Marmash herself is a Jordanian lawyer who has an in-depth knowledge of women’s legal rights in North Africa and the Middle East and was therefore recently invited by the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) to take part in a set of conferences of women’s rights in Madrid.

She talked about “women who are afraid to tell their own family” that they are being a victim of gender violence, she talked about laws which oblige adult women to depend on a male figure to exercise their right for property -just as it occurred in Spain only some decades ago-, she exposed the wide persistence of child marriages, “an open secret”, and assured there were 40,000 cases in Morocco in 2017, and another 10,000 in Jordan.

For this leading lawyer, who declares herself a Muslim feminist, patriarchy is a common phenomenon to the misleading historic interpretations of all religions. “I believe all religions begin with fair standards for women and men and, throughout history, they get changed to favour men,” she says to Salam Plan.

The international NGO she directs, AWLN, has set the priority to establish the path for women to be able to “take part in the construction of their societies” ameliorating the civil legal system of the Arab countries. Samah Marmash has seen how more and more men in the region are getting on board in the fight for equality, although not as actively as she would wish.

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Which accomplishments for women’s rights would you highlight in the Arab countries for the last years and what are the main issues you still need to address?

There were so many success stories in the region. For example, in Palestine they have created an Alimony Bureau; so, if a woman gets divorced [and does not get the legal maintenance from her ex husband], you can go to the office and ask them to file a case and get your money, even if the husband is not paying. This is very good to empower women economically and to show men, the Government will go after you and not after the vulnerable person.

In Jordan, we started something [similar] last year and it is on this year’s budget. We are at the beginning of the road, but the good example is Palestine. And we took another good example of Morocco. In Morocco they have family courts, where they review cases of violence against women, family cases or religious topics as well. It is [another] good example, [which] we want to reflect in our country in Jordan for the family violence cases.

The main issues you need to look at now are gender violence then?

Yes, violence against women; the right of nationality, to reflect it on their children [who for now cannot adopt the nationality of their mother in places like Jordan]; to stop child marriages… it’s for all of the region: North Africa or the Middle East. It’s a disease that is currently there. These are the main topics we should highlight now.

“Child marriages are a disease in North Africa and the Middle East that we need to stop”

What is the role of men in the Middle East in the fight for women’s rights?

They didn’t have a role at all. Actually, they were against the feminist movement; not all of them, but a large and good number of them. Recently, in the past ten years, we got them on board. We knew how important it was to make them our partners, because we cannot change attitudes if we work on one part of the community forgetting the other half.

When we started to work with them as partners, we had their voices with us. But they are not as large of an amount as you would wish. Most of them know that this is the trend nowadays, so [they] may talk with you about the same issues, they may try to show you that they are feminists, but in fact -whether they are helping or not- they are reflecting their attitudes on their policies, even in their homes, which is how you know if [their commitment] is true or not.

So, there are large voices of men who are supporting [the feminist movement], but not so many are truly on the ground. At least, we have a good start to work with them. Actually, they are helping us. In our Parliament in Jordan, for example, we have a few men who do believe in women’s rights which need to be reflected in the laws. In Lebanon, we [do also] have a good amount of fair men. In Syria now, nothing is clear yet.

“The attitudes of men on their policies, even in their homes, is how you know if their commitment to women’s rights is true or not”

During your conference, you talked about the influence of sharia on the rights or lack of them for women in the Middle East. To which extent would you say Islam is the reason of patriarchy in the region? Or is it tradition or…?

I believe all religions begin with fair standards for women and men and, throughout history, they get changed to favour men. It is not only in Arab countries. Europeans used to have it, but they used civil rights to change this idea.

We are still suffering from it, because after all the wars we have been through, we have not been able… the bad effect of wars is to give you traditions that you don’t have, ideas that you don’t have, bring you backwards, not forward… So, what we have is mostly in the name of religions, but it’s not us, it’s not religion. It’s the global force to keep persons backwards.

“I believe all religions begin with fair standards for women and men and, throughout history, they get changed to favour men”

You define yourself as a Muslim feminist.

Yes, and nowadays we have feminists from all the religions which are in the Arab region. Throughout the history we used to have Muslim feminist women, but the history does not highlight their efforts. For example, Mohammed’s first wife used to defend women’s rights, that is why she supported him.

But then again, this example refers to one of his wives, something which people often reject or do not understand.

