Student Blogger - #dgemw Blog: Musawah

Zainah Anwar is the founder of Sisters of Islam, which gave rise to a movement and organization known as Musawah. "Musawah" means equality. Ms. Anwar gave a hopeful view of what was happening on the ground. Musawah had a meeting in Kuala Lumpur in February to discuss strategies for making arguments against patriarchal interpretations of Islam. One important area for reform is family law, the topic of the afternoon's first panel. Many Muslim countries have unequal family laws, in provisions dealing with marriage age, consent to marry, grounds for divorce, and custody. A divorced woman, for example, only has custody of male children up to age seven and female children up to age nine; the former husband still has authority over those young children for anything requiring consent by a guardian. Anwar praised new scholarship giving alternative interpretations of the Qur'an and its historical context, for example, by pointing out assertions of women in marriage contracts hundreds of years ago. This movement has achieved some successes, such as family law reform in Morocco, a ban on polygamy in Tunisia, and a domestic violence law in Malaysia. By breaking the monopoly of traditional clerics over the interpretation of religion, women are opening the space for debate.