Empire, Subalternity, and Ijtihād: Two Muslim Women's Leadership Models in the Post-9/11 US

Abstract

Binary stereotypes silence Muslim women in post 9/11 America, but little has been written about how Muslim women's leadership can enable voice. This article presents two leadership models based on the philosophy of ijtihād (independent reasoning), which facilitate self-worth and solidarity, key elements of voice. The less visible spiritual colleague model, which has a followership of practising Muslim women, facilitates self-worth through ijtihād, allowing women to seek self-definition through their own interpretation of the Qur'ān. As strategy, the leader converts her home into a space which is simultaneously sacred and political where such informal discussions take place around religious rituals. The public bridge-builder model creates solidarity between and among its following of practising and nonpractising Muslims and non-Muslim men and women. The strategy focuses on effective dialogue between different groups. Ijtihād as discourse in pursuit of knowledge (‘ilm) creates equality and respect, the basis of sustainable alliances.

Introduction

Though neo-Orientalist images of Muslim women leaders throwing off the veil to assume leadership, or assuming leadership despite it, have shown remarkable tenacity in the popular imagination, little is really known about Muslim women's leadership in post-9/11 America. Critical research continues on how intersectionalities of empire, race, and religion in post-9/11 America silence Muslim women through a combination of binary stereotypes.¹ Debates on “the Muslim woman,” as a homogenous group² interrupt dominant discourse. Building on this trend in feminist scholarship, I argue here that “the Muslim woman leader,” an individual construction, also coexists in effortless juxtaposition with the collective stereotype. Essential to the larger imperial mission of saving Muslim women,³ these images, in fact, also obscure and distort the diversity of Muslim women, their everyday lives, and meanings of leadership. Clearly, a Muslim women's leadership which enables Muslim women, relegated to a subaltern position in this age of empire, to realize their need for voice within and outside the community, needs to be explored as an analytic category. Based on an analysis of the post-9/11 context in the United States, I present two subaltern Muslim women's leadership models in post-9/11 America, which utilize ijtihād (independent reasoning) as a philosophical axis to facilitate self–definition and to create solidarity, key elements of voice.

This article attempts to make two theoretical contributions: first, it highlights the importance of leadership research in the emergent scholarship on Muslim-American women's activism and resistance. In this way, it applies relevant concepts from the exciting feminist scholarship which reveals the diversity of such Muslim women's leadership, in various nations and communities ranging from Iran to Indonesia to the post-9/11 US diaspora.⁴ Second, it adds to the growing literature on minority women's leadership and its different philosophical foundations, in the United States. There is no dearth of leadership models for women, especially in the business literature, but they are based on assumptions of white middle-class women, which do not necessarily reflect the intersectional experiences or the philosophical values of minority women.⁵

Why explore leadership models and not individual women leaders and their personal traits, as is the general focus? While I do agree that individual characteristics are important, I argue that the investigation of leadership as structure needs to be distinguished from the exploration of leaders as individuals. In this article, I have, therefore, refrained from focusing on individual leaders and their biographies, much as I consider their vision and courage to be important leadership qualities. The analysis of leadership by using the structure of a model enriches theory and practice in three ways. First, the focus on models enables greater analytic flexibility because it is a conceptual abstraction, not limited to an individual, her unique experiences, and personality. Two different models can be used by the same leader at various times to confront different challenges based on the various needs of her following.⁶

Second, unlike the focus on personality traits, a leadership model is contextual, an aspect of leadership now acknowledged by different disciplines.⁷ By definition, a leader needs followers; leadership cannot be studied in a vacuum. In their pathbreaking work, Kellerman and Kelley analyze the power of followers and their ability to change leaders; indeed, there is a symbiotic relationship between leaders and followers.⁸ Interestingly, contextuality is also an Islamic viewpoint. As Mattson argues, by stipulating that followers will be raised with their leaders on the Day of Judgement, the Qur'ān underscores the responsibility of followers; they will have to answer for the leaders they have chosen.⁹

Third, I contend that not only do leaders arise from followers, but that the shape of leadership depends on the shape of followership in any given sociohistoric period. This broader perspective is needed because leadership is a structure which is called into being by the collective force of the biographies of its followership. Different leadership models can arise and are required in different historical periods. Therefore, an isolated emphasis on individual leaders can be ahistorical. In fact, multiple meanings of nation, imagined geographies of home, contradictory notions of citizenship, and dramatic shifts in state policy have intersected in different ways throughout history to give rise to different leadership models, ever since the first Muslim women arrived in the United States in slaveships in the sixteenth century.¹⁰

Leadership derives its sustained legitimacy by expressing the needs of its followership at a particular sociohistoric moment. Clearly, there is a need to develop context-specific Muslim women's leadership models after 9/11, a sociohistoric turning point for Muslims. At the outset, I analyze how the context of leadership, namely, the binaries of post-9/11 America underscore self-definition and solidarity as key components of voice for Muslim women. The subsequent review of the scholar-activist leadership model, which started in the 1970s, focuses on Qur'ānic hermeneutics and the revival of ijtihād (independent reasoning). Building on this model and drawing from Hill Collins' theories of leadership,¹¹ I then present the spiritual colleague and bridge-builder leadership models, illustrating the different uses of ijtihād as a philosophy which enables voice.

Post-9/11 Binaries: The Context of Leadership

The question of what it means to be a good Muslim woman is the binary pivot of Muslim personhood in the post-9/11 United States. As Afzal-Khan puts it succinctly,” If I don't inhabit a binary position, I don't exist.”¹² An analysis of why a Muslim woman feels compelled to make this statement and what it means is key to the understanding of the context of the leadership models which this article presents. A contextual investigation illustrates how this binarism is not simply an individual nor a community conundrum; it has its roots in the larger structures of state policy and its accompanying ideology.

