A woman, physician and essayist in her relation to her Muslim heritage
Born in Rabat in 1961, Asma Lamrabet is a haematologist, specialised in the detection of childhood cancer. Between 1995 and 2003, she lived in several South-American countries where she volunteered in hospitals. She is also a writer and, since 2008, the director of the Centre d'Études et de Recherches Féminines en Islam (Centre for Studies and Research on Women's Issues in Islam (CERFI) affiliated to the Rabita almuhammadya des Oulémas (Mohammadia League of Scholars) in Rabat Morocco. Committed to Muslim women's issues, she has written several papers and books in French, notably Musulmane tout simplement(2002) ; ‘Aïcha épouse du prophète, ou l'Islam au féminin(2004), Women in the Quran: An Emancipatory Reading (2015), Femmes, Islam, Occident: chemin vers l'universelle (2011), Femmes et hommes dans le Coran : quelle égalité ? (2012).
According to Asma Lamrabet, the situation of women is peripheral, whether in Muslim or European countries. She proposes to show, drawing from sacred sources such as the Quran and the life of Prophet Muhammad, that this stereotype so common in people's mind-set is not to be found in Islam as an ideology and faith but rather in three other factors. She cites first a culture universally discriminatory to women, regardless of birthplace or religion, corroborated – her second point – everywhere in the vastly diverse cultures of Muslim countries. Her third culprit is the interpretations figured by Muslim scholars and jurists who unavoidably ended up imposing their thinking on the religion's acknowledged sources.
As an activist who styles herself a “reformist” of Muslim women's condition, Asma Lamrabet aims to address the problem comprehensively as she states in Femmes et hommes dans le Coran : quelle égalité ? . She takes into account early-centuries Islam's socio-cultural context in order the better to take in the full evolution process of the status of women. She explains that the Quranic text majorly upturned the condition of women not just in spiritual but also and especially in political and social terms. She avers that women's situation was more favourable between the 6th and 10th centuries than over the following centuries, up to and including present times. She aims to show that early Islam brought about a societal reform in keeping with other religions' impact and that this religion has from the outset advocated such values as reason, freedom, justice and equality between men and women. Thus has the Quran, she argues, adjusted, regulated, or discarded some pre-Islamic practices such as female infanticide, slavery, polygamy, dowry, divorce, inheritance. Furthermore, it has, she points out, developed in women enough self-awareness to claim their own rights before Prophet Muhammad himself.
