This article examines developments in 'Islamic feminism', and offers a critique of feminist theories, which construct it as an authentic and indigenous emancipatory alternative to secular feminisms. Focusing on Iranian theocracy, I argue that the Islamization of gender relations has created an oppressive patriarchy that cannot be replaced through legal reforms. While many women in Iran resist this religious and patriarchal regime, and an increasing number of Iranian intellectuals and activists, including Islamists, call for the separation of state and religion, feminists of a cultural relativist and postmodernist persuasion do not acknowledge the failure of the Islamic project. I argue that western feminist theory, in spite of its advances, is in a state of crisis since (a) it is challenged by the continuation of patriarchal domination in the West in the wake of legal equality between genders, (b) suspicious of the universality of patriarchy, it overlooks oppressive gender relations in non-western societies and (c) rejecting Eurocentrism and racism, it endorses the fragmentation of women of the world into religious, national, ethnic, racial and cultural entities with particularist agendas. KeywordsIslamic feminism; legalism; universalism and particularism; theocracy and feminism; western feminist theory The concept 'Islamic feminism' is of recent origins, used for the rst time in the 1990s in the growing western literature on 'women and Islam'. However, Islamic intellectual encounters with feminism date back to the early twentieth century. Beginning with a historical sketch of Islamic responses to feminism, this article provides an outline of 'Islamic feminist' claims, and a critique of the theory and politics of feminisms based on Islamic approaches to gender relations. FEMIN IST R EVIEW N O 69, WIN TER 20 01, P P. 124 -1 46 124 Feminist Review ISSN 0141-7789 print/ISSN 1466-4380 online © Feminist Review Collective

This study's goal is to uncover the contradictions inherent in the philosophy and practice of the learning organization. Through a Marxist-feminist analysis of recent shifts in adult education and workplace structure, this study attempts to uncover the function of the learning organization in the capitalist political economy, the location of workers in relation to the learning organization, and the role of learning rhetoric in maintaining the status quo. This study argues that the learning organization model can be seen both as a mechanism for the extraction of surplus value from workers and as a method of social control. The learning organization model is often associated with progressive, even emancipatory, claims of inclusion and collaboration in the work-place. However, this study argues that the educational legacies of feminism, trade unionism, antiracism, and revolutionary struggle are better places to seek the learning interests of the workers that make up the learning organization.

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