Within six weeks of the September 11 attack, Congress passed the USA Patriot Act of 2001 (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act) which gave the US government sweeping powers of surveillance and investigation. For the first time, Muslims became a social category marked by law. What is new is that legal changes after 9/11 essentially reduced citizenship rights for Muslims. It is now permissible to heighten surveillance and summarily deport Muslim immigrants as state policy. Indeed, there have been large-scale deportations of Pakistani nationals on chartered planes from New York State in the middle of the night.¹³ State policy is condoned by popular opinion. Maira's study revealed that prior to 9/11, about eighty per cent of the American population considered racial profiling wrong; since 9/11, sixty percent favour it as long as it is directed towards Muslims and Arabs.¹⁴ Complaints of bias are rising. In 2008, the Council on American-Islamic Relations reported a record high of 2652 Muslim civil rights cases of harassment, violence, and discrimination, in thirteen years. Over sixty-three percent of these complaints were based on religious identity and “Muslim sounding names.”¹⁵ Muslim women who wear ḥijāb report discrimination in the workplace.¹⁶ As the recent “Mosque at Ground Zero “controversy confirms, Islam is the “morally deviant” religion that sanctions terrorism.¹⁷

It is not widely known that a reason for these popular perceptions is the ideological apparatus that accompanies state policy, which justifies constitutional violations of due process and free speech. A report entitled “Civil, Democratic Islam: Partners, Resources, and Strategies,” produced by the Rand Corporation, the influential conservative thinktank, presents American foreign policy in the Muslim world as a theological project.¹⁸ The best way to safeguard American interests and security at home and abroad is to spread the Western liberal-secular ethic to the vast masses of Muslims. In this schema, Muslims are divided into categories. The traditional are those who think that the word of the Qur'ān is the word of God. They aim to preserve orthodox norms as evidenced by their practice in daily life. The fundamentalists are those Muslims who are actively engaged in terrorist activities.

However, not all Muslims are the Enemy. Some Muslims are seen as capable of being integrated; others need to be excluded because they are dangerous. As Rastegar argues, gender is the litmus test: attitudes towards women (notably the ḥijāb) determine the binary categorization.¹⁹ The configuration of this enemy is stereotyped along binaries of class, gender, and race. Like two sides of a coin, different dualities have been simultaneously created: practising low-income Muslim men as terrorist-against-nation and oppressor-of–women. In her study of Arab Muslims in Chicago, Cainkar noted that Muslim males, when accompanied by women wearing ḥijāb (seen uniformly as the Islamicist oppressive tool), were more frequently attacked than those who were not. Such Muslim men are constructed as outcasts in American culture because they devalue Muslim women. As terrorists, they are constructed as non-citizens, disloyal to the red, white, and blue. Imaged as a barbaric colossus, the Muslim world is juxtaposed with the United States, a civilized modern nation in which freedom for women is valued.²⁰

As a result, the two groups of terrorist Muslims and practicing Muslims are conflated together as bad or, more accurately, dangerous, a threat to the security of America and the safety of American lives. In this apocalyptic vision, they are juxtaposed against good Muslims who are secular (read Westernized) in their beliefs and behavior. Such Muslims appropriately consign the Qur'ān and the Ḥadīth to a space, which is shrouded in the mists of antiquity, literature and legend. Assumed “bad” unless they declare themselves to be “good,” Muslims are now put in the position of continually proving themselves.²¹ This sanitized secularism is a civilizing mission of empire,²² but its binary reach extends as much within America as it does outside.

The political and social landscape of women's leadership in post-9/11 America is remarkable for its stark binarism. The dualisms that Muslim women face reflect imperial feminism and Islamicist patriarchy, different counterpoints of the nexus of empire, patriarchy, and state policy. These dualities are neither recent nor completely new; the post-9/11 state has brought them into sharp relief by legitimating them. As a result, it is now increasingly difficult for Muslim women to define themselves in their own terms. Divisions have also been created, making it difficult to achieve solidarity with non-Muslims and among Muslims themselves.

Binarism Outside the Community: Imperialist Western Feminism

Imperialist Western feminism needs to be understood as a structural ideology, complete with its own internal logic. A gendered binary plays a key role in its mission: hegemonic Muslim masculinity is the Other, but its counterpart, subordinate Muslim veiled femininity is civilizable.²³ This binary frames inevitable questions, as part of its inevitable self-contained logic, which imperial Western feminism poses and answers itself: by whom should the Muslim woman be rescued and what should the Muslim woman leader look like? Abu-Lughod has analyzed the answer to the first question.²⁴ It is the answer to the second question that is of particular relevance to this article.

The stereotype of “the Muslim woman leader” is based on a classed binary in opposition to bearded working class Muslim men and their veiled female relatives. Maira analyzes how such a leader projected, as an “objective native informant,” is, in fact, as a native Orientalist, a creation of empire.²⁵ Characterized by Western dress, unaccented English, and an entrepreneurial spirit, “the Muslim woman leader” expresses an unending gratitude to the West for the fact that she enjoys a high degree of personal freedom based on individual choice after migrating from her Muslim nation of origin. According to her, the most immediate problem for the Muslim diaspora is not state policy but the totalitarianism of the Muslim community. Focusing on sensational crimes committed by Muslim men against women such as honor killings, “the Muslim woman leader” makes it her mission to speak out for the reform of Islam. She does not raise the issue of Abu Ghraib nor deportations nor discrimination against Muslim women. To her, the problem is Islam. Her simplistic focus on Islam as the obstacle to women's freedom to make choices about their lives resonates neatly with the imperial Western feminist mission. Clearly, “the civilized Muslim woman leader,” an individual representation, is needed just as much as the collective portrait of the civilizable veiled Muslim woman because her testimonials justify and legitimate state policy. The job of this ideological representation of empire, the “native leader” is to translate “the Muslim woman” into a stereotype as a collective group who can be civilized. In so doing, she also simultaneously falsely presents the West, the Western woman, and the secular Muslim woman as unified categories, which, in turn, finds a different resonance in Islamicist patriarchy, the second binary that Muslim women have to face.

