Basira Press Staff
Since the mid-twentieth century, names such as Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan, Kate Millett, and Andrea Dworkin have emerged as the “great theorists” of this movement. Unfortunately, many of our women may not be familiar with these names, but they are influenced by their ideas through the media, imported curricula, and laws.
In her book The Second Sex (1949), Simone de Beauvoir claims that femininity is not innate, but merely a social construct that can be changed. She called for liberation from marriage and motherhood, considering them “constraints” on women’s freedom.
In The Feminine Mystique (1963), Betty Friedan depicts the home as a “gilded prison” and saw the wife as “deprived” of her self. She advocated for abortion and quick divorce as “natural rights.”
In Sexual Politics (1970), Kate Millett, considers marriage an “oppressive” institution, accused religion of supporting the oppression of women, and called for a sexual revolution that would abolish all moral restraints.
Andrea Dworkin went to the extreme, viewing marriage itself as a form of “legalized rape,” depicting the relationship between men and women as an eternal struggle.
The most disturbing and dangerous of theories came from Gayle Rubin, a Jewish-American radical feminist and author of the founding document of Queer Theory, an academic school of thought which designates the LGBT community as a demographic group entitled to political rights and recognition.
This founding document, an essay entitled Thinking Sex (1984), dedicated approximately half of its content to defending the rights of pedophiles, specifically “boy lovers.” “Like Communists and homosexuals in the 1950s, ‘boy-lovers’ are so stigmatized that it is difficult to find defenders of their civil liberties, let alone for their erotic orientation.” Rubin even went as far to compare pedophilia to a preference for spicy food.
Rubin is considered a pioneer in feminist theory and currently among the professors of Anthropology and Women’s Studies in the University of Michigan.
The Danger of Importing Feminist Thought into Our Societies
These above-mentioned propositionshave had devastating effects on Western societies: unprecedented family disintegration, high divorce rates and casual relationships, a decline in the value of motherhood, the absence of the father’s role, dehumanization of women via objectification, not understanding what femininity or womanhood even mean, and the result being the alarming spread of psychological crises among women.
A society that has lost the warmth of the family has been transformed into fragmented human masses without strong bonds. People become fully self-centered and individualistic as a result of liberal values.
The disaster lies when this experiment is replicated in our Islamic countries, consciously or subconsciously. Instead of drawing inspiration from Sayyeda Maryam, Sayyeda Khadija, Sayyeda Fatimaaz-Zahra, Sayyeda Zainab, Sayyeda Masoumeh,.etc. (peace be upon all of them), we are promoting strange feminist models that have no connection to our religion or culture. The result:
— Weakening the resistant woman and transforming her into a fragile entity focused on vanity and selfishness instead of chastity and intelligence;
— Striking the Muslim family from within;
— Distorting the image of marriage and motherhood;
— Opening the door to legislation that contradicts God’s law, under the pretext of “women’s rights.”
In contrast, Islam presents a sublime model for women, one that neither relegates them to the home nor eliminates their role in society, but rather makes them essential partners in the mission of Prophet Mohammad (S).
Sayyeda Khadija (peace be upon her) was the first to support the Prophet with her wealth and her life.
Sayyeda Zahra (peace be upon her) raised the banner of truth in the face of injustice.
Sayyeda Zainab (peace be upon her) shook the thrones of tyrants with her eloquence.
Sayyeda Fatima Masoumeh (peace be upon her) remains a symbol of knowledge and chastity.
These women embodied the model of the missionary, resistant woman, steadfast in chastity, selflessness, and awareness.
The Model of Hezbollah’s Women
We don’t have to go far to find living role models; the women of Hezbollah today have provided a practical example of what a missionary woman means in our time. They are the ones who:
—Offered their beloved sons as martyrs on the path of resistance;
—Stood in the battlefields, standing with their bodies in front of “Israeli” tanks in the south;
—Embodied patience, steadfastness, and a deep belief that defending land and honor is a sacred duty;
—Combined missionary education for generations, uplifting the intellect of the masses, various social and jihadi work, and shouldered the burdens of steadfastness in the face of aggression.
This living model proves that Muslim women, when they adhere to their identity and understand what femininity truly means, are capable of being makers of history and equations, not merely “lost individuals” as feminists portray them.
While the west no longer even knows how to define what a woman is, let alone value her as a human being rather than a collection of body parts,1 it is not even possible for them at this moment in time to truly give women their dignity and value them according to the unique and valuable feminine traits that they have been gifted by Allah with.
Practical Recommendations to Protect Muslim Women from Feminism
1. Reviving the luminous biography of the women of the Household of the Prophet in schools and educational curricula.
2. Developing and Strengthening Resistance Media: Countering feminist propaganda with films, series, and articles that highlight the role of the resistant Muslim woman.
3. Protecting the family through laws derived from Sharia, not from failed Western experiences.
4. Establishing Role Models: Highlighting the sacrifices of women in the resistance in Lebanon, Palestine, and Yemen as inspiring examples for future generations.
5. Sharing Shared Responsibility: Promoting the concept of partnership between men and women in building society, instead of the role conflict promoted by feminism.
We are today at a crossroads: Either we allow feminism to infiltrate our society, transforming women into a distorted version of Western women who live in isolation and loss, or we adhere to our role models in the Ahlul Bayt and the women of the resistance, thus preserving women’s identity, protecting the family, and building a resistant society capable of facing challenges.
Women can either be noble, dignified, chaste, loving, and intelligent, or they can be lewd, vain, selfish, foolish, and hedonistic. Feminism benefits capitalism in many ways, because vain and selfish women will only care about shopping and money-worshiping and the war between the two genders makes for a perfect divide-and-conquer scheme that will prevent men and women from uniting against the parasitic banker class who impoverishes the world through usury and fractional reserve banking models.
Muslim women face a historic choice: either follow in the footsteps of the holy ladies Maryam, Fatima az-Zahra, Zainab, and Khadija, or follow Beauvoir, Friedan, Rubin, and Millett, and each path has its own destiny.
Let the life of Shulamith Firestone, a Jewish-American feminist, be a lesson to all. Rejecting marriage and family, Firestone lived her last remaining years alone and in the period up to her death was living reclusively away from society and had poor physical and mental health. Her loneliness was so severe that she was found dead in her New York City apartment nearly one month after her actual time of death. Meaning, she died alone and no one came to look for her until one month later when the foul stench of her rotting corpse was noticed by other residents of her building. If anyone in the Muslim world wants to believe that feminism is like a rainbow with a pot of gold at the end of it should only take a critical look at what Ms. Firestone found at the end of that illusory feminist rainbow which declares family and bonds of love and affection to be forms of “oppression.”
[1] It is worth to note that in the Jewish Talmud, Tractate Shabbat, 152a, it states “a woman is essentially a flask full of feces and her mouth is full of blood.” This reduces women to a collection of body parts without any human value. When we see the Jewish-Zionist disproportionate representation in the mass media/Hollywood, fashion houses, pornography industry, and other areas of life which are responsible for the objectification of women, it is not hard to see the motivation behind it.
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