AHC: Most Muslims embrace gender and religious equality

With a POD after 1800, what would be needed to have the majority of the world's Muslims support full legal equality between men and women, and between all religions, even in Muslim majority societies, by the 21st Century?
 
Although tbf, there are westerners who haven't embraced gender equality. And there are westerners who are muttering about religions as well
 
Agreed. Isn't gender equality a Post-1900 issue even in the west?
Women vote didn't happen in France until 1945. They couldn't open a bank account on their own until the 70's, same in the US.

It's a global issue, not a religious one.
 
Two words: Jacobin Jihad. Aka, a Political Revolution based on a Islamic interpretation of the ideals of the French Revolution.

For reference: Malè Rising. Worth the read, lemme tell ya.
 
Not an expert but I would go with these.

Stop the rise of the House of Saud. Without them using petrol dollars to spread a rather legalist view of Islam, it goes a long way in the right direction.

Spread Sufi Islam in its place (no idea of how). It is artistic, has many female saints and is fairly intellectual.
 

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There's several responses of value in this thread, even if the simple question asked in the OP is going to be touchy for many.

Arguably the Christian-secular west only passed the Islamic world in gender equality issues as recently as 1920 or so. Even then social norms were not super divergent until after the sexual revolution in the west.

As others have said - many manifestations of gender equality face resistance everywhere, not just majority Muslim countries. Elements of the sexual revolution have penetrated majority Muslim societies, even if there is a strong backlash against it.

I suppose one could scope the challenge more narrowly:

AHC: Have objections to male-female coeducation be less politically salient & draw less of a violent backlash in Muslim majority countries by 1990, such that there's no perceptible difference between western and majority Muslim countries in those regards.

There's plenty of violence against women and misogyny in the west and the Islamic world.

Yet there are clearly some ways in which the "normal" level of these is different in different societies.

Things that stand out as different are:

Regardless of the passion that some religious conservatives have in the west for gender-role differentiation, and the nostalgia they may have about pre-sexual revolution mores, hardly any actually violently punish their daughters or family members for stepping outside those roles. The vast majority don't disown or shun them either, but come to some type of compromise with the new reality they encounter.

Although "jealous boyfriend" or "jealous suitor" violence is common worldwide and in the west, I think that physical enforcement and retribution against women for violating gender norms has more "community endorsement", legal endorsement and clerical endorsement, and involvement, in majority Muslim countries as opposed to non-Muslim majority countries. Old geezers who have no personal prospects of romance with the women in question get passionate about in Muslim communities compared with non-Muslim ones.
 
Not an expert but I would go with these.

Stop the rise of the House of Saud. Without them using petrol dollars to spread a rather legalist view of Islam, it goes a long way in the right direction.

Spread Sufi Islam in its place (no idea of how). It is artistic, has many female saints and is fairly intellectual.

Sufis are not liberal in any way on social issues. They still follow sharia.
 
I'll risk stating the obvious: most Christian denominations do not accept gender or religious equality until this very day. Equality in the West is not determined by Christianity, but by Secularism. Therefore, to achieve equality you need to make religion less important. That's all.
 
to achieve equality you need to make religion less important. That's all.
Pretty much.

Have the Ottomans reform 1) so they survive, 2) so they become richer
Then have them continue their trend to secularism (de facto, if not de jure), so Istanbul becomes one of the global centres of both culture and finance, second only to Paris for the first and London and New York for the latter.
 
Pretty much.

Have the Ottomans reform 1) so they survive, 2) so they become richer
Then have them continue their trend to secularism (de facto, if not de jure), so Istanbul becomes one of the global centres of both culture and finance, second only to Paris for the first and London and New York for the latter.


Agreed.

Specifically, have this TL happen :D https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/with-the-crescent-above-us.271993/

Now, change comes slowly here, it's true. But by the 20th century, the Ottoman Empire has liberalised, and it's stated in several parts that the position of women sees a major improvement.
 
Sharia Law (which I will clarify is a huge umbrella term and hardly a monolithic thing) gave women rights they didn't have in Western countries until the 20th-century, particularly when it comes to rights of inheritance and owning property. Many Western countries, France in particular, had extremely restrictive and onerous laws that effectively prevented women from owning property at all until the 1900's.

And as always, the Muslim world, as with Europe, always varies based on where you are.
 
Sharia Law (which I will clarify is a huge umbrella term and hardly a monolithic thing) gave women rights they didn't have in Western countries until the 20th-century, particularly when it comes to rights of inheritance and owning property. Many Western countries, France in particular, had extremely restrictive and onerous laws that effectively prevented women from owning property at all until the 1900's.

And as always, the Muslim world, as with Europe, always varies based on where you are.

Explain to me how sharia in terms of Sunni Islam is not somewhat uniform.
 
What Dathi said. It is prosperity which encourages secularism (de-facto and de-jure). The problems of many Muslim countries today is due to being ravaged economically, socially, culturally, etc. A turn to Fundamentalism and hardcore religion is a way of coping. A First-World Ottoman Empire would not only be liberal in itself but would also be in a position to provide protection and guidance for many many colonized countries.

Indeed, in many ways, a First World Ottoman Empire would be much more liberal than Western countries. The Ottomans decriminalized homosexuality when Europe was introducing anti-homosexuality laws in places that had never had them. The Ottomans had Christians and Jews in government positions that would be impossible for a Muslim in a Western country. The Ottomans were not an ethnically based state. Racism was present but at FAR less virulent. Then we have to get into how the Ottomans would be a magnet for decolonization and anti-imperialism. All the social progressiveness would have a huge impact when coming from the heart of Islam and the country of the Caliphate.

All this is lessened the later the POD and greater the earlier (back until a Selim III POD). The 1876 POD for winning the Russo-Turkish war in Nassirisimo's timeline is pretty good.
 
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