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Doha: The status of women in the Islamic world has often represented a ground for confrontation between Western and Muslim thinkers, detractors of Islam and Muslim radicals.
Some of these thinkers have called at times for women's liberation, others for their subjugation, but they have rarely asked the women their opinions and expectations.
The recent findings of a Gallup poll on Muslim public opinion may disappoint both sides and prove how these claims are based on widespread misconceptions on Muslim women's ideas, ambitions and hopes for the future.
US authors John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed have described these findings in a chapter of their book, Who Speaks for Islam, What a Billion Muslims Think, which is currently being released in the United States.
Their study of the Gallup data reveals that Muslim women have similar ambitions and hopes of women in the West and want to achieve a similar legal status, but on their own terms.
While rejecting a feminist type of approach to solve their issues, women in the region refuse to break away from traditional roles and want emancipation within their cultural and religious values.
The two authors summarise and try to explain the results of Gallup's largest study of Muslim populations worldwide shedding new light into what majorities of the world's Muslims really think and feel on a number of issues.
Based on more than 50,000 interviews conducted between 2001 and 2007 with residents of more than 35 countries that are predominantly Muslim or have sizable Muslim populations, the poll surveyed more than 90 per cent of the world's Muslim community, making it the largest, most comprehensive study of its kind.
Esposito, a Georgetown University Professor, and Mogahed, a Gallup analyst, divided the study into five key chapters; focusing on what Muslims believe and value; whether Islam is compatible with democracy, the nature of radicalism; what Muslim women want and how they view women's rights, religion and the West; and, insights into the clash of civilisations - whether there really is one, whether the issue is about religion or politics, and possible solutions to the conflict.
With regard to Muslim women's opinions the authors expose a number of Western misconceptions. In sharp contrast to the popular image of subjugation, women have not accepted a second class status.
"A majority of women in virtually every country we surveyed say women deserve the same legal rights as men, to vote without influence from family members and to work at any job they are qualified for and even to serve in the highest levels of governance."
While admiring much of the West, the majority do not yearn to become more like their Western counterparts, the authors said. "While they favour gender parity, women likely want it on their terms and within their own cultural context."
So if the legal status of western women is appealing to their Muslim counterparts, very few respondents associated adopting Western values with a progress in their status. In fact the survey discovered that Muslim women deplore what they perceive as Western promiscuity, pornography and indecent dress codes.
"While the Westerners still often see the veil as a symbol of women's inferior status in the Muslim world, to Muslims, Western women's perceived lack of modesty signals their degraded cultural status in the West."
The survey also finds that a majority of Muslim women believe that their most urgent needs are not gender-related but rather refer to the political and economic spheres.
Kaltham Al Ganem, a sociology professor at Qatar University, told Gulf News the findings of the survey reflect the position of a majority of women in Qatar and the region.
"Muslim women believe there in no need to copy the Western cultural values to have progress in their society and in their conditions. They believe they can have change on their own terms, while preserving their cultural and religious identity," she said.
Women in this region do not necessarily want to change everything of their current status. On the contrary, she said, they want to progress in society while preserving their traditional roles in the family and society. "This is a very different pattern if compared to what Western women have done so far."
Addressing a public gathering on the International Women's Day, Nour Al Malki, head of the women's affairs department at the Supreme Council for Environment, said Qatari women have ambitions but their fulfilment does not mean to break away from their traditional role.
"We cannot separate between working women and others. Here we look at development policies for women that cope with our traditional roles. There is no need to invent anything new, because history of Islam is full of women holding leading roles and we just need to highlight more of those experiences," said Nour.
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