I care about the rights of women (and men). I also care about the responsibilities of women (and men).
Had a discussion yesterday with someone about why I choose not to use the language of feminism to discuss women's rights. Feminism is an ideology: a system of ideas and ideals..

Feminism has its architects, ideologues and its own language. Words such as 'patriarchy', 'misogyny', 'toxic masculinity' etc are ideological words and are loaded.
Some Muslim women use them and add their own meanings to them, but they are part of an ideology outside of Islam.

Psychoanalyst Carl Jung said something along the lines of: "People don’t have ideas; ideas have people."

Question is: which set of ideas do you as a Muslim belong to? Which ideals? What is the source of our ideals and our values? It is Islam and the sources of Islam.

Islam has its own framework for correcting oppression, it has its own ideals regarding men and women and the best way for them to live in this world. And therefore Islam contains within it, all that we need to correct any oppression that exists within the Muslim community.

Feminism - on the other hand is a set of ideals that originated in the minds of a few human ideologues. Many of those ideologues ended up regretting/changing their minds about things they held as facts and truths. They were/are fallible and limited and frankly make mistakes.

Feminism will never be happy with the fact that God chose male prophets, that the majority of the most influential scholars of Islam were men, that the man is the head of the family, that a woman requires a Wali to get married...because it is intrinsically suspicious of men

...It cannot accept that men and women are different and not the same. God doesn't come into the picture when it comes to feminism.

For the Muslim God is everything. God is the source of our understanding regarding the rights and responsibilities of men and women.

So as my friend Zara Faris points out: Feminism is one response out of many, to the question of women's rights, just as capitalism or communism are responses to the question of the economy.

Islam is our response to the question of women's rights.

So even when we see injustice in our communities, as Muslims we need not invoke feminism and its idols to fight that injustice.

We need to invoke the Qur'an and Sunnah. We need to be knowledgeable and win arguments through correct thinking, educating and reasoning with others.

When women are prevented from mosques, we need to understand that social and cultural reasons have led to this becoming the norm in some cultures.
We tell them that Allah's messenger s.said:
"Do not prevent the female servants of Allah from the Houses of Allah" (Bukhari & Muslim)

This is what the sahabiyat - the female disciples did! When Umar was trying to limit dowries a lady stood up and quoted the Quran to him - that he had no right to limit dowries...

As Muslims we rectify each other via the authority of the Qur’an and Sunnah, not via mere social pressures & attitudes dictated to us by ideologies outside of the guidance of Islam.