Right- Based Equality vs. Faith-Based Equity: Paradoxes of Women's Human Rights in a post-Islamist Context

Islamist women in Turkey have always been committed  to defending their civil rights.  For decades their struggle focused on fighting against the headscarf ban in the fields of official work and education initiated by the secular regime. In  the last two decades, particularly,  during the recent fourteen  years of  post-Islamist Justice and Development Party’s rule Muslim women became more active in  civil society organizations  by working on variety of women’s issues ranging from  discrimination to violence  while also being successful to remove  the headscarf ban. They collaborate with feminist women on some topics  to the extent that   Islam’s embrace of individual freedoms, rights and democracy is promoted in post-Islamism in contrast to Islamism which attempts to  monopolize religious truth, overlook plurality and  impose certain  interpretations of Islamic Law upon  polity and society.  In this context women’s human rights are  considered important but interpreted within the framework of gender equity based on an understanding of equal opportunity in fundamental rights and freedoms  designed   according to so called  natural needs and strengths of men and women. By conducting focus group discussions  and in-depth  interviews with women who are active in Muslim women’s NGOs this paper dwells on how these women  experience gender equality in everyday life regarding  domestic division of labor, economic freedom, right to education, reproductive rights and domestic violence  and analyzes  their evaluation of women’s empowerment.  It problematizes whether Muslim women have rights because they are  human beings, or whether they have rights because they are Muslim women.