Feminist Movements and Women›s Rights in Africa A Reading in Light of Islamic Thought and African Identity

Abstract:
 The research is an attempt to draw a clear idea about feminist movements in Africa through Islamic thought and African identity. It provided an overview of the concept of feminism in language and terminology, the ambiguity of its definitions in criticism and presentation, and the history of its emergence as a movement and term. It also revealed the different waves of feminism, and intellectual and ideological trends.
Regarding feminism in its African version, the study placed it in its historical context, starting with women's participation in the liberation struggle of sub-Saharan Africa, and their failed attempts to ally with Western and European feminists in the 1970s, and the subsequent penetration of Western feminism into African societies since the 1990s, and its effects on the birth of conflicting intellectual currents within contemporary African feminism.
The research concluded by presenting a focused idea about the intellectual roots of feminist doctrine, represented in the belief in the existence of the "female goddess", and the "matriarchal religion", based on the myth of the ancient matriarchy, and its doctrinal and political effects in women's hostility to history and heavenly religions, feeding the spirit of hatred against men and masculinity, spreading homosexuality in Africa with the Islamic cultural exception, and the integrative construction between the sexes.