TELOSscope: The Telos Press Blog

Islamism and Gender Issues in the Muslim World

Arno Tausch’s “Better Look the Other Way? Islamism and Gender Issues in the Muslim World” appears in Telos 178 (Spring 2017). Read the full article at the Telos Online website, or purchase a print copy of the issue in our online store.

This article develops new empirical perspectives on the growing gender policy and gender role clash of civilizations now looming ahead in Western countries. The very same European governments that welcomed hundreds of thousands of migrants from countries with what the Muslim feminist Ziba Mir-Hosseini called “compulsory dress codes, gender segregation, and the revival of cruel punishments and outdated patriarchal and tribal models of social relations,” are untiringly promoting gender mainstreaming, which is now a top priority for European Union policymakers. Western feminism is at a turning point. Will it share with large sections of the green and left political currents in the West the cowardly silence about the threat of Islamist totalitarianism and terrorism, or will it develop solidarity with Muslim feminism?