Left Universalism: Towards a Muslim Feminist Ethics

How can we understand Muslim women’s agency? Is it possible to see such agency through the rubric of feminist universalism rather than through the standpoint of religious difference? This project presents a critical examination of the creative capacity of Muslim women to contribute to feminist and political goals, not as women who are Muslims, but through their religious identities. My objective is to build a theoretical grounding for a feminist ethic espoused by Muslim women that is not based on difference. Furthermore, I argue that this ethic can be politically engaged, and can articulate meaningful interventions for universal expressions of feminist struggle. As such, it is a critique of current literature on Muslim women’s agency which focuses on their particularity as the only site of legitimate knowledge production. I will argue that an exclusive focus on difference prevents these women from being understood as agentive through their religious identities and serves to isolate them from inclusion in larger feminist political discussions.

 As the title of this proposal shows, I rely on the concept of ‘left universalism’ as articulated by Sekyi-Otu. He presents a strong argument for the use of universalism as a tool in the hands of non-Western cultures to bring out organic and generative theoretical ideals that lead to progressive social and political change. Within poststructural and postcolonial studies, universalism has (rightfully) been deemed suspect in projects of Western cultural and political domination. However, Sekyi-Otu points out that condemning universalism as an imposition ultimately prevents non-Westerners from reclaiming parts of their tradition that overlap with Western values. Left universalism provides a theoretical methodology to better theorize religious women’s agency, ultimately highlighting universal aspects of feminist agency, such as multidimensionality and relationality.