(From
a paper presented at a conference titled: THE NEW
NIAGARA CONFERENCE: HUMAN DIVERSITY AND THE SEARCH FOR
MEANING held in Niagara Falls by The Snowstar Institute
of Religious Literacy and Tolerance on March 13,
2002)
Begin
in the name of Allah The Beneficent, The Merciful.
Before
we begin, I think it’s important to tell you who I am and where I come from.
Although I consider this paper an academic
endeavor, there is great personal involvement and vested interest.
I
was born and brought up in a culture where women were
supposed to be seen and not heard, so early in my
childhood I set out to prove everyone wrong. But before
I could continue on this rocky journey to set
everyone’s record straight, I had to read, research
and discover for myself
that my faith sets me free
and does not shackle me. So what I present to you today
is from the heart and with conviction in the cause.
I’d
also like to put on record that you can’t depend on
media to remove the specter of negative stereotyping
that surrounds the existence of Muslim women in the West
or to learn about the inner lives of Muslim women the
world over. The
images that you see in print or on CNN are not even remotely reflective of the lives of
Muslim women in
general. Media unfortunately has been responsible
for presenting a garbled image of Muslim women,
providing negative
portrayals and sensationalist propaganda for the masses.
Let me assure you that books like Not without my
Daughter by Betty Mahmoody do not portray the lives of a
majority of Muslim women but are based on limited personal experience.
There
is enormous plurality in the Muslim world and major
differences in the traditions of African Arab, Asian, or
European Muslims. Muslims live in almost 60 different
countries of the world so they reflect a rich diverse
cultural mosaic. Like
the differences in our language, food and clothing from
one region to another, Muslim women are diverse.
Stereotypical assumptions about us as women in black
shrouds are as inaccurate as the assumption that all
Canadian women are personified by the bikini-clad photos
in the Toronto Sun newspaper.
Dr.
Laila al Maryati, President and spokesperson for the
Muslim Women’s League in California, says that the
Western press' obsession with Muslim women is not
surprising, since the press in general, tends to view
Muslims simplistically. Headlines in the mainstream media have reduced
Muslim female identity to an article of
clothing--"the veil." It’s rare to have a conversation about Muslim
women without using the four letter word
"veil".
Dr.
Maryati explains that the word "veil" does not
even have a universal meaning. In some cultures, it
refers to a face-covering known as niqab; in others, to
a simple head scarf, known as hijab. Other
manifestations of "the veil" include
all-encompassing outer garments like the ankle-length
abaya from the Persian Gulf states, the chador in Iran
or the burka in Afghanistan.
Modern,
successful Muslim women are routinely excluded from
mainstream media. It’s unfortunate that the achievements
of many Muslim women today are buried under an avalanche
of misinformation by media in projecting them as third
class citizens or non-contributing members of society.
The media can’t seem to comprehend that a head
covering doesn’t make anyone brain damaged and that
majority of Muslim women aren’t FORCED to cover up.
Let me share with you a
personal anecdote from my recent trip to Dubai in the
Arabian Gulf. What
struck me first and foremost is that majority of the
women in that part of the world are covered –they wear
long loose clothes and cover their hair. Of utmost significance is the fact that these
women cover
by
choice and NOT by force.
I also found them
very confident, content and in some ways more liberated
on a spiritual and intellectual level than you or I.
They do everything we do here
and
more – they work outside their homes, they
are educators, politicians, leaders and also sit in a
tent by the beach in the evening and smoke a flavored hubbly bubbly - something we can only
dream off!
What
this did was reiterate what I’ve always believed –
that, despite numerous obstacles, Muslim
women are
active, assertive and engaged in society.
In
Qatar, women make up the majority of graduate-school
students. The Iranian parliament has more women members
than the U.S. Senate and currently there is major
discussion and debate taking place amongst the educated
women of Iran. According to a book called Islam and Gender,
by Professor Ziba Mir Husseini, law professor at New
York University, a paradox has occurred in Iran where
women are questioning the clergy about their rights and
are looking for venues to prove that the general message
of the Koran is one of egalitarianism. The book proves that many Muslim women in Iran
are highly educated and professionally trained; they
participate in public debates, are often catalysts for
reform and champions for their own rights.
Let
me tell you about another set of Muslim women, closer to
home. Virginia Woolf writes
as a woman
I have no country
- as a woman my country is the whole world.
This stands
true of the Muslim women who came as pioneers to Canada
- a foreign and cold land - in the early 1900's.
They came to support their families, many of them with
no language abilities and some who had never seen snow.
But they went far north and weathered more than the
winter. When the men failed to build a mosque, it
was a small group of women from these early settlers
that petitioned for the first mosque to be created in
Edmonton. They went door to door on Jasper avenue,
convincing people to join in their campaign and in 1938
the first mosque in Canada, the
Al Rashid
mosque,
was
named. In 1982, Dr. Lila Fahlman founded the first
registered national Muslim women’s organization called
The Canadian Council of Muslim Women,
which has taken
great strides in helping Muslim women
assimilate into
Canadian life. These
women are fortunate that they were in Canada so they
were able to follow their passions and achieve personal satisfaction whereas there are millions of Muslim women
right now, who live in abject poverty and terror.