Binarism Within the Community: Islamicist Patriarchy

Patriarchal Muslim imams have written texts on Muslim women in the US that emphasized unequal gender roles.²⁶ In this binary, good Muslim women were submissive and pure, and bad Muslim women were outspoken and of loose morals (like the Western woman). This binary focuses on the depiction of an imagined world, imbued with patriarchal nostalgia, in which everybody (especially women) “knew their place.” In stark contrast to “the Muslim woman leader” construct, the good Muslim immigrant woman remains “true” to the culture of her origin instead of falling “prey” to the evils of the West. The Muslim woman is constructed as the citadel of an endangered culture. But this also means that Muslim American patriarchy has as little tolerance for the sharīa‘ activist who argues that Muslim women should not have to pray behind a curtain in the mosque as it does for Muslim women who argues that women should not be compelled to wear ḥijāb.²⁷

A Canadian study indicates that citizenship for men doesn't always mean the same thing as citizenship for women. The host country environment impacts gender relations in the family. Males are more likely to view their marriage as high quality than females, and pious women are more reluctant to come forward if there are conjugal problems.²⁸ In the United States, domestic violence in Muslim households has risen after 9/11;²⁹ it is likely that silence in the face of oppression within the household has become a watchword for the patriarchal Islamicist definition of a “good” Muslim woman. As any Muslim woman realizes (whether she is pious or not), if she breaks this silence, those outside the community will also problematize her household in stereotypical binaries.

The Challenges of Leadership: External and Internal Schisms

Contradictory binaries of imperial feminism and patriarchal Islam, forces that are both historical and contemporary, have made the Muslim woman a “political football” in America.³⁰ As cooke analyzes, “As women, Muslim women are outsiders/ insiders within Muslim communities where, to belong, their identity increasingly is tied to the idea of the veil. As Muslims, they are negotiating cultural outsider/insider roles in Muslim minority societies.”³¹ Such compounding oppressions can lead to a lack of self worth. A study of Muslim immigrants indicated a strong inverse correlation between perceived discrimination and self-esteem.³²

It is, therefore, not surprising that a Muslim woman feels internal divisions and faces external schisms. As novelist Khakpour describes poignantly, a Muslim woman in the United States today feels divided within herself, within the community and even on the street. Moallem analyzes how it has become difficult to express oneself as a woman who belongs to a Muslim culture without being evaluated by one's religiosity.³³ Schisms can also exist between practising Muslim women: some take an interpretative approach to Islamic texts; and others follow a literal application, differentiating sex roles.³⁴ There are also divisions between different religions affiliations, as Ahmed-Ghosh reveals in her study of Ahmadi women in California.³⁵

But given the power of imperial feminism, embedded as it is in structures of state policy and ideology, the chasm between secular and practising Muslim women is wide. Muslim women, who do not wear ḥijāb, are the preferred Other in post-9/11 America. Khakpour expresses mixed emotions when she encounters a ḥijābī woman on the street. She may not necessarily face the overt job discrimination that Halla Banafa confronted because she wears the ḥijāb,³⁶ but no Muslim woman can avoid intersectionality in post-9/11 America, as Afzal-Khan's quote reveals. Clearly, the scholarly focus on how secular women discriminate against pious women is important,³⁷ but as the contextual analysis reveals, structural binaries encourage secular women to distance themselves from pious women. On the other hand, practicing Muslim women may consider secular women to not be Muslim enough. Ekram Bashir recounts her chagrin when a Muslim man demanded to know why his Muslim sisters were not wearing ḥijāb as all “modest and believing” women should. For her, this was a turning point, and she started wearing ḥijāb. But the same question could be oppressive to her Muslim sisters who choose not to wear it.³⁸ Though beyond the scope of this article, the rigid distinction between secular and pious women needs to be questioned. Muslim women who do not wear ḥijāb may not necessarily be nonpractising; a study revealed that it is entirely possible for pious women to believe in and engage in secular politics.³⁹

To summarize, the War on Terror, which has limited civil liberties and created the binaries which are, as Spivack argues, “alibied in the name of women”⁴⁰ impacts the everyday lives of Muslim women, creating multiple schisms of oppression within the community and without. Muslim women face three challenges. The first is to maintain a sense of self-worth and integrity. For practising women, it means living in accordance with Qur'ānic principles; for non-practising women, this means choosing not to be the preferred Other by expressing solidarity with their pious sisters. The second is to contest Western feminist stereotypes without stereotyping white women. If Muslim women are not a monolith, neither are Western feminists. Imperial Western feminism must be distinguished from those white feminists who do not identify with it and who seek to understand and to ally with Muslim women. As Mohjab and Moghissi cogently argue,⁴¹ to depict all things Western and all Western feminists as a unified negative serves only to reproduce another stereotype, preventing the solidarity across the racial and religious boundaries needed to struggle against patriarchy. The third is to defy Islamicist patriarchy without necessarily rejecting Islam. Exclusive and discriminatory Secular fundamentalism can be as is as limited as literal piety. More profoundly, its static framework leaves no room for the transcendental in everyday life.

These endeavours also constitute the challenges of Muslim women's leadership in post-9/11 America. The capacity to define oneself creates self-worth, clearly, a subaltern concept in the contemporary scenario. Self-definition, as Hill Collins analyzes, is the first step.⁴² It is linked to alliance building, which is necessary to defy stereotypes, to prevent marginalization, and to confront discrimination. Though these goals are brought into relief as subaltern to empire today, these challenges are certainly not completely new. Prior to presenting the post-9/11 subaltern leadership models, I turn to an analysis of how the scholar-activist leadership model which developed in the 1970s attempted to resolve these issues.

