Abdal Hakim Murad – Hagar (as) Paradigms of Leadership
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Smilla hamdu lillah wa salatu salam ala Rasulillah li WASAPI
woman well up.
We've been considering this
ethically problematic category of leadership and smacking down the
widespread current Muslim tendency to interpret it in managerial
terms. From our perspective, this is something which is a charism, a
robe of honor, which almost as part of a kingly procedure is
vested in us from elsewhere. The prophetic individual does not seek
prophecy. The true Monique is born to his role.
So we began this series with deconstructing in what were
perhaps to some slightly painful terms, this idea of the managerial
or the psychological model of leadership and moved in the
direction of something to do with secret charisma, a charism.
Indeed, carried most reliably by those who have never hoped for it.
We saw this in the context of Imam Shamil, with the conflict forced
upon him by the fact of Russian encroachment and also in the
context of Imam Malik, not wishing any kind of leadership and indeed
preferring the torture chamber to obeying kala for whim.
We're beginning to look at this current
problem with more classically Islamic and religious eyes, yes,
if there has to be society, there must be order, there must be
structures, there must be a leader and there must be the lead. But
the procedure whereby that falls naturally into place has very
little to do with the way in which contemporary democratic politics
works, or contemporary celebrity culture works or Contemporary
Literary eminence or how to become the CEO of Astra Zeneca and so on,
it's something new, different radical and godly.
What I want to do this time around and inshallah there will be other
attempts to look at certain individuals at an ideal type so in
our heritage and our imaginary body forth certain ways in which
this charism can unwillingly but rightly be assumed
is to investigate this in the context not of imminence but of
its opposite.
What ya know, whom are Emerton? Yeah, don't be a marina la
Masaharu. We made an Imams leaders guiding by Our command when they
had summer when they had patience, endurance.
And to be an imam in this Quranic sense, is essentially to assume an
excellence that is inward In other words, to lead oneself to be
master not of one's destiny. That's God's business, but at
least to hold the reins of the wild, unruly stallion. That is the
beast within the ego and the Amara. This is truly the ship
or the idle week, Neff suka, Letty Boehner, Jen bake, in the Hadith
we have to hold your worst enemy is your ego, which is between your
two sides.
Lead that control it subjugated trample upon it become Moses, and
you work become Pharaoh.
Elemental question of religious ethics, its participants subject,
the center of just about every hotbar overcome the lower self. So
the charism of leadership in outward structural terms, is
rightly vested on those who don't want it because the ego is
thoroughly under control.
Unlike the current spectacle, in one of iress 20 individuals who
very much are happy to be there and see themselves as leaders. The
prophetic model is the opposite of that it is about unwillingness
being dragged out of the halwa to assume this responsibility.
So leadership of the self. Now this may also mean that one
becomes as it were a symbolic leader rather than a political or
economic or military leader.
The figures who continue to inspire and humble us who are
listed in Scripture may
accidentally almost be external leaders. They may be up there
somehow with Napoleon and the rest but that's not really the point
and that's certainly not why scripture is citing them instead,
they are the
being cited as examples of individuals, men and women who
lead themselves and as ideal types. Moses's actual political
impact in his time is less significant than what he means for
us the archetypes which he is representing. So they lead us they
are our leaders.
Now, there are many forms of this because there are many types of
individuals and many aspects of life in which we need to be led, I
guess we need leading chemists and leading doctors and leading civil
servants. All of that is fine, and Islam has a way of being in those
spaces. But there is also a form of leadership that copes with
weakness, with marginalization, with difficulty with brokenness.
This is why this granite verse, which I'm proposing is to do with
leadership, we made them leaders,
God's decision limnol Sabato, when they had Sobral, which is the
essence of overcoming the ego. So you hold your hand back from what
the ego craves, and you put your hand forward to do what you really
don't feel like doing that somebody patient endurance.
So the Sabreen, the people of patients have to in our narrative
in our
Pantheon in our gallery of icons, individuals who are leaders in
particular respect has to include those who coped with and showed
fortitude
in the face of adversity from a position of weakness and from a
position of inner trauma and strain.