Yes, exactly. But during her lifetime he did not marry any other woman. He did after her death, and according to our religion, he did so, because he wanted to gather so many people. For example, he wanted to show that it is good to marry a widow, so he got married to a widow. According to our law, there was a reason for every marriage, according to Q’ran it is not preferably to be married to more than one [woman], but there are certain circumstances and hard conditions where you can do so.

But, again, people change religions according to their needs: if you ask one sheikh, he will tell you ‘to have more than one wife is good’ and if you ask another religious man, he will tell you ‘no, there were conditions in the Q’ran under which you can do this’. Religions are always like that.

Samah Marmash, executive director of the Arab Women’s Legal Network. © Salam Plan

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She worked as a journalist in Egypt before and during the Revolution of 2011, when she got an arm and hand broken by the riot police, who also sexually assaulted her, she recalls. Her lawyer believes it was censorship-motivated. Today the author of Headscarves and Hymens lives and works in New York City and Cairo, being a contributor to media like The New York Times or The Guardian.

Eltahawy defines herself as a feminist of Muslim descent born in Egypt. She spoke to Salam Plan in Madrid’s Casa Árabe, during her Spanish tour this week to present her new book, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls (Beacon Press), which is coming out next Septembre. It is her manifesto against what she calls “universal patriarchy”.

What does Donald Trump mean to you?

Donald Trump for me is a fascist fuck. Donald Trump is a white supremacist, who has been clear all along about his misogyny, his racism, his islamophobia, his homophobia… he’s a whole host of discrimination and bigotry. He was elected by a mostly racist body of American voters and he represents today the growing rise of global authoritarianism that has -at his core- patriarchy, a patriarchy which uses all these forms of oppression.

So, Donald Trump for me is a very dangerous man, but he’s one of many. He’s probably the most powerful of the many, but you have his equivalent with Bolsonaro in Brazil, Duterte in the Philippines, Orbán in Hungary and so on and so forth. And then you have Sisi in Egypt and Mohammed Bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, when we talk about authoritarianism.

“Donald Trump is a very dangerous man, but he’s one of many. You have his equivalent with Bolsonaro in Brazil, Duterte in the Philippines, Orbán in Hungary, Sisi in Egypt, Mohamed Bin Salman in Saudi Arabia…”

Do you think everyone who voted for Trump agrees with his rhetoric and all these ideas?

Well, 60 million Americans voted for Donald Trump. What is especially shocking to me is that the majority of white women voters voted for Donald Trump, knowing that he had been accused by at least twelve women of sexual assault, and knowing his rhetoric, that is racist, misogynist, homophobic, islamophobic and all of it. So, if you voted for Donald Trump, you are a racist.

Many Americans get very upset when you say that and they say: “No, I’m not a racist” and they give you a whole bunch of excuses. But you understood very well that you voted for a racist, and if you voted for a racist, you are a racist.

What lessons could the other politicians draw from his success?

Unfortunately, the Democratic Party in the United States for too long has been moving towards the right, because they believe that the best way to win more votes is to bring people over from the Republican party. This is a disaster, it’s a mistake. Some politicians are learning sadly, and you see this in Europe too, that they should co-opt the rhetoric that has won the election for the Republican party.

But I’m seeing now more and more younger politicians and politicians of colour, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez , Ilhan Olmar, Rashida Tlaib… especially the women of colour, who have been elected to the US Congress, I’m seeing that they represent a wonderful and refreshing and much needed antidote to the hate of the Republican Party and to the mistakes of the Democratic Party.

“The women of colour, who have been elected to the US Congress, represent a wonderful and refreshing and much needed antidote to the hate of the Republican Party and to the mistakes of the Democratic Party”

The Republican Party has been openly racist for decades. Donald Trump did not invent racism. He’s not the first American politician to run on these platforms. Donald Trump is the fruition of many years of white supremacy, islamophobia, capitalism… many, many other forms of bigotry and discrimination. He’s just especially avert about them.

At the same time, the Democratic Party has been dominated by white politicians and has not fought islamophobia in any effective way. In fact, when we talk specifically about islamophobia, I believe that one of the biggest mistakes of the Democratic Party is that the only time up until now, when they speak about Muslims, is when they talk about American Muslims in the military and in the police.

Also about Obama not being a Muslim.

Exactly, yes. The Democratic Party wants to play the good Muslim card, by saying ‘Muslims are us as well: they also fought for us in Afghanistan and Irak. This is not the kind of opposition to islamophobia that I support. I don’t want to be called a good Muslim or a bad Muslim, I want to be called an American citizen who has every right to be in this country, regardless of whether I’m in your military or not.

