Feminism between Islamism and Postmodernism

Abstract

In the wider context of dialogue among cultures, the analysis of women’s conditions in Muslim cultures -or in those European milieus affected by immigration from Maghreb- proves to be a difficult task, marked as it is by an ambiguity which is inherent to those power relations defined by economic and political balances between states at a global level. The debate on the veil is an exemplifying issue of the terms in which the dialogue is conducted between European nations and Islamist movements, and it sets the limits by which -given a certain power structure- women’s freedom is lost in the name of a culture presenting itself as promoting the value of differences. Within the European debate, Islamic feminism represents the main interlocutor of international institutions which -unable to solve those more radical questions giving origin to conflicts between peoples- exclude from their analysis other forms of social critique, in this way favoring culturalist and differentialist approaches. All considered, though, Islamic feminism does not limit itself to represent the positions expressed by those Maghreb and Arab feminists that -in reaction to a cultural model continuing to propose the image of a society based on the absolute control of women- keep struggling to reaffirm their right to freedom and equality: they instead carry on the deconstruction work that originally gave birth to world women’s movements.