The Scholar-Activist Leadership Model

A change in state policy in 1965, the revocation of the Asia Exclusion Act, which transformed context of the Muslim diaspora in the United States by bringing larger numbers of Muslim women from diverse ethnic, religious, class, and national backgrounds, gave rise to the scholar–activist leadership model. Based on a philosophy that reaffirms the faith-based self-identity of Muslim women even as they struggle against patriarchy in Muslim and non-Muslim communities, it unites theory and practice by enabling the resolution of practical problems.⁴³ The model was characterized by public advocacy, which challenged racialized stereotypes and an emphasis on Qur'ānic hermeneutics, which made a distinction between religion and patriarchy through the use of ijtihād.

Muslim women leaders challenged Western liberal feminism through scholarly writings and public advocacy. They also wrote op-eds in major newspapers questioning such stereotypes. They took issue with the leadership of the National Organization of Women (NOW) when it failed to condemn Israel's bombing of civilians in Lebanon in 1982. They created their own organizations. Dr. Azizah Al-Hibri, a law professor, who researches women's issues in Islam based on a critique of patriarchal medieval jurists, created Karama, an organization of Muslim lawyers that provides legal aid to Muslim women in the United States.⁴⁴

Predictably, patriarchal Islamicists found this objectionable. Riffat Hasan, one of the early pioneers of feminist leadership of this generation, explored an interpretation of the Qur'ān as a basis for gender equality, and subsequently challenged Muḥammad Abdul Rauf, imam of the Islamic Center in Washington DC. In the confrontation that followed, he publicly chastised her for assuming the authority to analyze the Qur'ān in such a manner.⁴⁵ African American Muslim scholars, such as Amina Wadud, who led a group in prayer at a mosque in 2005, and Amina McCloud, continue to make major contributions. Unlike other minority Muslim cultures in the world, today, the feminist scholar–activist model remains as a valid counterpoint to the patriarchal imam model. The post-9/11 contextual leadership models presented in this article build on the work of these early pioneers, especially on their revival of ijtihād as part of their focus on Qur'ānic hermeneutics.

The Revival of Ijtihād as Leadership Strategy

A form of Islamic jurisprudence, ijtihād is a derivative of jahada, which means “to make an effort”. In contrast, taqlīd means “to copy” or “imitate”. The mujtahid is, therefore, someone who forms his own opinion through reflection and reasoning, all of which require effort. According to Prophetic tradition, the mujtahid should be rewarded for the independent thinking even if such a person makes a decision that is erroneous. In contrast the muqallid, who practices taqlīd, copies what another person says without understanding its basis. Ijtihād, as a form of jurisprudence was the backbone of Islam during the first two and a half centuries. Then the right to ijtihād became limited to those who were considered great scholars and around 900 AD, it was gradually decided by patriarchal consensus that no one had the right to independent reasoning since all central aspects of legal doctrine were definitely established. This “closing of the door” of ijtihād in effect meant that henceforth taqlīd which is, at best, a repetition of doctrine, would prevail.⁴⁶

As a challenge to this, definitions of ijtihād continue to abound. Mohammad Iqbal described it “as the principle of movement in the structure of Islam.” Expanding on this, Rahman analyzes it as the effort to understand the meaning of the religious text in the past and then pinpointing and altering, if necessary, the underlying rule in the present-day context in order that a new solution can be found for a new situation.⁴⁷ Used to analyze women's status in Islam, it has the potential for a radical reassessment of basic tenets. Arguing that the exercise of ijtihād is not the exclusive preserve of Muslim lawyers, Al-Hibri goes even further: any Muslim can exercise ijtihād. According to her, the majority of Qur'ānic rules are general, requiring the exercise of ijtihād for the specific realities of everyday life. Even broader is Esack's analysis: he calls for ijtihād as a vehicle which enables Muslims to take responsibility for working against social injustice and to build alliances with the “religious other” to achieve common goals.⁴⁸

Clearly, the use of ijtihād is crucial for Muslim women to gain voice in the post-9/11 United States. In the ensuing section, I present the leader as spiritual colleague model and the leader as bridge-builder model, analyzing the different ways in which ijtihād can enable Muslim women to define themselves and to achieve unity.

The Leader as Spiritual Colleague Model

The leader as spiritual colleague model has roots in early Islam. Sophisticated and well-versed in the Islamic texts and their application, women leaders (muḥaddithāt) travelled all over the Muslim world in the dawn of this new religion.⁴⁹ In post-9/11 America, based on the followership of practising Muslim women, the leader as spiritual colleague model enables self-definition. It derives its legitimacy from wisdom based on the Islamic canon. This wisdom is not necessarily based on scholarly research. Rather, it is a combination of common sense and reflection on how to apply the meaning of the Qur'ān in the quotidian. As the result, the leadership, like its followership, is not confined to any particular class and can include women who are not fluent in English and who do not have formal schooling. Led by “peoples' professors,”⁵⁰ who enable followers to rely on the “comfort of daily conversation,”⁵¹ this model challenges the definition of who can, legitimately, be described as having the power of knowledge.

Invisible to empire, this leadership model plays an important role in the post-9/11 landscapes. Functioning within the community at the micro (household) and meso (neighborhood) levels, it confers leadership on those who are not necessarily recognized by formal Islamic authorities nor by the secularizing state. Therefore, though the followership is impacted by the state, its leadership is not curtailed thus. This model creates a safe space for women to resolve conflicts with men without feeding into the stereotypes. The invisibility of leadership is an important subaltern aspect of the model because it creates a political geography for Muslim women, which is free of surveillance from the binary gaze.

