Stephen Chan gave an incisive commentary on the complex changes taking place in Islam and the possible effects of an emerging world order ("A left too lazy to look the 'other' way", THES , December 7), yet he sidelined Islamic women.
It will be left to women on the left, in academia and, most important, in Islam to try to make sense of the inequalities affecting women and to effect positive change, but this will be done largely outside male consciousness.
Chan's article shows that we on the "feminist left" still have to fight to get women's voices heard by men and why the women of the world still need a feminist consciousness, however discomfiting some find the F-word.
Angela Kennedy
Middlesex University