And
this is something that will particularly hold our attention in
our own strained times. There is a lot of brokenness out there. Many
people carry stings of various kinds in their hearts. Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder, has become almost nonspecific, you
don't need to pass through a war nowadays in order to suffer from
it in some way or another.
The depression rates, you saw that Pew report, I think it was last
week amongst young people. Universities seem to double every
five years, mental illness, anxiety, self harm, darting
disorders, body image issues, depression, all of that
increasing, even though those are by global standards, build it
youth.
They are not half drowned refugees on the beaches of Sicily, they
have nice ba positions at University of Bristol or wherever
and the world is effectively in the eyes of most at their feet.
But there is this damage within that has happened and particularly
it seems. And this is exercise to journalists with particular
intensity amongst women.
Germaine Greer, her book, the whole woman is about this her
looking back on the feminist movement, which he still supports,
and offers some good reasons to support the old attitudes were
ugly attitudes.
But pointing out that the new YouTube utopia, which was expected
by the sisterhood in the 50s and 60s is looking pretty dystopian,
just because of the brokenness that is out there. The failed
relationships, the depression, the self harm, the darting disorders,
the cutting, all of these things indicate that whatever modernity
and its various revolutionary transformations might have
brought, whatever doors have been opened, it has come at some kind
of psychic cost and she just reflect on this without offering
any particularly profound solutions or diagnosis.
So what I want to do this time is to look at
this idea of how you,
exemplify solver, therefore, in the Quran is logic, leadership in
a position of paradigmatic weakness, the Quran and the Muslim
narrative, not just about heroes. It's not just about the flashing
of swords in the dawn light as the enemy come down like the wolf on
the fold, no, it's leadership. This is a more embracing, total
thing.
So what is it to be exemplar
Read, this word Imam
tends to have the sense of being exemplary. The metaphorical
leader. These are our spiritual examples. These are our role
models, these are our ideal types.
Now we find when we look at the female principle, and maybe
depending on how long these lectures go on for, we'll look at
one or two other cases in our history of ways of protecting
one's Muslim this in a paradigmatically feminine mode,
that we have this
interesting and helpful Hadith, which indicates that there have
been four perfect women. In other words, four modalities of
leadership. That doesn't mean there's only been four women in
history who have reached the limit of their potential God is
gracious,
it means that there's four modalities.
And more he didn't even Araby who likes to reflect on these things
because of his idea of the Divine Pleroma manifested through the
perfection perfected qualities of certain human types. And yes,
there's also HECM, in which he lists the organic prophets, each
of whom is a particular way of prismatic Lee reflecting the
single undifferentiated light of the Divine, producing a different
spectrum, that also amongst the feminine, there are alternate
modalities. And we didn't really have time because it's going to be
quite a dense topic to map these out. But we know that according to
the standard narratives of this hadith, the four perfect women,
usually it's Marian, it's Khadija it's Fatima
Isha, and in some narratives also ESEA who is the believing wife of
the pharaoh of the Exodus.
And looking around in the Hadith literature, you see different
reasons, why scripture values and validate them. So there isn't one
ideal form of being female in our tradition never has been.
This has been an issue over the border in Catholicism, Marina,
Juana writing her book alone of all her *, which is put down of
traditional convert convent to teaching about the Virgin Mary,
meek and mild, got into Ambrose, the only woman who ever pleased
God.
Passive, receptive, be it done unto me according to Thy will.
And not really any other very significant, salient, constantly
repeated female types. Apart from that, in the biblical or the
Christian narrative. And when you get into Protestantism, she
becomes even less significant and you're left with who knows the the
pastor's wife or something. It's a fairly bare landscape. But in
Islamic context, we have the salient Hadith for
Virgin Mary is one of them.
