Musawah is a knowledge building movement.

It facilitates access to existing knowledge and creates new knowledge about women’s rights in Islam. We seek to apply feminist and rights-based lenses in understanding and searching for equality and justice within Muslim legal traditions. Such lenses help reveal the tension between the egalitarian and hierarchical voices in the tradition, and uncover women’s voices that were for so long silenced in the production of religious knowledge, so that their concerns and interests can be reflected.

We believe that the production and sharing of knowledge should be participatory, should recognise non-traditional forms of expertise, and should begin from contexts rather than texts. In this way, the knowledge produced will be grounded in the lived realities of women and men. These realities then inform the approach to the issues and the questions being asked.

Musawah’s current knowledge building work has two components: (1) long-term, multi-faceted research projects on specific concepts and themes; and (2) capacity building of Musawah Advocates to make knowledge and advocacy strategies relating to family laws and practices and women’s rights in Islam more accessible. 

Focus Areas through 2014

• Conduct a multi-faceted research project on the concepts of qiwamah (male authority over women) and wilayah (male guardianship of women and children) that includes four main components:
  • Papers covering jurisprudential (Qur’an, fiqh, hadith), historical, philosophical, sociological, and ethical aspects of qiwamah and wilayah that have been commissioned from experts from a variety of disciplines.
  • An understanding of how qiwamah and wilayah are manifested in laws and policies, and how this relates to national constitutions and international treaty obligations.
  • Socio-economic realities, based on quantitative data.
  • Life stories of women collected by Musawah Advocates using a qualitative research documentation process.
• Develop a capacity building programme on ‘Understanding Islam from a Rights Perspective’, including curriculum development, trainings, and a training of trainers to help build a pool of resource persons.

Outcomes 

• A new understanding of qiwamah and wilayah in line with contemporary notions of justice, equality, ethics, individual freedoms, and dignity, as well as the lived realities of Muslim families today.
• A core of Advocates able to share knowledge about the dynamic interactions between the Qur’an, fiqh, and the rights framework and advance rights-based arguments grounded in lived realities and an understanding of Islam that upholds equality and justice.