The locus of safety is the home, a private domain that becomes a sacralised space for social change.⁵² The informal home environment is where such leadership is exercised around rituals, such as prayers and ifṭār (breaking of the fast). But it is not the performance of rituals per se that is key, it is the informal discussions that take place around the prayers. Hospitality which is embedded in religion, exemplified by events such as ifṭār, is the expression and strategy of leadership. The leader opens her home to women, which becomes a transformative site. As Peshkova says, “the mosque comes to the women instead of them going to the mosque.”⁵³

Men cannot enter this woman-only space. Segregation, therefore, is yet another structural aspect of the spiritual colleague leadership model. In fact, it can be legitimately argued that the female-only following, a structural aspect, is what brings it into being. Muslim women feel more comfortable talking to other Muslim women about their problems. Men, by definition, can never become leaders in this model. But does this necessarily mean as Abugideiri argues that this model, is at best, second class leadership? According to her, those women leaders who focus on women's issues are regarded as peripheral, as not contributing to the core problems of the community.⁵⁴ I agree with Abudigheiri, but I also contend that it is Islamicist patriarchy, which has also assigned a low status to this leadership. As long as women leaders mind ”women's business” which means to keep women from questioning conventional boundaries, patriarchal Islamicists can feel comfortable in relegating the model to a secondary category.

However, labels should not obscure the need that Muslim women have for the spiritual colleague leadership model, functioning as it does in a woman-only space. More profoundly, it is the question of whether the goals of the leadership model fulfill the expectations of the followership, not necessarily the gender of the followership, which defines its legitimacy. Though I certainly agree that Muslim women have every right to serve as imams of female congregations, some women may not ascribe to the imam leadership model.⁵⁵ The focus on the latter is misguided because as Mattson points out it equates the imam with the Christian minister which is untrue. “Anyone can lead the prayer and there are other levels of religious authority.”⁵⁶ Clearly, traditional leadership pathways should not be considered unimportant even as Muslim women leaders rightly break glass ceilings in their quest for voice.

Ijtihād as Self-definition: Seeking Self-worth

This leadership model relies on ijtihād as the principle that produces the discourse necessary to define oneself on one's own terms. Though this model inhabits traditional norms, its essential purpose is to challenge patriarchal conventions through self-definition. Ijtihād is the spirit that generates and sustains the discourse which evaluates formal Islamic orthodoxy. Linking independent reasoning to personal responsibility is an important leadership task. As a spiritual colleague, the leader reflects on the application of the Qur'ān together with other women to enable followers to challenge patriarchy.

The leader is a colleague, not a companion, because self-definition, especially in post-9/11 America, requires sustained effort (jahd). In this sense, the leader works with followers through ijtihād to understand, negotiate, and contest the multiple stereotypical binaries imposed on Muslim women.

Domestic violence and polygamy are among the problems that may be settled without going to the court or to the police through informal mediation, yet another leadership task. Through ijtihād, the leader can, acting as a spiritual colleague, can enable a woman to see for herself that she doesn't deserve to be beaten, a first step towards action. Using social control through informal networking at the neighborhood level to put an end to battering is another leadership task. Yet another related and perhaps lesser known issue is economic abuse, for example, mahr.⁵⁷ In Islam, marriage is a contract, and mahr must be stipulated at the time of marriage. But, as Peshkova found, in Uzbekistan, that local mullahs did not insist on mahr. When they did, they stipulated that the sum must be lower if the woman is not a virgin. It is entirely possible that such scenarios exist within the Muslim community in the United States. Through the exercise of ijtihād as self-definition, a woman can realize that she is not following Qur'ānic tenets if she acquiesces to such a marital agreement. The long-term strategy, as Peshkova describes, is to improve the moral caliber of the community through the reading and discussion of the Islamic texts.⁵⁸ But in post-9/11 America, this alone is not enough to overcome the web of binaries and gain voice. Muslim women also need to build bridges within the community and outside.

The Leader as Bridge-Builder Model

Alliance building in order to create a common platform against discrimination is the central purpose of the bridge-builder model. It is not necessarily rooted in an extensive knowledge of the Islamic canon nor does its locus lie solely within the Muslim community. Its following comprises practising and non-practising Muslim and non-Muslim men and women who have made a commitment to resisting religious extremism of any kind while refuting the racism of resurgent imperial feminism. Designed to counter the schisms created in the post-9/11 context, this model builds and sustains bridges between and among these different groups.

Similar to the scholar-activist model, its leaders are prominent women who are scholars and professionals. As the public spokeswomen for their following, they directly confront the state apparatus through public media and op-eds. Predicated on interactions in a variety of fora, which range from grassroots interfaith groups to transnational websites in cyberspace, this model requires a leadership which is fluent in the vernacular of Islam, gender, and politics.

Ijtihād as Philosophy of Discourse: The Pursuit of Knowledge (‘ilm)

Given the complex enmeshed binaries of post-9/11 America and the divisions they have created, it is not enough to say that what is needed is dialogue between two different groups. What is really needed is effective dialogue, which means the creation of a discourse that interrupts and interrogates schisms. This bridge-building discourse requires an underlying philosophy that frames way in which we talk and listen to someone who has a different viewpoint. Otherwise what is said may be misinterpreted or not heard at all. In this leadership model, ijtihād towards the pursuit of greater knowledge is the philosophy of such a discourse.