American politics has a massive problem with white supremacy, especially, and discrimination of all kinds. (…) Muslims in America were punished for 9/11, and we had no role in 9/11. But the Bush Administration launched two wars against Muslim majority countries and, inside the United States, launched the Patriot Act, which targeted specifically Muslims. And so you saw the rise of islamophobia.

“I don’t want to be called a good or a bad Muslim, I want to be called an American citizen who has every right to be in this country”

Where is the limit between freedom of expression or criticism and islamophobia?

I believe in the right to offend, but I believe in the right to protest offence. When we talk about the First Amendment in the United States, it protects you from the Government controlling your speech, but cooperations can and do. And the media does have its own kind of self-control in a way.

Speech has incited hate and violence in Boznia, Rwanda, in New Zealand… I’m against censorship, but I recognize the power of speech, and I think it’s imperative on us to protest hate speech with all the methods that we have at our disposal because people are being killed (…).

I was a journalist in the Middle East for ten years. I’m against censorship, because where I come from [Egypt], it is used to silence us, because once you give the state the power to censor, at first you think it is for a good reason, to protect us, but then the line gets bigger and bigger, and that is what happened in the United States with the Patriot Act.

>>>You may also read: Expert warns about more terror attacks against Muslims if politicians don’t tackle islamophobia<<<

The week after the New Zealand attacks, Islamophobia cases in the UK rose by almost 600%, according to the Tell Mama organization, which holds the records for it. How would you tackle hate speech? Media are always pointed at, but what about politicians and institutions?

I think politicians must stop using lazy stereotypes of people in a hateful rhetoric for votes. [They] must stop monopolizing any kind of fearmongering that they have used for a long time to portray people as ‘under attack’ or to say ‘these people are coming to take your jobs, to rape your women’.

I think that the media must start portraying a more complicated image of people who are not white. I think that the media is too lazy to portray people. They give you all these very, very reductive images of people. So, you’re not allowed to be a full human being.

Media news rooms are very white. The media must start hiring people of different backgrounds, because they will understand reporting on all of those communities in a much more complicated and rich way.

I think the aim of hate speech is to dehumanize, because if you dehumanize you make it easier to attack. And complication is the best way to humanize someone. Allow people to be complicated.

“The aim of hate speech is to dehumanize, because if you dehumanize you make it easier to attack. And complication is the best way to humanize someone. Allow people to be complicated”

What do you think about New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s reaction to the recent attacks?

I think she’s done some very good things and I think she’s done some very lazy stereotypical things. I think the fact that she refuses to say the name of the man who committed the massacre is very good. I think that the fact that she and the government worked very quickly to change the legislation on semi-automatic rifles and guns generally is very good and necessary, and a lesson to the United States.

I think the compassion that she showed to the Muslim community when she went [to support them]… she looked genuine. But I reject anyone who is not Muslim using the hijab as a form of solidarity, for many reasons. Number one: the hijab is not a gimmick or a toy that you put on one day and you take off the next day (..). It’s an empty gesture. It is much more meaningful to show solidarity by fighting white supremacy every day.

Number two: as a Muslim woman who fought for eight years to take off my hijab [in Egypt], and as a Muslim woman who is in a family where my mother wears hijab for piety, my sister wears it for identity -she wants to say ‘fuck you’ to the racists- and I reject hijab and all forms of modesty… So, when I see white non-Muslim women putting on the hijab, I see that they have chosen a sight that is not mine (…).  I would prefer instead of wearing a headscarf, when they’re out in public, that they support Muslim visible women. If you see a Muslim visible woman being attacked verbally or physically, intervene and help that woman.

“I’m a Muslim woman who is in a family where my mother wears hijab for piety, my sister wears it for identity -she wants to say ‘fuck you’ to the racists- and I reject hijab and all forms of modesty”

People are sometimes surprised or do not believe that Muslim women can be feminists.

I keep my feminism and Islam separate, because for me anything that hurts women and girls, I will fight, regardless of where it comes from. Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, secular politics… I will fight patriarchy everywhere.

I believe the Abrahamic religions -Judaism, Christianity and Islam- are very patriarchal and we have to fight the patriarchy inside those religions. But I also believe there is patriarchy outside those religions.

I think that Islamic feminism in this sense is useful, and I am not an Islamic feminist. I have used their work to give to Muslim women a weapon who write to me and say ‘I want something that will help me fight x, y and z’. (…) If a woman says to me, “my religion is helping me to be more feminist”, I want to have all the weapons at her disposal to fight patriarchy, because I want to fight patriarchy wherever it exists.

