Gender fiqh: The mobilization of gender-responsive movements on social media (original) (raw)

Gender Fiqh: Mobilization of Gender-Responsive Movement on Social Media

Ijtihad : Jurnal Wacana Hukum Islam dan Kemanusiaan

This study aimed to reformulate the ijtihad of gender-responsive fiqh. Such ijtihad model is needed in order to respond to the developments and dynamics of life in the current contemporary era. Moreover, current social reality and condition are often associated with empowerment of and justice for women. Movements and responses toward women’s issues recently has been occurring quite monumentally on social media. Such movements represent a response toward media development, especially on social media platforms. This literature-based study collected data from literature studies and descriptive critical analysis. Through the critical analysis, this study found an interpretation of gender fiqh ijtihad model initiated through social media platforms.

Women’s Identity in the Digital Islam Age: Social Media, New Religious Authority, and Gender Bias

QIJIS (Qudus International Journal of Islamic Studies)

This paper discusses the phenomenon of religious lectures on social media that are gender-biased. The gender-biased religious lectures delivered in social media by some famous figures perpetuate the discrimination against women in Indonesia. This research answers how and why the religious lectures with gender-biased theme appear massively on social media. By using a qualitative method and feminist approach, the study focuses on the religious preachers on the new social media. This study shows that the large amounts of lectures with the gender-biased theme in social media are inseparable from the role of the promotional accounts. It shares videos of gender-themed propaganda massively and attractively to attract many visitors and followers of these accounts. This study reveals that the massive religious lectures with gender bias on social media are not only dealing with the textual understanding of religious texts but also a matter of the religious commodification. The actors of busin...

Islamic vigilantism and women in social media

In Bangladesh, the number of cyber-citizens has been skyrocketing since the 2010s. Violence against women is also proliferating along with the presence of Islam in public spheres and discourses. Using thematic analysis, this study analyzes the discourse data collected from Facebook, the dominant social media of Bangladesh. The key aim of the research is to find out the bedrock of Islamic vigilantism and verbal aggressiveness against women in social media. Subsequently, three interlinked themes have been explored: women's religiosity, women's attire, and women's virtue. The findings have shown that men mainly capitalize on these three conventional and stereotyped ideas of popular Islam to conduct vigilantism against women in social media, which is most often accompanied by different types of verbal aggressiveness. Further, this study considering deep-rooted misogyny and patriarchy in Bangladesh society argues that these factors might have contributed to directing online vigilantism against women. As little research has been done in this area, this research study would lead to further researches in this area.

Claiming religious authority: Muslim women and new media

Media, Religion, and Gender: Key issues and new challenges, 2013

*CHAPTER DRAFT please refer to the published version when citing* This chapter focuses on interpretation of Islamic texts conducted by Muslim women in online spaces which is happening on a wide scale, both in women-only and mixed-gender Internet discussion groups. In contrast to religious academics or scholars who have more publishing power and who engage in such activities as part of their professional career, these online groups are populated by women who could be defined as ordinary, ‘grassroots’ Muslims who feel that in order to be able to apply Islamic laws to their lives, they need to extensively study Islam to be able to understand the hermeneutic principles guiding the process of interpretation. The online groups, however, are very eclectic, both in terms of their membership as well as purpose, and women who join them represent a whole spectrum of political and religious views. The novel feature of these groups is the potential to bring together women representing different religious and political attitudes in the ambitious project of learning about Islam and, often, learning to interpret Islam; the outcome of women's debates may be equally consensus or disagreement, but Islam-based arguments produced by the women to support their points of view are definitely creative and constructive, thus fulfilling the objective of committing to Islamic education. At the discursive level, women who claim the authority to interpret Islam are no longer merely constructed objects of the ‘Woman in Islam’ narrative, but also its authors, thus contributing to a shift in power in the Islamic context of gender relations.""

The Sunnah Lake of Muslimah: Salafi Women, the Manhaj and Online Media

Humanities & Social Sciences Reviews

Purpose of the study: This paper analyses the use of internet by salafi women especially in an online group named Telaga Sunnah Muslimah (The Sunnah Lake of Muslimah-TSM). Methodology: Applying content analysis by analyzing the messages shared within TSM WhatsApp Groups discussion, this paper analyses the agency which salafi women play through their internet usage, especially in online media they use. Main Findings: Viewed as passive, voiceless and subordinated group, they use internet as media for reproducing knowledge, expressing their voice and negotiating their identity. While salafi manhaj requires them to strictly limit their appearance in public space, the online space has facilitated them to have more spaces to exist beyond their offline world Applications of this study: The study gives an understanding on how a closed women group plays their agency to negotiate their boundary within modern world. Novelty/Originality of this study: While salafi women are commonly viewed as h...

