Muslim men and Muslim women: old and new questions

Serious alarm bells have recently been sounding in the field of the family, Türkiye's most important and traditionally strongest social institution. This is no joke; we are being struck at our strongest point, the one that makes us advantaged compared with other societies. Rising divorce rates, a steadily rising age of marriage, a record number of people living alone, and ultimately a dangerous drop in fertility rates and, as its final result, societal aging. These are data showing that the direction of social change in Türkiye is currently heading in a negative direction.

To draw attention to this course, to raise awareness of our family structure and to consider measures against it, the Presidency, at the proposal of the Ministry of Family, declared 2025 the "year of the family." However, to think that the incentives provided toward having children would on their own be sufficient would be to take the matter far too lightly. The change taking place is the result of a far more comprehensive sociological development.

The matter undoubtedly has to do with the rising level of prosperity. Contrary to what is supposed, economic hardship does not reduce fertility; on the contrary, those whose fertility has declined are the segments whose prosperity has increased still further. The number of children among the wealthy is far lower, and only those who view life from the most materialistic and shallowest place explain this by their being more conscious. On the other hand, it is also true that rising prosperity changes mentality. With a more selfish, more worldly, and more conformist approach, the child in this life remains at most an object of pleasure and is not seen as preferable to other pleasures.

As much as rising prosperity, the rising rate of university attendance, late entry into employment and, of course beyond all these, the increasing distance of male and female roles from their traditional lines also have a serious effect in shaping the new culture of children and family. This last part in particular needs to be examined thoroughly. In its latest issue, the journal Tezkire examines how the Muslim segment in particular is responding to this change in roles. Perhaps as a reaction to the examination of such subjects under the heading of Islamic Feminism, the journal has preferred to gather this file under the title "Muslim Men and Muslim Women: Old and New Questions." The change is not happening only in women; a serious change is also taking place in how men position their own gender role. Of course, in connection with developments in women.

The title chosen for the issue, edited by Saadet Bayazıt, seeks to shed light both on the issues inherited from history and the new questions these issues face in the modern world, and on the modern age's quest for redefinitions of gender, religion, and culture. The modern world is going through a process of radically questioning and redefining gender roles and identities. This process not only shakes traditional values and norms deeply but also subjects our religious and cultural codes to a new reading.

The file contains contributions from authors each as valuable as the next. Birsen Banu Okutan's article, for example, offers a striking analysis that focuses on the economic and cultural transformation of the new conservative middle class and deals with devout male identities through consumption practices. Mustafa Çevik takes up ongoing debates about the nature of gender by blending biological determinism and social constructionist approaches. Hacer Ayaz examines how Muslim male identities are being transformed in the modern world under the influence of patriarchal norms, religious values, and globalization. Gönül Yonar Şişman, in her article analyzing the origins of gender-centered discrimination through mythological narratives and questioning the historical burdens of the concepts of womanhood and manhood, draws attention to feminist myth criticisms based on the creation of Pandora in Greek mythology and the expulsion from paradise in the Holy Book, and criticizes the negative meanings these narratives attribute to women. Zehra Işık, putting Istanbul's İsmailağa Community and Cerrahi Group under the lens, examines the change and transformation in these two religious communities' conceptions of women and men. Hüseyin Yılmaz, for his part, takes up modern gender debates through tradition and social norms and examines the effects of social changes that lead to erosion of meaning. The German thinker Birgit Rommelspacher, in her article titled "Feminism and Cultural Dominance: Debates on the Emancipation of Muslim Women," which treats the debates on the emancipation of Muslim women through feminist movements, questions Western feminism's effort to shape Muslim women according to its own normative understanding in the name of emancipation, while drawing attention to the contradictions of this approach within feminist ideology.

In the file's most comprehensive and longest article, Necdet Subaşı takes up the concepts of Muslim masculinity and femininity in their historical, theological, and modern contexts, analyzing the transformation of traditional religious references in the modern world; he notes that in the Qur'an and the Sunnah the roles of women and men present a structure founded on complementarity, but that in the course of history these roles evolved into a patriarchal structure. Underlining the concept of "Islamic feminism," Subaşı touches on movements that demand the reinterpretation of religious texts in women's struggle for emancipation. While discussing the continuing tensions between traditional and modern understandings, his article offers a critical framework on how the message of religious equality can be reconsidered in the modern context. Subaşı emphasizes that this conceptual transformation carries a force that can shape not only the identity quest of Muslim individuals but also the future of social structures. Subaşı notes that the question of gender in the Islamic world has evolved from a traditional approach based on "wisdom" and "submission" to a modern ground of debate in which the questions "how" and "why" come to the fore. In fact, not only regarding gender roles but in general, in our relationship with all religious texts or commands, instead of perceiving a command, an advice, or a wisdom that addresses us, we can say there is a language that, with its consuming and secularizing aspect, brings to the fore these objectifying "why" and "how" questions. At this point I think Subaşı's contribution can form a model for more general readings of religious texts as well.

The file's special interview guest is Nazife Şişman. In the interview conducted with Şişman, gender debates are taken up through the concepts of fitra, ahsan al-taqwim, and the modern social division of labor. Another interview was conducted by Faatima Knight, digital editor of the journal Renovatio, with Haifaa Jawad, a faculty member at the University of Birmingham. This interview, too, proceeds through the fundamental contradictions of Islamic feminism. Issue 90 of Tezkire, under the direction of Yunus Badem, with Gonca Dedemoğlu also contributing a book review, has turned out to be less a file on Islamic feminism than a good file confronting Old and New Questions on Muslim Men and Muslim Women.