Very briefly, we might
identify the type that they represent as follows the Virgin
Mary is the one who indeed and she has so much about her in the
Quran, Al Imran and sort of Meriam
she is the one who surrenders to the Divine Decree,
and is gifted with the miracle of an Mercia. Alehissalaam.
asiyah is the paradigm of the battered bride, that abused wife.
The hadith says, when it was woman is abused by her husband, she
shall receive the reward of that which is given to Asya Was that
him, the wife of the pharaoh of the Exodus. So there's that
possibility the patient suffering wife also
in the context of Russia world you have a very different type as well
very outgoing, extroverted, scholarly, leading an army into
battle, answering back a strong, vivacious, self possessed type on
recognizable and sadaqa.
venerated in our tradition, Khadija, the type of the Earth
Mother kind of maternal MetroNorth, but also a paradigm,
how to overthrow of a woman who is financially autonomous employing
men. She's the CEO of her caravan business or whatever. And if you
read in modern Muslim feminist literature or some feminist
literature, you'll see that she's one of the types that they
Like to extol
whatever we make of this leadership in a feminine context,
and Islam is not just a single thing that has these different
models of perfection. We're not talking about approximation
talking about perfection
can be let.
So, this is the complicated point at which we begin any
consideration of what it is to be a leader
in this very special Imam eight Islamic conception in terms of the
feminine half of humanity, Shankar ecoregional, the sisters of men.
Now, what I want to do here is to look at another ideal type. And
we'll as we proceed on the journey, see ways in which
actually she represents aspects of all of the perfect women who are
listed in the famous Hadith. And somebody who is somewhat
mysteriously veiled in our heritage, even though unanimously
recognized as in a sense, the founder of our heritage.
When we go to Makkah,
and we perform the obligation of homage, the fifth pillar and
obligation.
One of the things that we do we know that it's an Abrahamic
recreation, it has cosmic and ontological significance in the
journey to the center, and it's full of symbolism.
Whether or not we understand the symbolism may not affect the way
in which it works. Its alchemical effect on the soul. But one of the
things that we do as part of the geometrical unfolding of the
rituals of the Hadron is not a geometry in Islamic rituals and
shells on at least the French Muslim writer has written about
the geometry and the symbolism for the Hydra particularly, is that
you have
the plane of Arafat, and you have the circles around the Kaaba, and
you have straight lines, which is say, between suffer and marijuana
and all of the basic forms of geometry are there, around the
cube, the dome of heaven, it's a kind of perfect enactment of what
in very ancient primordial times were taken to be the earthly
concretization of the
heaven rooted facts of symmetry and geometry in the world. And
when we go through the Hajj, we are confronted with that, so that
the heart of that
is the
tawaf when we, as it were joined the circlings of the solar system,
and we become part of that circular, gravitational moment
moths around the flame flame, and also the say, suffer Mattawa
with the symbolism that that entails, and we find that Hotjar
this year is Rembrandt
is the foundress of a lot of this.
And that's an interesting circumstance. As far as I can
tell. She is the only woman who initiated a practice in any major
world religion.
That nobody knows it. Safa and Marwah after all, is the coursing
of Hotjar looking for water for her son.
And she is buried, according to as Rocky and other historians in the
hedger
along with Ismail, as well. It's called the hedgerow Ismail. This
is the semicircular walled area, on one side of the Kaaba, which
you have to walk around. Otherwise your toe off is not complete.
That's actually a tomb. It's a bizarre when you go there, you can
go up to the Saudi guards and explained we're walking around the
tomb here. Isn't it great.
But it's legislated is required that is the Mazhar of Hydra and
Ismail. And that's a remarkable honor.
It is their house.
Ibrahim Killeen. Allah is very far away in Hebron, Palestine, but
those two are there.
So we find that she's not really marginal but kind of central in
the
the landscape of our religion and its geography. There she is.
But the story and every Muslim child learns the story of her
abandonment, her desolation, the difficulty of her solo situation
in the desert is the theme that I want to look at today in order to
present an image of
a
of
human excellence of moral, spiritual leadership, in the midst
of a sea of troubles and disadvantages.
