France and Islamic feminism: intersectionality in the Republic

The fact is that Islamic feminists in western
countries, and especially in France, struggle with identity affiliations and
fight against multiple forms of oppression that bind them to post-colonial and
anti-racist movements.

As the presidency of François Hollande
commenced its third year, French society is revealing its profound division
between progressive and reactionary stances on gender equality and race issues.
The latest protests “Manif pour Tous”, led by Christian rightwing movements
against gay marriage were followed by the unbelievable alliance of Black
anti-Semitic Dieudonné with the French far-right. “Jour de Colère”, the
“Anti-Hollande” protest, gathered together on January 26 the Christian right, extreme
right supporters, anti-Islam and anti-Semitic groups.

In the midst of what really feels like
a backlash for all feminist and anti-racist activists, the topic of Islamic
feminism in French society raises issues that help us towards a deeper
understanding of women’s rights and racial segregation in France.

Islamic feminists, as defined by researcher
Stephanie Latte Abdallah,
"claim the right to an interpretation (of the Q’uran), (ijtihad) that
promotes gender equality, new roles in rituals and religious practices, changes
in the areas of family law, criminal law, and legal and political practices.
"

Islamic feminists in Muslim countries
do indeed seek to change their legal framework by various means, including
Quranic "feminist" or gender-sensitive exegesis and raising
legislators’ awareness of a more progressive interpretation of Islam. These
researchers and activists try to help people to perceive the double bind that
they experience; on the one hand, that of traditionalism or fundamentalism and
political Islam and, on the other, that of Islamophobia or the discrimination that
they encounter in western countries in their quest for alliances or for legitimacy.
The fact is that Islamic feminists in western countries, and especially in
France, struggle with identity affiliations and fight against multiple forms of
oppression that bind them to post-colonial and anti-racist movements.

Muslims, friends & supporters in Paris against the stigmatisation of Muslims in France/Demotix/Tom Craig/All rights reserved

French
feminism and anti-racism

Laure Berenin of the Institute of
French Studies at NYU, analyzes
the French feminist movements along two axes, the materialistic axis and
the liberal axis. I would like to classify French feminisms, in their relation
to anti-racist issues, under six category headings:

- Marxist / radical, materialist
feminism, which founded the struggle for the emancipation of women on the
basis of a"sex/class struggle," as defined by researchers such as
Christine Delphy and Monique Wittig who refer to anti-racist issues in
terms of feminist questions: culture as a whole is oppressive to women.

- Academic feminism, represented for
example by the philosopher and feminist scholar, Elsa Dorlin, who
introduced the concept of intersectionality to France; the anthropologist
Nacira Guénif-Souilamas who offers a typology of racialized and sexualized
figures in the French discourses on immigration and identity; or the sociologist
Eric Fassin who makes explicit the links between sexual issues and
racial issues through, for example, the concept of "sexual
whiteness".

- Institutional feminism as epitomized
by the equal political representation (parité) movements of the 90s, which
recently led to the creation of the first Ministry of Women's Rights in France
since President Mitterand. The majority associative epitome of French
institutional feminism, movement Osez le Féminisme, which emerged from a
Parti Socialiste, Planned Parenthood and UNEF alliance, makes claims which
can crystallize in institutional terms in the Ministry. Osez le
Féminisme’s positions on the use of headscarves by Muslim women, for
example, are clear: the veil is a tool of domination.

-“Islamophobic” feminism, represented
by Anne Zelensky, co-founder of the MLF in the 70s and recently
participating in the Conference of Islamisation in Europe in 2010.

- Indigenized feminism, finally, with
the movement (now party) Indigènes de la République with spokeswoman
Houria Bouteldja, who manages to apply post-colonial analysis to the French
case and has an in-depth analysis of the relationship between feminism and
anti-racism.

However, in my opinion, feminists in
France seem to have trouble getting out of a discourse crystallized around
the "veiled women". "The veiled woman" as an object, seems
to be the sticking point around which French feminists circulate.