You just said you are not an Islamic feminist. How would you define yourself?

I’m a feminist, I was born in Egypt and I’m of Muslim descent. This is how I usually present myself, and I think that makes it complicated enough and that’s all you need know [she giggles].

Feminist Mona Eltahawy thinks patriarchy needs to be tackled universally. © Salam Plan

Why do you say ‘Arab countries need a sexual revolution’ in your book Headscarves and Hymens?

When the revolutions began in Tunisia in 2010 and then spread to many other countries, including my country of birth, the revolutions were men and women together fighting the state. I wanted to ask in my book: when we go home, after we all have risked our lives together… Are the men that we stood shoulder to shoulder with against the state, are they revolutionaries at home, in the street? And we found in many cases the revolutionaries have a patriarch inside them.

Without the social revolution against the dictator in the public space and the sexual revolution against the dictator in the bedroom, the political revolution against the dictator in the palace will fail.

[In] Egypt right now, the political revolution is stuck, because it is one group of men fighting another group of men for a small piece of power: the military and the Muslim Brotherhood. I’m not interested in this, I’m interested in this revolution in the street and the revolution in the bedroom [which] -together- will make possible a much more comprehensive form of liberation on the state level as well.

What is the main lesson you have learned throughout your years of journalism and activism?

To stay angry and to recognize that the revolution lives inside you. So that way, wherever you go around the world, that internal revolution finds the various forms of oppression that patriarchy co-opts and utilizes. I often say that my goal is to destroy patriarchy all over the world (…). The tattoos which I have on my arm [, one of them says]: ‘we are the ones we have been waiting for’.

Don’t you get tired of staying angry?

[She giggles and then gets serious again]. No, not really, because it really does fuel me and I can use it everywhere I go. And for my next book I use anger as what I call one of the necessary sins. Because women are discouraged of being angry. It’s one attribution we’re not allowed to be by patriarchy.

What other six “necessary sins” do you talk about in your new book?

These are attributes that patriarchy does not want women and girls to want to do or to be: anger, attention seeking, profanity, ambition, power, violence and lust. Each of the chapters is about one of these sins and I write about why those sins are important in the fight against patriarchy.

I call this fight “feminism in 3D”: defying, disobeying and disrupting patriarchy. And it’s not about the Middle East or North Africa, it’s about the world. It’s about how patriarchy is universal. And I use stories and examples from feminism fights from around the world: Uganda, South Africa, South Korea, Argentina, India, Ireland… as a way of showing the feminist international revolution that targets patriarchy around the world. So, it’s like my feminist manifesto [she giggles].

I believe Judaism, Christianity and Islam are very patriarchal and we have to fight the patriarchy inside those religions. But I also believe there is patriarchy outside those religions. It’s universal

And how do you imagine Egypt and the US, the places you know better, in ten years’ time?

One of the things that gave me hope in the United States lately is what I was mentioning earlier about the election of these women of colour. I think they have come to American politics and really turned it upside down (…).

I believe the revolution, everywhere in the world, comes from the margins. It doesn’t come from the majority; the majority is too comfortable and wants to hold to the status quo.

In the Middle East and North Africa, Egypt now, including Saudi Arabia too, I really believe that feminism and talking and sexual ownership of our bodies -be it of feminist discourse or LGBTQ discourse-, so queer groups, who are increasingly visible -in Tunisia, in Lebanon they have been for a while now, and in Egypt we have something called the Alliance of Queer Egyptians now-…

So, in the Middle East and North Africa, [I imagine] an increasingly feminist-queer identified struggle; in the United States, an increasingly feminist of colour struggle will be the places of the margins that will influence society at large. They give me optimism, because I’m a tendentious optimist.

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When Amparo Sánchez Rosell had to give up wearing the hijab at work in order to avoid unemployment, she began to plan a solution to be able to exercise her option without having to renounce being herself. “I had to choose: either take off my hijab or work,” she tells Salam Plan. Today it is no longer necessary: ​​she is an entrepreneur and has her own restaurant in Valencia (Spain).

She is also the president of the Citizen Platform against Islamophobia in Spain (Plataforma Ciudadana Contra la Islamofobia) and this 8^th of March she asks for the same rights as other women, such as the end of the wage gap. But she points out that as a Muslim she is forced to make extra claims related to the so-called “gender Islamophobia”: “If women in general suffer the inequality of opportunities with respect to men, Muslim women more, and if they wear hijab, even more.”

