What Does a Progressive Islamic Feminist Look Like?

Dr Farhat Hashmi heads the Al-Huda International organisation
for the Islamic education of women

Dr. Farhat Hashmi, who has PhD in Hadith Sciences from the University of Glasgow, founded and runs Al-Huda International, which operates Islamic education programs for young Muslim women in 200 cities around the world. Hashmi and her organization say they are progressive feminists who empower Muslim women by helping them to understand and interpret the Koran in order to use it to assert their rights under the Islamic faith. Dr. Hashmi  believes that women Muslims must cover their hair and upper bodies entirely – such as with a hijab or a burqa – because they must hide their beauty from men.   

So, the rights assumed by her students can only work within the strict and traditionalist Koranic framework Hashmi advocates, which forbids many of the women's rights taken for granted across Western liberal democracies.

Okay, I'm not getting much of a warm progressive, feminist empowering feeling here.

Women are said gravitate towards her because they are either disillusioned with their life in the West, or they want their daughters to be protected from what they perceive to be the moral laxity of the West. According to a report in Canadian magazine Maclean's, Hashmi focuses on "young Westernized women from moneyed families who had hitherto preferred a pair of jeans to the hijab" and she "became famous converting them to a stricter form of Islam.

No word on how marrying off an 8 year old girl fits into her progressive feminist philosophy.

Hashmi is said to not propagate jihad to her students, though the reason is ostensibly because they are female and the time is not right. "I have even been called a kafir [unbeliever] because I do not propagate jihad," Hashmi said. "I teach women – are they going to go and fight? Anyway, there are many things that need to be done before thinking of jihad."

Well thank goodness Islamic progressive feminism wasn't evolved to the point of teaching young women to strap bombs on themselves and blow up buses.