المرأة المسلمة بين مطرقة الأصالة وسندان المعاصرة

Abstract

The successive reform and renewal processes in Arab societies since the 19th century have achieved significant and undeniable accomplishments. However, regarding the fundamental issues facing our societies, these processes have largely remained trapped in a vicious cycle, taking one step forward only to regress several steps back. This is because they failed to view renewal as a comprehensive and organically interconnected intellectual, social, political, and cultural process. Instead, they adopted a selective approach, dealing with modernity utilitarianly, primarily by embracing material and consumerist aspects while rejecting, and even opposing, intellectual, cultural, and political ones. Consequently, we observe in our Arab countries a stark contradiction between the consumerist, material innovations of modern civilization and the traditional social, cultural, and political structures that appear static and unaffected by the passage of time and the powerful winds of progress around us. Meanwhile, most of our countries have remained stagnant, if not regressed, on fundamental issues of modernity such as democracy, human rights, and especially gender equality. The issue of Arab and Muslim women has remained at the heart of the social and political transformations witnessed by Islamic countries throughout the 20th century.