The president of the Alliance for Action of Muslim Women in Germany (Aktionsbündnis Muslimischer Frauen), Gabriele Boos-Niazy, regrets that for them today -the International Women’s Day- is “a day like any other”, in which they are devoted to work against discrimination of Muslim women, “especially those who wear a veil and have the same desire as most women: to be successful at work and to be judged according to their abilities and not because of their appearance.”

Faeeza Vaid is executive director of the Muslim Women’s Network UK. She already went onto the streets last Sunday in London, when the great British feminist demonstration was organized. She was one of the women who made a speech from the stage and explained that she “marching because so many experience discrimination and sexual violence because of their gender, their race, their religion, their age and their sexuality.”

The equality of women in Islam

For Dolors Bramon, a non-Muslim Islamologist, it is also clear that professing Islam is not at all at odds with claiming equality between women and men. “Obviously” feminism and Islam are compatible, she says. Moreover, “the first regulations favorable to women were born in the basic book of Islam,” says the author of Ser mujer y musulmana (Being a Woman and a Muslim), Ediciones Bellaterra. She admits that “that is the theory” and the practice depends on the interpretation of each one: “Then every Muslim, especially male Muslims, will be responsible for not wanting to see what is feminist in the Quran.”

Bramon believes that Islam establishes “absolute equality from the religious point of view: women have the right to life -before they did not have it-, women can inherit -before they were inherited-, women have the right to a dowry and without it there is no marriage, the custom of polygamy (before Islam) practically gets cancelled, because the Quran speaks of polygamy but then says that it is impossible to meet the requirements… ”

“The first regulations favorable to women were born in the basic book of Islam. Then every Muslim, especially male Muslims, will be responsible for not wanting to see what is feminist in the Quran.”

Fátima Tahiri is writing her doctoral thesis at the Autónoma university of Madrid (UAM) on “the development of religiosity and religious beliefs of young Muslims in Spain: the case of young people of Moroccan origin.” She is also Muslim and feminist and has no doubt that believing that the Muslim woman is subjected is “something very far from reality”. She explains that historically “Islam appears as a salvation to women who in pre-Islamic Arabia were considered objects and with Islam they became independent political subjects with the right to free marriage, property, inheritance, divorce and participation policy, among many others.”

One of Sánchez Rosell’s favourite quotes on equality between women and men is one that says that “the believers, both men and women, are allies of one another” (Quran 9:71). She also reminds that “there were women who held power, both during the life of the prophet Muhammad and with the first caliphs. What happens is that later the patriarchy became stronger than those teachings and ended up absorbing all of that in some countries.”

Patriarchy in Islamic conservatism

María Dolores Algora, a professor of Contemporary History at the CEU-San Pablo University in Madrid and specialist in the Arab and Islamic world, explains that in countries where the sharia (or Islamic law) rules, it is interpreted by men from a conservative perspective. “The Arab society is a society enormously subject to the model of patriarchy, a confessional system with a radical use of sharia, which treats women like underaged people,” she regrets. Before the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ broke out, she was convinced that the revolution in that region would originate from the women.

Sonia Moreno, correspondent for several media in Rabat (Morocco) for eight years, explains that for this 8^th of March she has “no press release on the table”, because there are no Muslim feminist associations as such in the country. However, there are some Moroccan feminists who carry out actions such as painting fountains with red to protest against gender violence, despite the punitive laws of the Alawite kingdom. There are also Iranian women who demonstrate against the oppression of the Ayatollah regime by taking off the hijab, because they are forced to wear it restricting their freedom of choice…

In Europe some Muslim women also claim to be victims of that macho reading of the Islamic faith. And in some cases they suffer it at unsuspected levels. “Forced marriage, honour-based violence and female genital mutilation happens to women in the UK. We know this because we get calls on the Muslim Women’s Network helpline,” Vaid explained in her recent speech.

An ongoing issue in Western countries is the hijab. The usual complaints of Muslim women come from those who have been discriminated against for wearing it, but it also happens the other way round. “I have felt more discriminated against by Muslim men (than by non-Muslims),” admits the Madrid lawyer, expert in hate crimes, Nessrin E. Bensaid, although she emphasizes that this just happens from time to time. “I am a Muslim woman, but I do not wear hijab. Religion seems to me a matter of the private sphere and it is shocking to people that I’m a practicing Muslim but do not wear a hijab. That has led me to have anecdotal conflicts with Muslim men.”

