Critique internationale 46, janvier-mars 2010

Margot Badran
Re/placing Islamic Feminism
By comparing it with the secular feminism that appeared in some Muslim societies starting in the early 20th Century, and sketching its trajectory since its appearance in the 1980s, the novelty of Islamic feminism is brought to light. This movement devoted most of its efforts to defending the rights of citizenship and practiced a secular-nationalist, Islamic-modernist and humanitarian discourse. Islamic feminism, for its part, based its demand for social justice and absolute equality between the genders on sacred texts. Its development has consisted of two stages. In the first stage, which lasted two decades, a model of gender equality in Islam was elaborated on the basis of an innovative reading of the Koran and the fiqh (Islamic law). Although this model drew on the most recent analytical tools of the social sciences, it did not depart from the classical exegetical tradition. The second stage, which began only a few years ago, is characterized, on the one hand, by a desire on the part of its theoreticians to break free of this constraining framework of thought and, on the other, by efforts to construct a transnational movement. It would seem that, in Muslim circles, these two major trends of feminism (secular and Islamic) are today in the process of fusing. ■

Azadeh Kian
Islamic Feminism in Iran: A New Form of Subjugation or the Emergence of Active Subjects?
The emergence of Islamic feminism in Iran is here analyzed as a consequence of the process of social change that took place after the Revolution and the new awareness that resulted among traditional, religiously observant middle and lower class women who had been largely excluded from the public sphere under the Shah. The presentation of a typology of Islamic feminists and the examination of the multiple sources of their identity explains the similarities and differences between secular and Islamic feminism. The social, political, cultural and intellectual struggles of Islamic feminists seek to introduce changes in laws and institutions in order to establish equality between the sexes and alter relations of power between men and women. To the degree that they challenge the single model of emancipation that has characterized the Western trajectory, Iranian Islamic feminists must be seen as active subjects. ■

Amélie Le Renard
"Women's Rights" and Personal Development: The Appropriation of the Religious Domain by Saudi Arabian Women
A field study in Saudi Arabia has revealed how modes of appropriating the religious domain among Saudi women have contributed to modifying the relationship between state and familial power relations. In doing so, they have increased autonomy for women at various levels vis-à-vis their families without necessarily calling upon or challenging dominant interpretations. In the 1990s, sex segregation allowed relatively autonomous religious spaces for women to develop within which women preachers expounded a discourse specifically addressed to women. Since 2003, the rhetoric of “women’s rights in Islam” as opposed to “traditions and customs” has frequently been employed by the government in the framework of its “reform” strategy as well as by several types of female actors. “Liberal” and Islamist intellectuals disagree as to the content that is to be given to these “rights”. Yet, despite these disagreements, their discourses have helped promote an approach that consists in demanding rights for women in the name of Islam. Young Saudi women thus draw upon this rhetoric in negotiating access to professional activity with family members. They also appropriate the Islamic discourse of personal development promoted in religious spaces to legitimate the pursuit of individual objectives and activities outside of the sphere of the family. These various modes of appropriation contribute to pushing the boundaries of the possible for women. ■

Souad Eddouada and Renata Pepicelli
Morocco: Towards a “State Islamic Feminism”
In 2003-2004, the authorities’ initiatives in favor of greater gender equality were crowned by the reform of the family code and that of the religious sphere in the name of the “egalitarian spirit of Islam and [the] universal principles of human rights”. These reforms were part of the larger framework of the Moroccan “process of democratization” in which two trajectories of change interacted: the effort at greater political openness launched by the Moroccan monarchy in the 1990s and a trend towards institutionalizing religious affairs under state patronage that was announced following the 2003 terrorist attacks in Casablanca. In an effort to take account of Islamist and feminist discourses concerning women’s rights, the authorities developed projects which sought to demonstrate their respective compatibility with Islam. The recruitment of women in state religious institutions (in particular, as preachers in mosques and theologians in the ulema councils) began in 2006; they are expected to promote a “moderate Moroccan Islam”. The theme of the woman in Islam has become a site of conflict between the authorities, Islamists and liberal feminists. Yet the question is whether the authorities’ projects to feminize religion and political life really create spaces in which the autonomous action of women (in the religious domain or that of citizenship) can blossom or whether these formulae imposed from above do not use women more as symbols than as agents of change. ■

Cristina Escobar
The Contribution of Latin-American Immigrant Organizations in the United States to Home Country Development
The comparative study of immigrant organizations in the United States and their contributions to their countries of origin (Columbia, the Dominican Republic and Mexico) reveals differences between the three nationalities in respect both to the nature of their projects and their home country partners. These differences are explained by the sociology of the immigrant populations as well as by the respective states’ structures and policies vis-a-vis expatriate nationals. Thus, the mainly rural character of Mexican immigration and a state tradition of playing a very active role in organizing civil society have allowed close cooperation between immigrant organizations (mainly structured by village or region of origin) and public development programs. This has not been the case of Columbian immigration, which above all consists of middle class city dwellers whose state-independent organizations favor classic charitable models. In Columbia, it is the private sector, not the state, which offers an “efficient model of social investment” to migrants abroad. The organizations of Dominican immigrants, for their part, are more oriented towards improving immigrant living conditions in the host country and offer a varied supply of social services. Of course, several years ago, the President of the Dominican Republic established programs aimed at the Diaspora. In order to render them genuine public policies independent of changes of government, however, these initiatives should be separated from their electoral aims. ■

Nabil Mouline
Power and Generational Transition in Saudi Arabia
The question of political succession is the Achilles’ heel of the Saudi monarchy. Since its appearance in the 19th-century, the dynasty has more or less successfully endeavored to resolve this problem, which is mainly due to a horizontal mode of transmitting and distributing power inspired by the system of local kinship. The phases of generational transition systematically coincide with periods of crisis in the course of which each lineage attempts to monopolize power. In order to define the problem of succession in Saudi Arabia – a model of patrimonial royalty – it must be set in historical and political context. ■

Anne Daguerre
Programs for Fighting Poverty in Venezuela
Since 2002-2003, Hugo Chavez has made support for the most impoverished a spearhead of his policy by creating the Missions, social programs aiming to respond to the needs of the poorest segment of the population in the areas of health, education and nutrition. The Missions are characterized by their practice of systematically bypassing institutions as well as by an anarchic proliferation which renders their institutionalization particularly difficult. Do these programs really represent a fundamental break with earlier social policies, as the government claims? To respond to this question, the evolution of the Venezuelan social state and the record and development of the Missions – in particular, that of the Che Guevera Mission, a training program that prepares its beneficiaries for creating cooperatives – must be analyzed. It would appear that, despite the ideological and discursive break with the past proclaimed by President Chavez, there is strong continuity between the social policies of the “Bolivarian Revolution” and those of earlier governments. ■