These
women are the forgotten legacy of the world.
They
are the mothers in Bosnia who watched their daughters
being brutally raped; they are the daughters in Kashmir
who see their entire family slaughtered; they are the
wives and children in Iraq living with internal strife
and external sanctions against medicine and daily
amenities; they are the mothers of Palestine striving
for peaceful co-existence and today they are women of Afghanistan who are still struggling to
liberate their land and their bodies.
Since
September 11, Muslims and especially Muslim women have
been under a microscope. Front and center have
been Afghan women. It’s an anomaly when Western
feminists want to liberate Afghan woman by removing
their burka (outer covering) which to them, has become a
symbol of repression. The burka was never their major
focus of concern. Their priorities are more basic, like
feeding their children, becoming literate and living
free from violence. Nevertheless, recent articles in the
Western media suggest the burka means everything to
Muslim women, because they routinely express
bewilderment at the fact that all Afghan women didn't
cast off their burkas when the Taliban were defeated.
Dr. Riffat Hassan is
professor of religious studies at the University of Louisville and founder of The
International Network of Rights for Female Victims of
Violence in Pakistan. A trail blazer in the field of women’s rights, she says
"God who speaks through the Qur'an, is characterized by
justice, and it is stated with the utmost clarity in the
Qur'an that God can never be guilty of unfairness or
tyranny...hence the Qur'an as God’s word cannot be made
the source of human injustice, and the injustice to
which Muslim women have been subjected cannot be
regarded as God-derived."
Constant
exploitation of women in Islamic societies is
not
religious, but cultural.
This springs from ignorance of Qur'anic
injunctions and blatant misinterpretation of Islamic
commands and has been routinely ignored by the Muslim
community at large. If we were to construct a society on
the true basis of Islam, men and women would be equal in
the sight of God.
About 100 years after the message of Islam,
women’s rights were set into place under Islamic law
called Sharia. According to these laws, Muslim women
were presented with rights
to voting, pre nuptial
agreements and inheritance.
They could have an
abortion up to the fourth month of pregnancy and birth control was permitted.
Furthermore, while Muslim women could participate
in battle, and keep their maiden name, they also had the
right to keep their wages. I believe it was only in the
1900's that Canadian women were actually declared
persons
and women
in Britain were not allowed to keep their earned wages
till the twentieth century.
Judith
Tucker's rewarding study of Islamic law in seventeenth
and eighteenth-century Syria and
Palestine titled
"In
the House of the Law,"
talks about a period when Muslim legal thinkers
gave considerable attention to women's roles in society,
and Tucker shows how fatwas, or legal opinions, greatly
influenced these roles. She challenges prevailing views
on Islam and gender, revealing Islamic law to have been
more fluid and flexible than previously thought. In the
book Tucker studies court records from Ottoman-Syria and
concludes:
-
The
Shariah courts were available and popular with women
-
The courts took upon themselves the task of
defending women's Islamic rights against the
vagaries of custom. For example they would insist on
her right to a share of the inheritance or her right
to refuse a marriage proposal
against her family's or communities desires.
-
obtaining
a divorce was easy for women who could prove one of
the following:
These
conditions are no longer applied in the modern shari'a
family courts.
I ronically, discrimination
and victimization of women began with colonization
because western institutions would not allow women to
open bank accounts without a male counter signature so
their assets were frozen and they felt the deprivation
of their rights. Also,
western ways of life and modes of modernity were not
compatible with the Islamic system. Social, political
and economic causes also added to the cause, but
religion became the raison d'etre that men used to
legitimize their crimes. What is truly at fault is a misguided, narrow
interpretation of Islam designed to serve a rigid
patriarchal system.
Professor
Amina Wadud, is currently Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at
Virginia Commonwealth University, has taught at Harvard
University and is the author of a controversial book
titled
Quran and
Woman.
Daughter of a Baptist preacher,
Professor Wadud is an African American convert to Islam
and explains that as a western woman, she would never
have accepted a faith that is unfair to women.
Qur'an
and Woman
is a unique look at the status of women in Islam
-
a more equal and just status.
For 14 centuries the
Qur'an as the guiding book
for Muslims, was interpreted solely by men. Everything was filtered through male intellect -
even women's issues. So, for a long time, men have told Muslim women
about being women. This has led to western misconceptions about the
roles and status of women in Islam, and also set a poor
record of human rights abuse in many Muslim countries.
Some Islamic practices have
continuously troubled feminists, outside observers and
Muslims. Issues relating to Polygamy, inheritance, women's
rights, unequal witnessing laws and other injunctions
that seem to discriminate against women. However, a new and deeper look at the verses in
the Qur'an pertaining to these injunctions, the context
in which they were revealed, the spirit in which they were intended plus
grammar and language variances, does much to clear up
these doubts and misunderstandings.
One of the reasons Dr.
