What I’ve Learnt from Being an African Muslim Feminist
By: Wardah Abbas
Tags: Patriarchy, Feminism, Equality, Religion, Muslim

What I’ve Learnt from Being an African Muslim Feminist

The Sisterhood is Not Global

Photo by Suad Kamardeen on Unsplash

“Your feminism is too basic to be recognized by the mainstream,” said one of my friends during a casual meet-up after Eid. We had been arguing about how I was supposed to have celebrated Eid with my In-laws and not my parents and how the society would frown at my insensitivity. Upon telling them that first, it was a decision I made in agreement with my spouse and that secondly, I was free to decide how and where to spend the holiday, they immediately invoked the new F-word and went on about how they couldn’t understand why a headscarf-wearing Muslim woman living in patriarchal Africa would be a feminist.

It was true that as an African Muslim woman, my feminism was not on the same scale with that of the mainstream; that my unique struggles as a Muslim woman living in Africa was not the same as those living in the West and other parts of the world; that while I was still fighting against being a victim of abusive family customs, societal cultural practices and religious patriarchy, Western feminists were quite advanced in their activism; that while I was busy navigating the deathly hallows of misogyny and trying to reclaim my rights as a Muslim woman, mainstream feminism was all about conquering a male-dominated world. But that was not where the problem lay. The real problem was that by virtue of being a religious woman trying to emancipate myself from the shackles of patriarchy, I had been labelled as a “religiously repressed” woman who needed first to break free from the shackles of the very faith that empowered her.

All over the world, issues revolving around headscarves continue to cause controversy and generate debates; debates where headscarf-wearing Muslim women are rarely heard. And even if they are, it is usually with scepticism. It’s quite funny that two distinct sections of the global population can dish out their contrasting opinions on what I can and can’t be; the former being an unapologetic white-dominated group of feminists and the latter being a conservative group of Muslim Misogynists.

From being subjected to inferiority complexes because of what I look like or rather because I don’t meet the standards of beauty and fashion set by a patriarchal society to being labelled as not being Muslim enough by more radical Muslim communities, the rhetoric of oppression has been a weapon that mainstream feminists use to label Muslim women as regressive. This rhetoric of oppression and not the headscarf is what Muslim women find overbearing.

The truth is we have seen patriarchs and misogynists hiding under the umbrella of feminism to indirectly oppress women. An example of such a person was Lord Cromer, the former governor of Egypt who happened to be the leader of the Men’s league against women’s suffrage in Britain. We are also beginning to see the mainstream feminist movement as part of the Anti-Muslim agenda.

On a number of occasions, Mainstream feminists have told us that as religious Muslim women, we can’t conceptualize our own feminism; we must instead conform to theirs. In reality, this appears to me as pseudo-feminism because the spirit underlying the concept of feminism is Liberation. And liberation does not mean the same to everyone. What you consider liberating may be oppressive to me and vice versa. I thought feminism was a diverse movement where women from all walks of life irrespective of colour, culture and religion can determine what equality and liberation mean to them; little did I know that the sisterhood is not global.

Mainstream feminism is more or less a form of a neocolonial weapon through which Muslims are made to believe that they are trapped in the past. We, headscarf-wearing women, are thought to be a visible symbol of a lack of progress and our lifestyles are incompatible with modernity, making everyday socializing and mixing impossible. The faulty perception of the headscarf is more than a misperception since deliberate analyses and rational arguments have failed to correct them. It is an operational ignorance of the fact that Muslim women are a heterogeneous group of people with diverse experiences and that while it is true that some Muslim women feel oppressed by being forced by patriarchal societies to wear the head-scarf, many others feel empowered and liberated by it.

This disregard for the heterogeneity of Muslim women creates a sectionalized idea of “we” versus “them”. And the ongoing bans of the headscarf in the west and some parts of Africa are a manifestation of how anti-Muslim feminism operates, taking on a different appearance and hiding under the pretext of “saviour” from religious oppression. The normative framework of mainstream feminism is instrumentalized to make a case for the hostile exclusion of Muslim women who unfortunately are also outlawed in their patriarchal communities. And even when we have successfully fought against being pawned by Muslim men and our agency is recognized, we still have nowhere to turn to but ourselves.

