I still disagree with you – “utter skepticism of anyone who says the worth of a nation is the worth of its women” -> I am skeptic about that too. I don’t think the worth of a nation is the worth of either its women or of its men – but only of justice.

But I’d be really interested in discussing your critical grasping of Shariati.

Which brings me to Shariati. For the sake of sticking to the topic, I’m not going to explain my critique of Shariati, so if you want to discuss more, you can email me. But in short, I don’t really care if one finds it spiritually enlightening or an empowering moral/ethical text. You’re free to do so and are entitled to that. He’s certainly not an unimportant scholar or ideologue. But I’m reading it as a political work, with a womenanist critique, with recognition of the valayet faqih, with a marxist/leninist framework, and with utter skepticism of anyone who says the worth of a nation is the worth of its women.

2- About Jewish rabbis using their faith against the Israeli apartheid in Palestine:
http://www.jewsagainstzionism.com/
http://www.nkusa.org/

3- Fatima Is Fatima – by Ali Shariati – is a vital reading for Muslim women. Even the title is a strongly anti-sexist profession of faith.
Unlike many – Muslim or non Muslim – men writing about women, Shariati is not patronizing, he is not trying to get the best part of the patriarchal cake – you can’t find the least touch of arrogance in his text. This book is filled with love and genuine interest in truth and justice.

Readers will judge by themselves inshaAllah. Here is the full version of Shariati’s book
http://playandlearn.org/eBooks/FatimaIsFatima.pdf

Islamic fundamentalist groups have killed more Muslims in the last 30 years than they have killed all non-Muslims combined. I do NOT mean to say that more Muslims have been killed by Islamic fundamentalists than non-Islamic fundamentlists. You’re right — that would be absurd. You can look at any non-partisan terrorism database that includes data on violence carried out by Islamic fundamentalist groups. This makes sense, intuitively, because Islamic fundamentalist groups have been most active in Muslim majority countries than in non-Muslim countries.

See more info here: http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=248

And while I agree that political Islam can take a variety of forms, I am NOT “reducing” it to fundamentalism. But unfortunately, the fundamentalists (of all colors and creeds) like to hijack the movements of other religiously-motivated political groups. When was the last time you’ve heard of Catholics for Choice or one of the many many Christian Evangelical groups promoting cross-faith understanding and moderation in the news? When was the last time you’ve heard an individual using her Jewish faith and spirituality as the basis of her protest of Israeli apartheid? You don’t, because the crazy fundamentalist groups speak louder. Fundamentalists are very good at framing the debate as to shut everyone else out (and they do this by calling everyone else inauthentic and illegitimate.) That’s what makes them so dangerous.

And oh oh oh Ali Shariati how I hate that man. Fatemeh is Fatemeh makes me want to puke, but that’s a whole ‘nother conversation.

I’m critical too of the essentialized distinction you mentioned (West/Islam).
It’s true we are getting nothing from this dichotomy, as you said.
But how do you explain that some are precisely getting EVERYTHING from it (influence, power – and oil, among other benefits)?

That’s why I’m still not convinced by your argumentation.

Moreover I find really boring – and caricatural – this distinction between “good muslims” and “bad muslims”.

I also disagree with you reducing political Islam to fundamentalism: it has been (and will be inshaAllah) a platform for resistance against injustice – including the sexist, patriarchal injustice.

You refer to Hamid Dabashi, Parvin Paidar, Edward Said.

I would refer in addition to Ali Shariati, Munir Chafik, Malek Bennabi.

PS – Please mention your sources and be precise when you write serious accusations as:

“Islamic fundamentalist groups have killed more Muslims in the last 30 years than all non-Muslims combined.”

Which group of fundamentalists are you referring to?

Does it include the American and the British armies that are still occupying Iraq and Afghanistan? – And I am not even mentioning the occupation of Palestine…

http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/22664

They claim to represent the “authentic” or “legitimate” brand of whatever religion call themselves. By making a POLITICAL (as opposed to theological) argument for their reactionary, sexist, and, yes, RACIST ideology, they thereby SHUT OUT all other interpretations, practitioners, and believers of said religion.

This is why Islamic (and other) fundamentalist are both sexist AND racist/nationalist as well as, belligerent to other non-fundamentalist members of their religion.

I said in my original post that I agree that the terminology is ambiguous and misleading. Islamism, if one defines it as the political face of Islam, is very broad and can be read as an umbrella for term for everything from Sufi quietism to Al-Qaeda. So in this sense my grandmother can be called an “Islamist” but she is certainly not a “fundamentalist.” So yes, on that point we agree.

But I stand by argument that fundamentalism and neo-con Western imperialism are two sides of the same coin. They amplify one another’s ideologies for their own agendas: fundamenalist essentialized the ‘West” as all Islam-hating, gun-happy, naked, God-less invaders and the neo-cons essentialize “Islam” as women hating, violent suicide bombers.

We all know the reality is more complicated that this and that these agendas are only there to serve a small minority of people in this world.

The people who really lose in this dichotomy are women, because they lose from Western imperialism obviously, but if they criticize fundamentalist interpretations of shariah they are called “western” and thus illegitimate. Doing it within a religious framwork sometimes helps, but the fundamentalist can just call their religious beliefs fraudulent and inauthentic.

This is the way that Islamic fundamentalists are both sexist AND Islamaphobic: they completely reject any interpretation of Islam besides their own.

Also, I would just like to point out that Islamic fundamentalist groups have killed more Muslims in the last 30 years than all non-Muslims combined.

I completely agree, by the way, that the neo-cons are sexist — 100%. But I am also really critical of the “West/Islam” essentialized distinction that people like Hamid Dabashi, Parvin Paidar, and even Edward Said in his later years rejected. What are we getting from this dichotomy? It puts us Muslim women in a proverbial pickle so to speak.