Muslim women and scholars think it does - spiritually and sexually. By Madeleine Bunting
We're sitting in a stylish club, ArRum, in Clerkenwell, central London. Firelight is flickering on the leather sofas, there is contemporary art on the walls and delicious "fusion" food on the table, but what distinguishes this club from its many neighbours is that it is Muslim, there is no alcohol on the menu and downstairs there's a prayer room. The stylish place conveys a complex ethos - modern, yet true to its Muslim identity.
A suitable setting, then, chosen by the six Muslim women who agreed to meet me to discuss Islam and the position of women. All university graduates, all in their mid-twenties in careers ranging from journalism to teaching, all have chosen in the past few years to wear the hijab (a scarf wrapped tightly around their heads to conceal every wisp of hair). Most strikingly, however, all of these women fluently and cogently articulate how they believe Islam has liberated and empowered them. The Islam they describe is a million miles away from that of the Taliban, let alone the Islam practised in many Muslim countries from Pakistan to Saudi Arabia, but they insist - and back up their points with Koranic references - that the Islam they first discovered when they were teenagers is true to the Prophet's teachings. They don't need western feminism, which, they argue, developed as a reaction against the particular expression of western patriarchy.
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