Islamic Bill of Rights for Women in the Bedroom

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The Islamic Bill of Rights for Women in the Bedroom is a list of rights for Islamic women in the bedroom written by Muslim author and feminist Asra Nomani. The bill of Rights were vanguarded in the United States in 2004 by the Daughters of Hajar, a group of 7 prominent progressive Muslim feminists.

1 The Islamic Bill of Rights for Women in the Bedroom
2 History
3 See also
4 References

[edit] The Islamic Bill of Rights for Women in the Bedroom

Women have an Islamic right to respectful and pleasurable sexual experience.
Women have an Islamic right to make independent decisions about their bodies, including the right to say no to sex.
Women have an Islamic right to make independent decisions about their partner, including the right to say no to a husband marrying a second wife.
Women have an Islamic right to make independent decisions about their choice of a partner.
Women have an Islamic right to make independent decisions about contraception and reproduction.
Women have an Islamic right to protection from physical, emotional, and sexual abuse.
Women have an Islamic right to sexual privacy.
Women have an Islamic right to exemption from criminalization or punishment for consensual adult sex.
Women have an Islamic right to exemption from gossip and slander.
Women have an Islamic right to sexual health care and sex education.

[edit] History

The Islamic Bill of Rights for Women in the Bedroom along with Islamic Bill of Rights for Women in the Mosque, and the 99 Precepts for Opening Hearts, Minds and Doors in the Muslim World was written with the end of making Islam more progressive.

Nomani wrote it in honor of the the ancestral matriarch of the Arabs Hajar who stood alone with her son Ismael in the Arabian desert and through which her courage permitted the lineage which became the Arabs to survive. [1]

I walked in the history of all the amazing women that have defined Islam in the First Century. So many years ago, women were participants and leaders. And I walked in the footstep of this great woman who is the mother of Islam, Hajar. She went to Mecca and she stood there alone with her son and she is the source of our religion. And I sit before you with her strength coursing through me. I walked in her footsteps and could I feel her power. And I knew that we had to reclaim our place, our rightful place, as women in Islam.[2]

The Bill of Rights for women in the bedroom was written upon her return from Mecca where Asra noted the egtalitarian treatment of all individuals which she found to be lacking upon her return to her local mosque in Morgantown.

In Mecca I was a fully realized human being. There were no back doors for me. There was no back entrance. There was no back row where I had to pray. I prayed alongside my father. I walked in through the front door with him. When I dared to try to do the same at my mosque in Morgantown, I was screamed at and yelled at and I was told to take the back door. I was told to sit in the balcony. And so for almost two years now, we've been fighting and we walked in through the front door and into the main hall. And I now sit on trial because 35 men at the mosque have signed a petition to have me banned for being a troublemaker. So on March 1st, the start of Women's History Month, I launched what we're so proud to call the Muslim Women's Freedom Tour. And what I did was I posted on the door of my mosque 99 Precepts for Opening Hearts, Minds and Doors in the Muslim World. And with it I attached a bill of rights for women in the mosque and a bill of rights for women in the bedroom, so that we can assert and reclaim all that Islam created for women.