FINLAND & PALESTINE Proceedings of a Joint Workshop

Women:s Role in Building a Society _______________________________________________________________•
Islamic feminism, and, especially, to the idea of mixing religion
and politics. Dr. Fadwa Allabadi is one of the latter.
Dr. Fadwa Allabadi also dates the emergence of Islamic feminism
in the early 1990s, but she relates its development to the
global escalation in Islamic fundamentalism.
A number of women's Islamic organizations affiliated with
Hamas and Islamic Jihad were launched in the 1990s, and they
have attracted many female Muslims. Affiliating themselves
with these political movements has given these women access
to educational and job-training programmes funded by Hamas,
and encouraged them to finish school, and to attend university.
Yet, at the same time, their legal rights are restricted to
those laid down in the Qur'an.
Muslim feminists have decided to uphold Sharfa as the basis
of the legal system. Even though agreeing with certain amendments
on personal status law, their struggle is to ensure proper
implementation of Islamic law. They also focus on adequate levels
of education, so that women are aware of their legal rights.
Islamist feminism in Palestine is similar to other Islamist feminisms
in the Middle East. They construct their discourse on
gender by trying to bridge the gap between tradition and modernity,
and reconcile two sets of principles: the traditional and
patriarchal religious conception of women's nature, role and
rights, and the new modern understanding of Muslim women's
social and political roles. 1o
According to Allabadi, Hamas admitted for the first time in
1999 that women were oppressed, and that they had reason to
10 Tohidi, 2002.
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