Now
you always find with these really ancient archetypal narratives,
that the moment you start looking at them, and start looking at the
sort of pre echoes of them in biblical texts, in this case, the
book of Genesis, and also in the tafsir literature, that there is
so much going on that you don't even know where to start.
Obviously, if she is kind of the foundress of Islam,
sons on site, which is buried there, the matriarch
then there has to be something really gigantically emblematic
about her that points to a certain essential feature of Muslim this.
She's not just some kind of random Egyptian slave girl who happened
to be there that doesn't have much to do with who we are. And what we
are required to be, necessarily, as Providence has designed these
stories and shaped history, there is something essential about her,
which tells us something about how we are and how we are supposed to
be.
And it's not just about being patient, and amazing things will
happen.
All of the Quranic prophetic stories are about that there's
adversity, you're patient, and then some great thing happens. But
there are closest symmetries for a start this.
And here is a funny kind of figure in Western art.
Because
they don't quite know what to make of her. The story is in the book
of Genesis, such an amazing story. Genesis is full of amazing
stories, it's a masterpiece. And the Western mind is not quite sure
what to do with her because so much that seems to be
still spiritual and noble happens to her, even though according to
the normal Jewish and Christian narrative, she's the kind of
mother of the Saracens of the Ishmaelites, of the outcast. And
so this is always a kind of tense thing, and much of the basis of
this art, and it's quite an extensive
body of art, it was a popular theme, especially in the 17th 18th
century,
is to do with this.
God is hearing her in the wilderness, and there is the
child's dying and the angel comes. But this is very interesting to a
certain type of tragedy oriented, Western or Christian mind.
Actually, story doesn't mean much. Nothing comes with this
historically. In fact, it's Harrison's come out of this, which
is a big problem. So there's that tension, that the angel is kind of
saving her for what for millennial darkness.
That here you have one of the best images in just a few pen strokes.
You have the human drama that the confidence, the celestial nature
of angel with a few lines indicating where the angel has
come from.
And there she is, in supplication, and the child in a state of
destitute destitution. But those who know the Bible will say, Well,
this is extraordinary. Angels don't actually appear much. And in
the Bible, they hardly ever appear to women.
And in the biblical narrative, she speaks to God.
In the biblical narrative, she's actually the first person ever to
shed tears.
A lot of archetypal important things are happening here. And an
angel coming to her to announce what
well, the angel has already appeared to Abraham in order to
give him the very surprising news, that at the age of 80, something
with his wife, in a similar age bracket,
that they're going to have a son who will be the heir to the
covenant and progeny, as numerous as sons stars in the sky. One of
those great Genesis moments. And
Abraham in our narrative, of course, accepts is with the angel
comes and the promise is delivered. And then the angel
comes and appears to hardware. Now, if you
know, your Rembrandt, in your Christian art, they all are aware
of the fact that the only other time anywhere in biblical history
that anything like this ever happens is in the story of the
Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin.
There could be that story except the child already there.
But the maternal aspect of it that the sort of natural vulnerability
of womanhood is there, the fact that she is for the child and not
for herself for a progeny. And then the constellation, the
amazement produced by an angelic manifestation. And often, I mean,
Rembrandt's certainly from the Protestant Dutch, Puritan world
knew his.
His Bible, that narrative in Luke's gospel, where the angel
comes to the Virgin Mary
seems to be constructed. Rembrandt knew this, and modern scholars
knew it by people, whoever it was, Luke's gospel will probably never
know who knew these stories in the Old Testament and knew about the
Annunciation of Hotjar under certain evidence, symmetries and
resonances between the two stories.
Again, the church is going to have kind of neuralgic issues over this
because hedger is supposed to be the symbol of the unchosen. But
she gets this kind of Christic proleptic.
Foreshadowing, so what else have I got?
So many pictures? Yeah, that's kind of more sort of Baroque
image.