The pursuit of knowledge (‘ilm) is a sacred duty in Islam. God is the All-Knowing One, and as humans we partake in this godly quality as we learn. A basic Islamic tenet, seeking knowledge is a life-long duty; the knowledge seeker is one who follows “the path of righteousness (taqwa).”⁵⁹ Knowledge is necessary to elevate the self (nafs) to higher levels of consciousness. But this knowledge is not simply textual: as the mystic Rūmī philosophizes, it must affect your heart.⁶⁰

Ijtihād is the philosophical connection between transversal dialogue and standpoint theory. An attempt to move beyond the universalism versus relativism debate, transversal politics provides answers for the fundamentals questions of alliance building: with whom should we work and how? Predicated on a root and shift paradigm, it requires members to have the integrity to root themselves in their own values yet to also possess the flexibility to shift, crossing boundaries needed to build alliances.⁶¹ As Hill Collins argues, this also clarifies with whom we cannot work.⁶² But this difficult task cannot take place without a philosophy. Ijtihād, as the discursive philosophy towards greater knowledge (‘ilm), also clarifies the link to standpoint theory.

A form of mujāhada (effort), knowledge has a collective and connective dimension. We are enjoined to share what we know, especially with those who are different from our group. As this quote from the Qu'rān reveals:” We have made you into tribes and peoples, so that you could know each other.”⁶³ In this connection, ijtihād can be linked to the standpoint theory in which each group and each individual member acknowledges the partiality of knowledge. What we know is limited to our experience which, though valid, can only be partial. As such our knowledge is incomplete. But as we shift to include the experiences of others in our knowing, the possibility of completeness beckons, however asymptotically. Discourse is therefore framed as a situation of partial situated knowledge while anticipating an understanding that is more complete through dialogue. Ijtihād means that everyone acknowledges that what they know is limited, necessitating a type of equality. Indeed, if Islamic tenets emphasize that in the quest for spiritual knowledge, we are all equal then this equality also applies to those who seek knowledge to build alliances.

Ijtihād, therefore, can create a foundation for respect for difference and openness to new ideas in two ways. First, it enables the leader to unite followers who belong to different religious groups or hold different religious interpretations of the Islamic texts by making an effort to perceive each person as an individual, and not necessarily as a representative of the group to which she belongs. Ijtihād enables an ethos which does not allow binarism since it is not based on universals in which members are seen as a homogenous category. Prior to participating in this dialogue, women and men commit to acknowledging power differentials and to refuse to reproduce these unequal relations however, unconsciously.

Second, given that ijtihād is diametrically opposed to taqlīd (to copy), individual followers are not pressured to blindly follow the perspectives of their grouping. As a result, false claims of sisterhood which deny power differentials between the followership can be prevented. Nor is it based on relativism or a post-modernism which either assumes that differences preclude common ground and political mobilization impossible. Alliance building is seen as a discursive journey in which everyone is equal, possessing knowledge that is different or of varying degree, in the path to the completeness of greater knowledge (‘ilm).

Conclusion

Every Muslim in post-9/11 America knows what fear feels like; it has a taste, even a smell. But few understand that terror is a social construction, comprising multiple binaries which pivot on every aspect of Muslim women's lives, their bodies, their minds, and their souls. Contradictory binaries of Islamicist patriarchy and imperial Western feminism create a paradox: hypervisibility of stereotypes of Muslim women yet erasure of their everyday existence. Secular therefore civilized, “the Muslim woman leader” is the spokeswoman of empire. Such representations of Muslim womanhood, however, illusionary, are a necessary ideological testimonial of imperial Western feminism, which purports to liberate Muslim women in order to “make them just like us.” External and internal divisions within and outside the community and between and among Muslim and non-Muslim women result, silencing Muslim women.

The importance of leadership models which enable Muslim women to attain citizenship, at this sociohistoric juncture, cannot be overstated. The scholar-activist model, which started in the 1970s, continues as pathbreaking beacon, but more models need to be developed. This article has presented the spiritual colleague and bridge-builder leadership models, which facilitate voice: the ability to measure oneself on one's own terms; and to reach across divides in solidarity.

As the underlying ethical framework, ijtihād reveals various dimensions in both models. In the spiritual colleague model, it enables followers to read the Qur'ān and to interpret it on their own terms to define who they are and who they can become on their own terms. As the basis of dialogue in the bridge-builder model, ijtihād enables effective alliances among men and women of different faiths who are committed to the struggle against religious extremism and racial stereotypes. But, to perceive these models as oppositional would be to commit the same binary mistake. Nor is each model restricted to a certain type of leader. In fact, the same leader can use either model or even a combination depending on the situation. Similarly, for heuristic reasons, the purposes of the models have been analyzed as discrete goals. But as Hill Collins cogently argues, self-definition is the imperative fundamental.⁶⁴ In the face of seemingly impossible intersectionalities, the very attempt to define oneself is a subaltern act. It creates self-worth, inspiring individual acts of resistance in everyday life. However, as Ghaffari and Ciftci indicate, though essential, self-knowledge through spirituality and faith is not enough to overcome the intensity of multiple intersectional oppressions.⁶⁵ Bridge-building also requires knowing which parties one cannot ally with and which areas one cannot compromise on. This, in turn, necessitates knowing who one is, a task that is as pragmatic as it is spiritual.

This exploration of leadership models suggests two further avenues of research. First, context-specific leadership models need to be developed for Muslim youth, especially girls, which reflect the needs of a followership whose demographics have changed and increasingly comprises Muslims born in the United States. Young, multi-class, and vociferous, Muslim youth are increasingly using the internet and links between leadership and cyberspace deserve further exploration.⁶⁶ Targets of the “War-on-Terror” and the “War-on-Immigrants,” adolescent Muslim women are compelled to negotiate meanings of hybridity, discrimination, and resistance.⁶⁷ Second, male Muslim imams are not a patriarchal monolith; a study revealed that despite a general conservative ethos, seventy-seven percent of mosque participants agreed that women need a greater role in the mosque,⁶⁸ and as Kunkler illustrates in Iran, effective alliances have been forged with progressive imams.⁶⁹ In general, there needs to be a study of different masculinities within Muslim communities in post-9/11 America.

