Waleed Aly’s wife Susan Carland insists Islam is compatible with feminism.
The Muslim-convert academic, who is married to the host of The Project, also described as ‘lazy’ the suggestion women were oppressed in Islam.
In an interview with the Diversity Council of Australia, Dr Carland declared Islam was a feminist religion.
‘I don’t really feel a sense of contradiction,’ she said.
Waleed Aly’s Muslim-convert wife Susan Carland insists Islam is compatible with feminism
While women in Iran are protesting against being forced to wear the hijab, Dr Carland argues there are versions of Islam that are compatible with feminism
‘But I guess the thing to keep in mind is that feminism is a very broad church.
‘There are many different approaches to feminism.
‘Similarly, with Muslims. There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world and there are 1.6 billion ways to be Muslim.’
Dr Carland, who is based at Melbourne’s Monash University, described as a ‘lazy trope’ the idea that Islam was inherently hostile to women, adding people should switch off their TVs and instead speak to Muslim women.
While Muslim women are often free to express their faith in Australia, the story is very different in Iran where 29 women were arrested earlier this month in Tehran for removing their hijabs in protest at oppressive modesty laws in the Islamic theocracy.
Dr Carland says Islam is compatible with feminism, but the version practised in Indonesia’s Aceh province is anything but secular punishing adulterers with caning
The dress code of women is also heavily policed in the Indonesian province of Aceh, which operates under a strict Islamic Sharia law legal system where people are flogged for adultery.
Dr Carland last year argued Sharia law could be used to promote women’s rights during a launch in Sydney of her book ‘Fighting Hislam: Women, Faith and Sexism’.
The hijab-wearing writer argued an American lawyer had used sharia law to criticise Pakistan’s punishment for adultery and having sex outside of marriage.
‘For those of you that don’t know, if a woman is raped she can be punished for adultery,’ Dr Carland said.
‘The woman I interviewed said, “I could go to them with these human rights justifications for why it’s wrong but I know that if I do that, they will double down on this law because they will feel it’s an insult to their culture and their tradition and their religion’, so she said, “Why would I just not use the sharia to make the argument this is wrong?”.’