Islamism, Feminism and Post-Modernism: Women's Movements in Islamic Countries

Abstract

We thought “isms” were dead after our disillusionment with socialist utopian thinking in practice. But in the last two decades, new “isms,” Islamism, feminism and postmodernism, each very distinct, have changed our lives as much as our conceptions of ourselves and our societies. Feminism redefined woman's identity and, by the same token, changed the relations between man and woman; Islamism brought Muslim actors to modern politics, in which the veiling of women blurs habitual distinctions between public and private, traditional and modern; and post-modernism-by pursuing the critique initiated by new social movements for egalitarian, progressive, emancipatory values of enlightened modernity-challenged the central and hierarchical place occupied by the West as standard-bearer of modernity. Despite their differences, each movement—feminism as a social movement, Islamism as an anti-systemic movement, and postmodernism as a movement of ideas—changed definitions and perceptions of woman, Islam and modernity.