In addition to race, class, and gender, increasingly complex intersectionalities of state policy, empire, and religion require a multiplicity of leadership models for minority women. These models need to be based on a combination of contemporary contexts and of their unique feminist traditions and values. Ijtihād, as the philosophical axis of the Muslim women's leadership models, illuminates how feminism can continue the heterodox Islamic discursive tradition in post-9/11 America.

Footnotes

• 1

  Sunaina Maira, “‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ Muslim Citizens: Feminists, Terrorists, and US Orientalisms”, Feminist Studies Fall 35: 3 (2009), 631–656; Fawzia Afzal-Khan, ed., Shattering the Stereotypes: Muslim Women Speak Out (Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2005); Mitra Rastegar, “Managing” American Islam: Secularism, Patriotism, and the Gender Litmus Test,”International Feminist Journal of Politics, 10.4 (2008):455–474.

• 2

  miriam cooke, “Round Table Discussion: Religion, Gender, and The Muslim woman,”Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, 24.1 (2008): 91–119.

• 3

  Lila Abu-Lughod, “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and its Others”American Anthropologist, 104.3 (2002):783–790.

• 4

  Mirjam Kunkler, “In the Language of the Islamic Sacred Texts: The Tripartite Struggle for Advocating Women's Rights in the Iran of the 1990s,”Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 24.2 (October 2004): 375–392; Svetlana Peshkova, “Muslim Women Leaders in the Fergana Valley: Whose Leadership is it Anyway?”Journal of International Women's Studies. 11.1 (2009):5–24; Rachel Rinaldo, “Envisioning the Nation: Women Activists, Religion and the Public Sphere in Indonesia,”Social Forces, 86.4 (2008): 1781–1804.

• 5

  Mary L. Grimes, Re-constructing the Leadership Model of Social Justice for African American Women.”Advancing Women in Leadership Online Journal, 19 (2005); Patricia Hill-Collins, Black Feminist Thought, (New York: Routledge, 2000).

• 6

  I use following and followership interchangeably throughout the article.

• 7

  Graen, George B. (2007), “Asking the Wrong Questions about Leadership”, American Psychologist 62, 604–618; Molm, Linda. 1986. Gender, Power, and Legitimation: A Test of Three Theories. American Journal of Sociology 91 (6):1356–1386.

• 8

  Kelley, Robert E. (2008), The Power of Followership, quoted in Barbara Kellerman (2008), Followership: How Followers are Creating Change and Changing Leadership. (Cambridge: Harvard Business Press); James Macgregor Burns, Leadership cited in Kathleen B. Jones, Compassionate Authority: Democracy and the Representation of Women, (New York: Routledge, 1993) 117.

• 9

  Ingrid Mattson quoted in Heidi Schlumpf, “Leadership,”National Catholic Reporter, (April 25, 2003):15–16.

• 10

  Fauzia Erfan Ahmed, “Globalization and Women's Leadership in the Muslim Diaspora: An Intersectional Analysis.”Muslim Diaspora in the West: Local and Global Perspectives. Eds. Haideh Moghissi and Halleh Ghorashi. (England: Ashgate Publications, 2010).

• 11

  Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought.

• 12

  Fawzia Afzal-Khan, ed., Shattering the Stereotypes, p. 26.

• 13

  Oliver Ryan, “Empty Shops, Empty Promises for Coney Island Pakistanis,”ColorLines 6.2 (2003):14–16.

• 14

  Sunaina Maira “Youth Culture, Citizenship and Globalization: South Asian Muslim Youth in the United States after September 11,”Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, 24.1 (2004):219–231.

• 15

  Council on American-Islamic Relations Report (2008) p. 18 quoted in Azadeh Ghaffari and Ayse Ciftci, “Religiosity and Self-Esteem of Muslim Immigrants to the United States: The Moderating Role of Perceived Discrimination.”International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 20.1(2010): 14–25.

• 16

  Steven Greenhouse, “Muslims and Rising Tensions,”New York Times, (September 24, 2010): B1, B4.

• 17

  Louise A. Cainkar, Homeland Insecurity: The Arab American and Muslim Experience After 9/11. (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2009).

• 18

  Cheryl Bernard, Civil Democratic Islam: Partners, Resources, and Strategies (Rand Corporation, 2003) quoted in Saba Mahmood, “Secularism, Hermeneutics, and Empire: The Politics of Islamic reformation,”Public Culture, 18(2006):323–347.

• 19

  Mitra Rastegar, “‘Managing’” American Islam.”

• 20

  Cainkar, Louise A. Homeland Insecurity.

• 21

  Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror (New York: Pantheon, 2004) p. 15, quoted in Sunaina Maira, “Good” and “Bad” Muslim Citizens.

• 22

  Saba Mahmood, “Secularism, Hermeneutics, and Empire.”

• 23

  miriam cooke, “Islamic Feminism before and after September 11,”Duke Journal of Gender, Law and Policy, 227 (2002) in Sunaina Maira, “Good” and “Bad” Muslim Citizens.

• 24

  Lila Abu-Lughod, “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?”

• 25

  Sunaina Maira, “Good” and “Bad” Muslim Citizens.”

• 26

  Fauzia Erfan Ahmed, “Globalization and Women's Leadership in the Muslim Diaspora.”

• 27

  Katherine Bullock ed. Muslim Women Activists in North America: Speaking for Ourselves (Austin: University Of Texas Press, 2005).

• 28

  Haideh Moghissi, Saeed Rahnema, and Mark J. Goodman. Diaspora by Design: Muslim Immigrants in Canada and Beyond (Toronto: University of Toronto Press Incorporated, 2009).