She recognizes that the most conservative Muslims “get scared” when they meet her with what she calls “the full pack”: woman, Muslim, feminist and lawyer. “Their world falls apart: they are even more scared,” she says sarcastically. However, she quickly underlines that “we must differentiate those who believe themselves to be culturally Muslim, those are the ones from whom I’ve experienced rejection. With the real Muslim men and the true Muslim women I have always had an extraordinary relationship.”

“The men who oppress do that because of a cultural context issue. In the Quran, women are asked to be modest the same way men are,” Bensaid assures. Tahiri agrees: “I do not feel relegated by Islam. I feel relegated by a patriarchal and misogynistic interpretation, that has been made sometimes of the sacred texts by some wise men, and by some political regimes.”

Does Islam encourage beating women?

Bensaid laughs when she gets asked about a controversial verse in the Quran in which -depending on which translation is read- God would have said that the men have “authority” over the women and would have even encouraged to mistreat her physically. She considers that it is a misinterpretation.

“Men have authority over/shall take care of/ give advice to (qawwamuna ala) women with the bounties which God has bestowed more abundantly on the former than on the latter, and with what they may spend out of their possessions. And the righteous women are the truly devout ones, who guard the intimacy which God has [ordained to be] guarded. And as for those women whose ill-will you have reason to fear, admonish them [first]; then leave them alone in bed; then beat them/put them up for sth (daraba)!”, Quran 4:34.

First, it should be noted that Muslims always prefer the Arabic version of the Qur’an, since it is the original version and they understand that they are words that come directly from God which do not always find an appropriate translation. This is how Sánchez Rosell and Bensaid feel about this paragraph. In fact, this quote of the Quran has several versions in English, as shown and even more. The lawyer explains that “daraba” has different meanings in Arabic and between them, in addition to hitting, is also having sex, for example.

As for Bramon’s point of view, she broadly explains in her book that what some translate as “authority”, others would understand as “responsibility”, “accompany” or “give advice”. As for the translation of “beating”, however, the Islamologist considers that there is no way round, since it is the most widespread meaning for the Arabic word “daraba”. Even so, she points out that there are many hadiths (in the Sunna, the other sacred text of Islam, which tells the life of the prophet Muhammad) that “criticize the mistreatment of women” and argue that the prophet of Islam said that the best Muslim is the one who treats the women well.

“The Quran was written in medieval Arabic. This, added to all the patriarchal contamination, means that it is being interpreted under very wrong perspectives”, argues Sánchez Rosell. “One of the demands we have -Muslim men and women- is that we have to review all that. What you cannot do is to be functioning with an explanation of the Quran that goes back more than thousand years ago. ”

Feminism can also wear a hijab

“I’m here because my religion motivates me to fight (…) for equality for justice and for peace,” Vaiz told the London protesters. She called “to build a movement that is inclusive of black feminists, of working-class feminists and of faith-inspired feminists. I’m simply saying either we fight for all, or we all fall”.

A claim with which all Muslim women consulted agree. Tahiri believes that Muslim women also suffer from sexism by other women, “as was the case with the prohibition of hijab in France, which was supported by French feminists.” The researcher believes that this way, some women consider other women “culturally inferior”.

“Western feminism looks with its purple feminist glasses to Muslim feminists and feminists from other countries as if they were trying to save them. But you do not have to save them from anything”

Both Tahiri – who wears the Islamic veil – and Bensaid – who does not wear it – think that considering the hijab as an oppression is contradictory in a society where “mini shorts are worn where the pockets of the pants are longer than the pants themselves”. Bensaid recalls that FEMEN activists “can claim freedom with their bodies and we cannot claim them wearing hijab, for example.”

The president of the Alliance for Action of Muslim Women in Germany, Boos-Niazy, says that “in the association’s office it has been shown that non-Muslim men have fewer problems with hijab than non-Muslim women of a determined age and background, who quickly see the achievements of their long feminist struggle threatened as soon as they have to recognize the rights of a veiled woman”. She reproaches the attitude of some non-Muslim women for being “based on the vision of the human being as ‘I know better what is convenient for you than yourself'”.

The expert lawyer in hate crimes, Bensaid, sums up this appeal to other feminists: “Europe and western feminism look with their purple feminist glasses to Muslim feminists and feminists from other countries as if they were trying to save them. But you do not have to save them from anything.”

La entrada Muslim and feminist? <br>These women show it is possible se publicó primero en Salam Plan.