DUBAI: Women are pushing forward on gaining more rights within their respective societies across the Islamic world, professor Amina Jamal of Ryerson University in Canada said at a seminar on Islam. She said that Muslim women are gaining more acceptance in entering a broader range of opportunities and are working for their rights through the space they have created for themselves. Jamal, speaking at the seminar titled “Islam: South Asian Muslim Women's Struggles and Transnational Feminist Practices,” said that the move to create more space for women should not be discounted and she said that more work is still needed. Organized by the Female Campus of the International Islamic University Islamabad (IIUI) in collaboration with Iqbal International Institute for Research and Dialogue, the seminar addressed women's rights in South Asia. Speaking at the seminar Jamal said that the “Muslim feminist groups and individual activists in societies as far apart as Pakistan and Canada, are faced with the increasing activism of women who identify themselves as Islamic and oppositional to feminism.” She added that the feminist movement in Pakistan “is split between those feminists who seek to invoke Islamic scriptures in support of women's rights and those who advocate the traditional secular position of insisting on the separation of religion and politics.” Jamal also shared portions of her research on the status of women rights in Jamaat-e-Islami (JI). She argued that there are strong indicators that “JI women have a balanced approach towards women and development as they engage in politics and social work as done by the secular feminists and prioritize [the] nation state, another aspect that substantiates the argument that they follow modern development approach.” Highlighting another trend among Islamist women, she said that they have developed a dislike towards modern terminologies that are related to women such as women rights and feminism. BM
