The American Muslim Feminist Witch Hunt

Acquiring knowledge in the Islamic tradition is not merely for self-satisfaction. It involves numerous endeavors to attain enlightenment and ultimately, the pleasure of The Creator, Allah.

Prophet Muhammad (SAWS) provided a lofty directive for attaining knowledge when he said, “It is fard (mandatory) for every Muslim to seek knowledge” (Al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 74).

Thus, there is a rich history of Muslims procuring knowledge, which ideally enriches the ummah and creates opportunities for vibrant discussions from multiple perspectives, even those with which we may disagree or find problematic.

Unfortunately, diverse perspectives are often catalysts for conflicts, resulting in a plethora of negative attitudes and behaviors towards people having differing standpoints. Like everyone else in our society, Muslims are not immune from constructing silencing, dismissive, and dehumanizing attitudes about people expressing varying or oppositional points of view, all of which are counterintuitive to the primary object for learning and building a knowledge base – Allah’s pleasure.

A noticeable trend on various forms of social media in the United States involves some Islamic male scholars and Muslim men subjecting American Muslimah feminists to acts of symbolic violence and digital coercion in attempts to vilify their standpoints as unIslamic and actively set out to silence them. Muslims identifying as feminists do make problematic assertions. However, this is not exclusively because they are feminists. The discipline itself is not the sole reason for such troubling claims. That would mean controversial assertions made by scholars from the Islamic sciences stem from their theological scholarship. Feminism is a social movement as well as an academic discipline that is not monolithic and is always evolving.

This article is not a treatise to defend or explain feminism, but an attempt to focus on some common misconceptions held many American Muslim men as well as scholars and leaders about Muslimah feminists and the engendering of violent communication to ridicule them and suppress their voices in the American Muslim dialogue. The violent communications stemming from these interactions ultimately extend the targeting of Muslim women from the broader culture into Muslim spaces, where they should be the safest.

Stereotype-Producing Generalizations

Overgeneralizations about Muslimah feminists generate stereotypes conflating every Muslimah utilizing a feminist critique with problematic stances by some in the discipline as universal positions. For example, a cursory internet search of the term “Islamic Feminism” generates a plethora of commentary from non-Muslim men and women as well as Muslim men broadly attributing concepts such labeling Quranic teachings as sexist and Prophet Muhammad (SAWS) a misogynist. A widely-accepted fallacy is that all Muslimah feminists malign men and embrace the Western conceptualization of “patriarchy” to obliterate the status of Muslim men.

There is also the tendency to assume that all Muslimah feminists are anti-patriarchal and promote licentious behavior under the guise of liberation, gender equality, and autonomy.

While there are Muslimah feminists that assert some of the notions as mentioned above, one must avoid erroneously deeming their approaches and interpretations as cohesive ideology held by all women in the discipline similar to ways agents in our society promote anti-Muslim bias by conflating all Muslims with ISIS “Islamicists” ideologies and terrorism. Comparable to how the Muslim-terrorist stereotype generalizes Muslims into what Nazreen Bacchus refers to as “categorical lumping,” male Muslim agents label Muslimah feminists with an ideological phenotype stereotyped as antithetical Islamic teachings and seditious to the construction of an American Islamic socio-cultural construct.

The categorical lumping of Muslimah feminists by Muslim male scholars and leaders results in an underappreciation of how differently Muslim women learn, assess, and apply feminist episteme, cultural criticism, and social analyses resulting from intersections of gender, race, class, nationality, and the manifestations of gender oppressions they face. In addition, it creates opportunities to stereotype Muslimah feminists and generate prejudices harmfully affecting the way their coreligionists interact with them.

Biases against self-identified feminists in Muslim communities by scholars and leaders often result in harsh treatment, especially by those made hypersensitive by their limited examinations of the discipline and the multiple ways its applied by Muslim women, which often serves as an exemplar to Muslim laypeople, allowing further ill-treatment.

Bigotry and Misogyny

Social media posts and articles produced by some Muslim male scholars and leaders condemn Muslim women expressing views outside the normative or even speaking out against gender-based injustice, which creates a social “witch hunt” criminalizing them by association. Because of the social statuses of Muslim male scholars and leaders in American Muslim communities, their  generalized condemnations of Muslimah feminists provide validation for actions to demean and demoralize Muslim women. Ironically, it often presents as veiled objective scholarship and engaging in “Ya’maroona bil ma’ruf” (enjoin the right) as “maintainers and protectors” of women.

Unfortunately, many fall short. The means by which they convey their standpoints are more accusatory in delivery and more indicative of condescension and censure than productive criticism meant to inspire reflection. Readers absorb the resulting violent communication, guised as objective scholarly reminders, and commonly engender biases that manifest when communicating with Muslimah feminists and limit opportunities for civil discourse.

Digital Coercion

One disturbing repercussion of bias against Muslimah feminists is the dehumanization and unIslamic treatment of them by some Muslim men on the internet.  Like many women on social media, Muslimah feminists and women who dare to decry against sexism and gender inequality become vulnerable to “witch dunking” in the form of aggressive, abusive posts, tweets and comments from Muslim men, including Muslim male scholars, which is unfortunate because their positions (as men, scholars, and leaders) hardly warrant such behavior.

Prophet Muhammad informed us, “The learned are the heirs of the Prophets” (Abu-Dawood, Hadith 1631). Therefore, Muslim scholars have a noble responsibility to augment their knowledge (Ilm) with purification (Tazkiyyah) and wisdom (hukm), part of which is exemplified in their treatment of each other and humanity.

Prophet Muhammad said, “It is better for a leader to make a mistake in forgiving than to make a mistake in punishing” (Al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 1011). Muslims should be able to anticipate that they will receive kind treatment from those leading them, which includes forbearance when encountering vexing perspectives and attitudes.

For scholars and leaders blessed with knowledge and/or the trust of appointed leadership position to publicly denigrate someone with whom they disagree is unseemly. For Muslim men to target their sisters for such treatment is incorrigible. As maintainers and protectors of women and carriers of the prophetic tradition, there is a higher expectation for patient and chivalric expressions.

Just because violent communication emanates from a computer screen doesn’t make it any less troubling. Muslimah feminists commonly encounter negative consequences for the demonizing words about them from men who should use their scholarship and leadership to protect them, but instead brandish it as a weapon against them. It’s hard enough for a Muslimah without scholars and leaders misusing their position to air their personal grievances and to legitimize and encourage bias.

Historically, in the United States, witch hunts started on pulpits, but disappointingly, for Muslimah feminists, it now begins on mimbars. May Allah protect our Muslim sisters from similar drastic results and keep them safe.

Layla Abdullah-Poulos holds an MA in Liberal Studies and an advanced certificate in Women and Gender Studies. She is a  New York Facilitator for the Muslim Anti-Racism Collaborative and an adjunct at SUNY Empire State College.  Abdullah-Poulos is the project manager for NbA Muslims, a cultural project highlighting the heritages, experiences, and cultural productions of native-born American Muslims of African American, Indigenous, Latinx, and European descent. She also serves as a US correspondent for AboutIslam.