Beverly Mack was incredulous when she read about a Nigerian Islamic court that recently sentenced a woman to be stoned to death. The woman’s crime? She had been raped, and therefore was guilty of adultery.

“That’s absolutely against the intention of mercy, which is at the basis of Islam,” said Mack, associate professor of African and African-American studies at Kansas University. “It doesn’t reflect the Islam that many people know. What’s going on is patriarchy.”

The woman’s case is an example of an extremist form of Islam on the rise in some parts of the Muslim world. Led by men who interpret the Koran the Muslim holy book for their own political purposes, these movements often severely limit women’s role in society and force them into subservience.

This kind of Muslim extremism, according to Mack, “is no more characteristic of the Islam that was intended than the David Koresh (and Branch Davidian) situation is characteristic of Christianity.”

In the Islam that Mack has come to know through years of study and experience, there is no room for violence or inequity, whether psychological, gender-based or economic.

Mack teaches courses about women and Islam, Muslim women’s autobiographies, female African writers and African literature. She lived in Nigeria for three years while on a Fulbright scholarship, and spent two years in Sierra Leone when she served in the Peace Corps.

Mack views the action of regimes like the Taliban in Afghanistan as a particularly cruel betrayal of Muslim women and the nature of the peaceful, loving faith.

“What was intended initially in Islam was that men and women were understood to be equal in terms of being able to advance spiritually, and to do that through education to be literate,” she said. “The whole idea of Islam was to level the playing field, to have equity between genders and classes. Everybody has the same opportunity to seek God.”

Slowly, in some places, the role of Muslim women in contemporary Islamic societies is beginning to change. They are challenging the notions that Islam is supposed to be patriarchal shaped by men and women should be subservient.

“Women are going back to the original source, the Koran,” Mack said. “They are supposed to be able to pursue their education and acquire knowledge to the same degree that men do.

“The idea is that God made everything, so the more you learn about anything, the closer you come to God. To deny a woman literacy or the pursuit of a higher (academic) degree is, in effect, denying her spiritual right.”

Education is critical to redefining the role of Muslim women, she said, especially in the face of extremist movements.

Mack recalled her experience of living in Nigeria among Muslim women.

“They would say to me, ‘The main thing is that women need to be able to read and write,'” she said. “If they’re not literate, they can only believe what men tell them. They were adamant about literacy.”

Mack said she believes conditions are getting better for Muslim women.

“I’m hopeful that things are improving,” she said. “Twenty-five years of Muslim women being vocal against cruel patriarchal regimes is having some effect. But the key is education.”