• 29

  Nawal Ammar, “Wife Battery in Islam — A Comprehensive Understanding of Interpretations,”Violence Against Women, 13.5 (2000): 516–526.

• 30

  Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, “Islam, Women, and the Struggle for Identity in North America”, in Keller, Rosemary Skinner and Rosemary Radford Ruether (eds.) Encyclopedia of Women and Religion in North America. Vol. 2, Part VIII. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006).

• 31

  miriam cooke, “RoundTable Discussion: Religion, Gender, and The Muslimwoman,” p. 91.

• 32

  Azadeh Ghaffari and Ayse Ciftci, “Religiosity and Self-Esteem of Muslim Immigrants to the United States.”

• 33

  Porochista Khakpour, “New York Times op-ed (September 12, 2010); Fawzia Afzal Khan, ed. Shattering the Stereotypes.

• 34

  Rachel Rinaldo, “Envisioning the Nation.”

• 35

  Huma Ahmed-Ghosh, “Ahmadi Women Reconciling Faith with Vulnerable Reality through Education,”Journal of International Women's Studies. 8.1 (2006): 36–51.

• 36

  Steven Greenhouse, “Muslims and Rising Tensions,”New York Times, (September 24, 2010), B1, B4. Halla Banafa, who wears the ḥijāb, was not hired by an Abercrombie store in California with “not Abercrombie look” written on her interview notes.

• 37

  Jasmine Zine,” Creating a Critical Faith Centered Space for Antiracist Feminism: Reflections of a Muslim Scholar-Activist,”Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, 20.2 (2004):167–187.

• 38

  Ekram Bashir in Katherine Bullock ed. Muslim Women Activists in North America.

• 39

  Fauzia Erfan Ahmed, “Secularism in Rural Bangladesh: Ijtihād and Lower Middle Class Women,“Journal of Comparative Studies of South Asia, Asia, and Middle East (CSSAME), 31.3(2011): 124–132.

• 40

  Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Terror: A Speech After 9–11”Boundary 31.2. (2004): 81–111, p. 91.

• 41

  Sharzad Mojab, “'Muslim Women” and ‘Western’ feminists: The Debate on Particulars and Universals.”Monthly Review: An Independent Socialist Magazine, 50.7 (1998):19–31; Haideh Moghissi, Feminism and Islamic Fundamentalism: The Limits of Postmodern Analysis, (London: Zed Books, 1999).

• 42

  Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought.

• 43

  Gisela Webb, Windows of Faith: Muslim Women Scholar-Activists in North America, (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2000).

• 44

  Fauzia Erfan Ahmed, “Globalization and Women's Leadership in the Muslim Diaspora.”

• 45

  Fauzia Erfan Ahmed, “Globalization and Women's Leadership in the Muslim Diaspora.”

• 46

  See Joseph Schacht, “Idjtihād,”Encyclopaedia of Islam, (Brill Encyclopaedia 2010 online second edition), http//www.brillonline.nl

• 47

  Fazlur Rahman. Islam and Modernity: Transformation of an Intellectual Tradition. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982).

• 48

  Tamarra Sonn, “Philosophy,”Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures, (Brill 2010), http//www.brillonline.nl

• 49

  Nadwi, M. A., Al-Muḥaddithāt: The Women Scholars in Islam (Oxford UK: Interface Publications, 2007), in Svetlana Peshkova, “Muslim Women Leaders in the Fergana Valley.”

• 50

  Svetlana Peshkova, “Muslim Women Leaders in the Fergana Valley,” p. 17.

• 51

  Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought, p. 113.

• 52

  Svetlana Peshkova, “Muslim Women Leaders in the Fergana Valley,” p. 15.

• 53

  Svetlana Peshkova, “Muslim Women Leaders in the Fergana Valley,” p. 15.

• 54

  Hibba Abudigheiri, The Renewed World of American Islam: Shifting Lenses Toward “Gender Jihad?”The Muslim World, 91.1/2.(2001):1–18.

• 55

  Svetlana Peshkova,“Muslim Women Leaders in the Fergana Valley.”

• 56

  Ingrid Mattson quoted in Heidi Schlumpf, “Leadership,” p. 16.

• 57

  A sum to be paid by the groom to the bride for maintenance if there is divorce.

• 58

  Svetlana Peshkova,“Muslim Women Leaders in the Fergana Valley.”

• 59

  Qu'ran 35:28 in Saeeda Shah, “Educational Leadership: An Islamic Perspective,”British Educational Research Journal, 32. 3 (2006) 363–385. p. 367.

• 60

  Fazlur Rahman. Islam and Modernity.

• 61

  Nira Yuval-Davis Gender & Nation (London: Sage Publications, 1997).

• 62

  Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought.

• 63

  Qur'ān 49:13 in Saeeda Shah, “Educational Leadership.” p. 368.

• 64

  Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought.

• 65

  Azadeh Ghaffari and Ayse Ciftci, “Religiosity and Self-Esteem of Muslim Immigrants to the United States.”

• 66

  Barbara Stowasser, “Old Shaykhs, Young Women, and the Internet: the Rewriting of Women's Political Rights in Islam,”The Muslim World, 19. 1/2, (2001):99–119; Alexis Kort, “Dar Al-Cyber Islam: Women, Domestic Violence, and the Islamic Reformation on the World Wide Web,”Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 25, 3, (2005):363–383.

• 67

  Sunaina Maira “Youth Culture, Citizenship and Globalization;” Rhys Williams and Gira Vashi, “Ḥijāb and American Muslim women: Creating the Space for Autonomous Selves,”Sociology of Religion 68.3(2007):269–287.

• 68

  Ihsan Bagby,” The American Mosque in Transition: Assimilation, Acculturation and Isolation,”Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, (2009) 35(3): 473–490.

• 69

  Mirjam Kunkler, “In the Language of the Islamic Sacred Texts.”