Non-victimization
and double bind

What seems intolerable to the
reactionary narrative is non-victimization. While western rights are the
first to vilify the Muslim domination of women, their words imply that
"dominated" women themselves do not want to participate in their
liberation. It is intolerable to be faced with someone who is seen as a victim
and who yet considers himself as a free being. Recognizing multiple forms of
oppression while refusing victimization is a powerful means of struggle rooted
in the struggles of Black feminism in the United States. Amélie le Renard, in
her article « Lectures
et usages féministes de l’islam » about Zahra Ali’s book Féminismes Islamiques, said that,
"Zahra Ali (…) returns on the prohibition of headscarves in schools and of
the niqab in public places in France, and draws a parallel with the unveiling
of women in the colonial context. (...) She strongly associates the approaches
of Islamic feminism and anti-racism. Islamic feminists seek to "fight
against racism, Islamophobia stigmatizing them and their brothers, associating
them to the other, archaic and obscurantist. This interweaving of sexism to
racism [...] is a posture facing a double oppression.””

The
veil provocation

Zahra Ali, the main Islamic feminist
theoretician in France explains the genesis of the movement in a French
assimilationist context. She explains that French Islamic feminists are using
their knowledge of Islam as an access to legitimacy in their communities. They
also recover, according to Zahra Ali, through these affiliations, political
resources against racism in society at large.

Thus, French Muslim women have a faith
that the researcher identified as "born again", unearned but in some
ways reinvented, mainly fuelled by agency, in itself a post-modern tool.
"The adherence to Islam is spiritualized in the discourse of these women,
the divine is synonymous with love, and religion is seen as a support, an
additional resource, a choice that gives preference to the meaning, the intrinsic
logic of Islam, rather than to belonging to a socio-ethnic group.”

This strategy refers to what Amelie Le
Renard identifies among feminists in Saudi Arabia, opposing emancipating
“Islam” to conservative “social customs". Le Renard links this narrative
to a hybridization between American-style personal development and references
to the Quran and the Prophet's character as an example of “indigenized”
modernity.

Beyond the individual, or personal and
cultural dimension of Islam appropriated by women, Islamic feminism in France
clearly allows women who claim their belonging to this movement to accumulate tools
that can respond both to sexism and racism. Are Islamic feminists in France,
then, only reacting against intra- and extra- community discrimination? They do
experience a double bind similar to their counterparts in Muslim countries. However,
in the case of France, the strategies of Islamic feminists have everything to
do with the question of the veil. "Aware of the stigma associated with
Islam, the veiled Muslim women will (especially after the adoption in 2004
by the French Parliament of the law on the wearing of conspicuous religious
symbols in public schools) also give their veiling a sense of challenge and
of questioning the French integrationist injunction.”

Intersectionality

Knowledge of religion by a gender
sensitive exegesis, coupled with awareness of intra-community and societal
oppression, empower French Islamic feminists. Unconscious colonial
representations, highlighted by the law on religious symbols in public places,
founded the context from which Islamic feminists in France emerged. Political
resources and cultural capital provided by membership to an Islamic feminism
movement, allow women who associate themselves with this movement to offer a
different interpretation of “Islam” and "Muslim women". However, this
line of thought and action binds them to formal and informal local and
transnational Muslim networks as well as to Islamic feminist ones, and this
affiliation continues to isolate them from both dominant feminist movements in
France, and more broadly from the French governmental left, who both continue
to claim an anti-community and universalist line.

In these times of generalized
backwardness, it is necessary for French feminist movements to take into
account the double bind that these movements meet in their struggles. Only an
intersectional French feminism can allow for the building of transnational
alliances to support the struggles of liberation and emancipation of women and
step out of the universalism/cultural relativism dichotomy or, as in the French
case, the confrontation between identity politics and the Republican rejection
of any form of differentiation. In the French context, traditional feminism
must seize on intersectionality if it is to support Islamic feminists. And use
this outstanding conceptual tool to embrace the issues that cross French
society at this juncture.

2 Laure Berenin, “Accounting for French
Feminism’s Blindness to Difference: The Inescapable Legacy of Universalism”,NYU
Symposium:“Feminism/s Without Borders: Perspectives from France and the United
States”, Oct 2009

3 The National Union of Students of
France, the first student organization, present in all Higher Education
Institutions.

Adriane
Choukour Wali is a French gender and development international consultant with
an Afghan and Lebanese background. With degrees in political science and social
anthropology, she is especially interested in social and cultural movements in
the MENA region. She lives in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

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