As a Black Muslim woman living in a black African country, I doubt if my own unique experiences have been felt by anyone. African realities are shaped by an entirely different social and cultural logic and it is not always gender that defines women’s roles, but the society too. Being born into a patriarchal African tribe and raised in a patriarchal Muslim community makes challenging the patriarchy sometimes too overwhelming for me to bear. More than fifty per cent of Black African Muslim women still have their mentalities ingrained in the patriarchy and are always quick to point out women like me as outcasts or less of being Muslim. In a society where everything you ever heard about your worth as a Muslim woman was based on marriage, motherhood and total submission to men who determined every aspect of your life like what to wear, where to go and whether or not to work, how do women like me navigate the murky waters of cultural and religious patriarchy?

For the Black African “non-Muslim” feminist, it sometimes seems like an easier ride; they only have to challenge prevailing cultural practices that are unfair to women. But for me as a Muslim woman, it is like battling two demons; the oppressive African culture on one hand and the unislamic patriarchal practices that are prevalent in the Muslim Communities. The most unfortunate thing is that even within the African feminist movement, Muslim women are still excluded.

Against the backdrop of misogynistic customs which have in the past relegated Muslim women to the rudiments of cooking and cleaning, Muslim women have now actively asserted their rights to not only be seen and heard in public. They have also shown in so many ways that they can bring more to the table by not only holding public offices but by also being astoundingly successful in their careers. We have seen this in the example of women like Ilhan Oman and serving in the United States’ Congress and Amina J. Mohammed who is now the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations. However, this has not come without its challenges. After the events of 9/11 and the coining of the term Islamophobia, women wearing the headscarf are more than ever at risk of discrimination in the public sphere because the headscarf helps identify them as Muslim women and projects any negative stereotyping of the religion onto them. As a result of this, most Muslim women who have had to work to earn a living resort to taking off their headscarves in hopes to prevent any form of discrimination.

Take my example as a brilliant young lawyer who was called to the Nigerian bar five years ago. For many years in Nigeria, the headscarf had been banned by most professional bodies, one of which was the legal profession. For a woman like me who was forced to remove her headscarf just to be called to the bar, I called this an unjust system; one which had shunned every form of inclusivity and I made a vow not to be a part of it. Practising as a lawyer in Nigeria was for me going to be the beginning of so many years of removing my headscarf against my own personal belief and conscience. I said no to this.

I remember how out of anger and despair, I walked out of a male-dominated law firm where the president had been a Muslim. He had told me as a matter of fact that it was against his policy to employ Muslim women and that seeing how desperate I was to get a job; he could only afford to pay me half of what the male Lawyers receive. He had, as a matter of fact, pointed out to me that women like me were supposed to be operating within the four walls of our “husbands’” homes and were not cut out for public life. And although I needed the money so bad, I could not bear the injustice that was being dished out to me. I couldn’t be part of a system that was unfair to Muslim women. I walked away.

Even in the corporate world, I have been treated as a total outcast and have been the object of small talks with demeaning comments directed at me; from being sarcastically referred to as an “eleha”, (a Yoruba word for “a trapped woman”) and being told that “this is not a good place for you to be Muslim” to being asked “Isn’t it haram to drink that?” when all I had been taking was a bottle of coke” are all manifestations of the level of hate against Muslim women in Africa.

Let mainstream feminists know that these Muslim women who have taken off their headscarves as a result of the pressure to do so, to avoid discrimination and/or oppression are equally victims of the kind of feminism that is being promoted; that this in and of itself is one of the biggest failures of feminism. For being forced to act against your beliefs as a woman is against the true spirit of liberation.

I will also not fail to admit the racism that exists even amongst Muslim women. Who cares about a Black Muslim woman living in Africa? Not a single person, I guess. I am struggling hard to get my son a decent education; struggling to get a promotion at work because I wear a headscarf; struggling to make ends meet and just when I made the shift from the corporate world to freelancing, the editor of a particular media platform; a white Muslim woman offers to pay me seventy per cent less than what is paid to other Muslim writers simply because “I’m from Africa.”

In moments of sober reflection, it appears to me that even the Muslim feminist movement is characterized by racial and geographical discrimination with African women being at the receiving end and excluded from both the discourse and the benefits. Being a Muslim feminist is a struggle. But on a global level, being a Black African Muslim feminist is a bigger struggle. I am combining three different attributes that are synonymous with sectionalization and oppression. And I just happen to be rambling about all these in the hopes that my protest will be validated.