DOHA, Qatar

How is it that Islam seems capable of undermining women and promoting them at the same time?

Anyone attempting to take stock of the position of women in the Muslim world cannot help but be confused. One finds stories in the media all the time about injustices committed against Muslim women, such as "honor" killings, child marriage and unequal legal judgments in matters of divorce, custody and inheritance.

On the other hand, one also comes across stories about the remarkable strides made by Muslim women in education, career development and political activism in countries as diverse as Bangladesh, Morocco and Turkey.

How can we make sense of such a dichotomous picture?

The answer is simple: by distinguishing the religion of Islam from the Muslims who practice it.

Those who study the Quran know that Islam elevated the rights of women beyond anything known in the pre-Islamic world. Muslim women were granted rights in the 7th century, such as property ownership, inheritance and divorce, not granted to European women until the 19th century,

That said, Muslims who codified the Quran and the Hadith, sayings by the Prophet Muhammad, into Islamic law did not succeed in expunging the patriarchy of the pre-Islamic world from their practices.

This distinction between the faith and the various manifestations of its practice is a subtle but extremely important one.

When a Westerner is trained to pick up on the distinction, he or she comes to recognize that the Muslim woman who criticizes Muslim practices is not usually rebuking Islam or her heritage in favor of Western ideals -- the kind of rebuke that hits best-seller lists in the West and that feeds Western stereotypes about Muslims -- but is instead summoning other Muslims who claim allegiance to the Quran's teachings to live up to the holy book's highest principles. This inward criticism and call to action is often called Islamic feminism, a promising paradigm which seeks change from within, as opposed to imported formulas.

While adopting the Quran at its core, Islamic feminism challenges two main norms: the patriarchal cultural customs mistaken for Islamic teaching and patriarchal interpretations of certain Quranic verses.

The project of disentangling what is true Islamic teaching from cultural traditions historically practiced in some Muslim territories is an ongoing project for Islamic feminists.

Arifa Mazhar, manager of gender issues for the Pakistan-based Sungi Development Foundation, which attempts to mobilize marginalized local communities on behalf of their own development, declared at the International Congress on Islamic Feminism in Barcelona in 2008: "Instead of debating Islam, we should be debating culture and its impact ... There are a lot of social taboos and tribal traditions that oppress women, and they have little to do with Islam."

Islamic feminism's second challenge is to attempt to reinterpret verses in the Quran -- especially in a modern context -- that have been misinterpreted or over-generalized.

One example is the disproportionate weight given to the few Quranic verses giving men authority over women within families vs. the many others that emphasize equality between men and women. Islamic feminism encourages women to study the words of the Quran for themselves, and to judge whether the misogyny and failure to take women seriously prevalent in some traditional customs is a matter of Islamic doctrine or, indeed, of cultural impositions on such doctrine. In this way, Islamic feminism provides the grounds for changing civil and national law in ways that prove progressive for women.

Sisters in Islam, a leading Muslim women's rights group in Malaysia, has been trying to tackle the issue of polygamy, for instance. Rather than calling for its abolition, the group calls only for it to be limited to certain situations -- such as when permission is obtained from a first wife and a court -- and is working on public surveys that would provide empirical evidence of the negative effects of polygamy on society.

Rooted in Islam and the Quranic spirit of equity, Islamic feminism provides a credible political voice for women. It gives women's organizations, women's rights advocates and gender scholars in the Muslim world legitimate grounds for action while fulfilling their religious obligations.