Claiming our Space: Muslim Women, Activism, and Social Media

Islamophobia Studies Journal, 2021

This paper addresses the ways in which Muslim women seek to employ online media, particularly social media, to reclaim narratives around space, embodiment, and power. I argue that digital space is, like any other form of media, structured essentially by racism and patriarchy, but I also note the crucial potential for resistance exhibited by Muslim activists such as political leaders Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, Instagram influencer Ayesha Malik, and the largely anonymous women who participated in #MosqueMeToo, encouraged by the journalist and activist Mona Eltahawy. I draw upon a post/anti-colonial feminist framework and the tools of critical discourse analysis in examining specific instances where such women perform acts of resistance that, in turn, trigger a gendered and raced reaction. I note the ways in which some Muslim women, such as Saudi teenager Rahaf Mohammed, are constructed as media heroes, given that their stories can be co-opted to validate notions of the white coloni...

Framing the online women's movements in the Arab world

The events of the Arab Spring led to several reforms in the Arab world and facilitated the creation of feminist movements. Social networking sites such as Facebook were used as tools to promote this kind of online activism and create a collective secular identity for the members of these movements. This study investigated over 220,000 Facebook posts and comments taken from three online feminist movements which supported gender equality in the Arab world. The results show that these movements sometimes face fierce resistance from Islamists who believe that their religion is under attack. Instead of having one type of poster and commentator, three main online groups are identified; each one competes to garner attention and support from the public.

39. Negotiating Identity in Democratic Society The Internet and The New Public Sphere of Salafi-Niqabi Women

Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Social and Political Sciences (IcoSaPS 2018), 2018

The discovery of the internet has significantly changed the way people live the life in the contemporary world. People are increasingly easy to connect and build a network with the outside world that they have never seen before. The Internet is also used for a variety of needs, from searching and disseminating information, to the need for market promotion and expressing their personal life. The internet has been also argued in the course of enhancing the democratic nature of the world as it facilitates people to be having more freedom to talk and express. This also applies to Salafi-Niqabi women who have been known to be very close to the outside world. The internet has changed their previous ways of life that is very restrictive, closed to the outside world and always seen as the voiceless group. This paper analyzes the internet usage of young Salafi-Niqabi women in Surakarta and their negotiation with their strict salafi manhaj in their everyday life. Using narrative inquiry approach by applying in-depth interview and participative observation method, this paper discovers that while salafi manhaj requires them to strictly limit their appearance in the public space, the online space has created an alternative space to facilitate them to exist beyond their offline world.

Power X Expression X Violence: Women’s freedom of expression on social media in Malaysia

Feminist Internet Research Network (FIRN), 2021

In Malaysia, and to some extent, globally, gender inequality is often and rightly addressed in terms of GBV and gender discriminatory impacts. However, the impact of gender inequality in relation to freedom of opinion and expression is largely unaddressed. A framework for an unrestrained freedom of opinion and expression means very little to women if it ignores the inherent unequal power dynamics in our access to human rights and equal protection under the law.

#EndMaleGuardianship: Women’s rights, social media and the Arab public sphere

New Media & Society

This study examines the online communicative dynamics between women and men during the Saudi women’s rights campaign to end male guardianship, which unfolded on Twitter. We analysed 2.7 million tweets with the #EndMaleGuardianship hashtag over a 7-month period quantitatively and 150,245 of these qualitatively to examine the extent to which Twitter shapes and facilitates cross-gender communication, and how this helped engender new spaces for expression of dissent. Our study shows that Twitter provided shared online communicative spaces that had several characteristics commonly associated with public sphere(s). There is also evidence that using these alternatives spaces, women transcended to an extent the gender segregation that exists in traditional public discourses and spaces of Saudi society. The anonymity of Twitter offered women a safe place to deliberate their concerns about male guardianship. We suggest that these deliberations created a counterpublic sphere of sorts, which he...