will this reform movement will be successful.

The problem with interpretation is that it can change in any given instant, these Muslim women

must rely on the ambiguity of the religious text that stress equality in Islam. The women in this

book and millions of others striving for change are a growing movement, it is only a matter of

time until they breakthrough these conservative shackles.