.... The author notes that the efforts of Muslim feminists and the modernist elite to attempt alternative interpretations of Islam to reform women’s rights have been pushed to the margins because of burgeoning and militant Islamism.
Violence against women, including so-called honour killing, derives from the dogmatic and literalist interpretation of the Quran, which permits beating of disobedient wives. On the whole, women were considered sexually too attractive to be allowed a presence in the public sphere.
.... The authority of the Quran is more totalist, covering all phenomena: the physical world, the social world, law, politics, culture and so on. The age-old argument that revelation is perfect, and absolute knowledge and reason and science imperfect, continues to apply to far more social, legal and political matters than is the case in secular-democratic societies.
Such argumentation effectively defeats calls for fundamental change and reform. Vain formulae of so-called spiritual democracy and Islamic human rights have proved to be neither fish nor fowl. [Daily Times] Read more