Wadud sees acceptance of her variation in the
interpretation of certain verses of the Qur'an, is that
in the last two decades many issues have come up that
were never imagined or addressed at the time of the
revelation of Islam e.g. rape as a weapon in war.
Social and cultural
traditions as well as economic circumstances are the
cause of distortion and misinterpretation of the Qur'an
which has hurt Muslim women a great deal. Many female Muslim scholars like Dr. Hassan and
Dr. Wadud have initiated groundbreaking steps towards
setting the record straight and their work is referred
to as Gender Jihad
(Jihad being a struggle to overcome
injustice).
Having
discussed women in Islam from a political, social,
economic and intellectual perspective, let me now touch
upon the religious and spiritual perspective because
it’s important to tie this in with the former.
The
Qur'an says :
"I shall not lose sight of the
labor of any of you who labors in My way, be it man or
woman; each of you is equal to
the other (3:195)
Spiritual
equality, responsibility and accountability for both men
and women is a well-developed theme in the Qur'an.
Spiritual equality between men and women in the sight of
God is not limited to purely spiritual, religious
issues, but is the basis for equality in all temporal
aspects of human endeavor
The
concept of gender equality is best exemplified in the
Qur'anic rendition of Adam and Eve. The Qur'an states that
both sexes were deliberate and independent and there is
no mention of Eve being created out of Adam's rib.
Having
discussed women in Islam from a political, social,
economic and intellectual perspective, let me now touch
upon the religious and spiritual perspective because
it’s important to tie this in with the former.
The
Qur'an says :
"I shall not lose sight of the
labor of any of you who labors in My way, be it man or
woman; each of you is equal to
the other (3:195)
Spiritual
equality, responsibility and accountability for both men
and women is a well-developed theme in the Qur'an.
Spiritual equality between men and women in the sight of
God is not limited to purely spiritual, religious
issues, but is the basis for equality in all temporal
aspects of human endeavor
The
concept of gender equality is best exemplified in the
Qur'anic rendition of Adam and Eve. The Qur'an states that
both sexes were deliberate and independent and there is
no mention of Eve being created out of Adam's rib.
Having
discussed women in Islam from a political, social,
economic and intellectual perspective, let me now touch
upon the religious and spiritual perspective because
it’s important to tie this in with the former.
The
Qur'an says :
"I shall not lose sight of the
labor of any of you who labors in My way, be it man or
woman; each of you is equal to
the other (3:195)
Spiritual
equality, responsibility and accountability for both men
and women is a well-developed theme in the Qur'an.
Spiritual equality between men and women in the sight of
God is not limited to purely spiritual, religious
issues, but is the basis for equality in all temporal
aspects of human endeavor
The
concept of gender equality is best exemplified in the
Qur'anic rendition of Adam and Eve. The Qur'an states that
both sexes were deliberate and independent and there is
no mention of Eve being created out of Adam's rib.
The
Prophet of Islam, remained concerned all his life about
the status and treatment of women, because at the time
of the revelation of the message of Islam, women were
buried alive, treated as chattels and at one point
considered to be inhuman without a soul.
In his last sermon, the Prophet clearly asked men to
treat women with kindness because due to economic
conditions, men were responsible for the well being of
their women. The Qur'an says in 2:228:
“and
they (women) have rights similar to those of men over
them...treat them in a just manner.”
Let me tell you about some
early Muslim women who have become role models for us. The
Prophet’s first wife, Khadijah was a successful
business woman who was 22 years older than the Prophet and sent a
proposal of marriage to him. His second wife, Lady
Ayesha actually led a war and rode into combat on a
camel. It has been narrated that when the Prophet’s daughter
Fatema entered the room, the Prophet stood up in
respect. Fatema was a mesmerizing public speaker
and her sermons have been recorded. Also
noteworthy is Rabia of Basra – the first mystic of
Islam.
I n the present time, given
the opportunity, Muslim women, like women everywhere,
will become educated, pursue careers, strive to do what
is best for their families and contribute positively
according to their abilities. How they dress is
irrelevant. It should be obvious that the critical
element Muslim women need is freedom, especially the
freedom to make choices that enable them to be
independent agents of positive change. Choosing to dress
modestly, including wearing a head scarf, should be as
respected as choosing
not to cover.
With regards to what the
final solution must be and what needs to be done in
areas of helping Muslim women, especially in
Afghanistan, I’ll quote from a paper written by Dr.
Layla al Mariati. She says:
Traditional Muslim
populations will be more receptive to change that is
based on Islamic principles of justice, as expressed in
the Qur'an, than they will be to change that abandons
religion altogether or confines it to private life.
Muslim scholars and leaders who emphasize Islamic
principles that support women's rights to education,
health care, marriage and divorce, equal pay for equal
work and participation in public life could fill the
vacuum now occupied by those who impose a vision of
Islam that infringes on the rights of women.
The
worth of a woman--any woman--should not be determined by
the length of her skirt, or the covering on her head:
but by her wisdom, spirituality and the
dedication, knowledge and skills she brings to the task
at hand.
Because
our strength lies not in our way of adornment, but deep
in our ruh, our soul - which for the interest of
feminists, has no gender.
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