And again, but for the fact that she's already got a baby and think
well here is the Virgin Mary and the Annunciation and
not quite Botticelli, but it's from
Italy, the post Renesas environment. Already slightly
emotional, sentimental. She's kind of nicely dressed yet Rembrandt
has her in rags, it's much more effective.
And where is the angel pointing her?
Well out to the desert. That's the point in these stories, not to
luxuriant and bless it progeny because she is not heir to the
promise. She is the root out of dry ground.
So the angel is pointing her to the well, but subsequently to just
the desert decision lights, as Ishmaelites become subsequently in
the biblical narrative, the emblem of that which is not Israel
they're the ones who captured Joseph if you remember the story
and put leave a beat him up, put him in the well.
Take him out of the well take him off to Egypt, Ishmael light is the
kind of wild man that emblem of unchosen, this the non covenanted
peoples.
So, take a look at these two things. This is back in Holland,
and both by the same artist. Now, here again, even though these are
from different periods of his life, I can't remember which comes
first.
That traditional Western, biblically educated imagination
necessarily had to conflict these stories and see them as archetypes
of different principles that nonetheless, had parallels and in
England until 50 years ago, everybody would know the stories
and if you heard them, you would make the comparisons.
When my father was a child, the only game he was allowed to play
on Sundays, were games involving the Bible. That's how England has
changed. Now it's Sunday shopping, like compulsory, but back then you
had to play scriptural games. And actually, in his effects, I found
a little picture, which was a picture of Hydra and Ishmael in
the wilderness. People used to 100 years or 50 years ago, give each
other little pictures of biblical stories. People lived in the
Bible. Nowadays, hardly anybody reads it.
It said that at the end of his life, Churchill was given a copy
of the Bible to read. And he said, this book is very well written.
Why is nobody bought it to my attention before.
We're not a biblical
Anglophone community any longer unless we're American evangelicals
who tend not to pick up these things, but something very
interesting is going on here.
With Reubens, paintings, of course, fourth, symbolizes
something that not least a color has or is very often represented
in red. Western art. Why? Because that's the color of desire. She is
the concubine. She's the one who Abraham and Hotjar have kind of
borrowed to be a kind of surrogate mother because Sarah's obviously
passed it. And so she's the new bile Egyptian teenager, who is
just
to produce the child of the flesh, not the child of the Covenant, so
red fire desire, whereas the Virgin Mary Of course, there she
is being
brought up to heaven because you
She can't die being not under the influence of
original sin.
Blue, her natural color is the color of heaven. That's where she
belongs. She is Queen of Heaven. Mater courageous. So this year is
going up. And of course, she's looking up to her natural home.
Hunter is kind of looking down, she has got a kind of hand, sort
of pushing away there is Abraham and Sarah, and the dog barking at
her, of course, she has to go out because Sarah now has the child.
And so no more use for hardware. And so she gets pushed out into
just nowhere, the wilderness. And then the imagination of the
Genesis authors that would mean certain death. It's another like,
cut the throat of your son moment. It's a binding moment, obviously
goes with the child into the desert, where somebody will cut
her throat or she will die of thirst and that very nearly
happens of course. So these two things juxtaposed represent these
perhaps the two most salient women in the Christian scripture
doing opposite things even though there are analogies in their
lives. So
this
later,
feminine representation of this great fork in the road of
monotheistic history. Historia monotheistic
is something that continues to be
significant, at least in terms of Jewish and Christian self
understanding. Book of Genesis is setting up certain tensions and
tinham is opposites are chosen the unchosen the Israelite and the
Gentile, the local and the forum, the fertile the infertile. All of
these opposition's are there in the book of Genesis and the
subsequent narrative of the Hebrew scripture in particular, which is
about God's providence to his people is seen in terms of these
original chosen unchosen dichotomies, of which perhaps the
most salient is Ishmael and Isaac, Hotjar. And Sarah because of
course, she's not from the chosen people because she comes from
Egypt.
Egypt, for the authors of the Hebrew Bible is the place where
the foreigners live, it's the place where you're going to exile
someplace where they enslave you, it's the place where Israel is
persecuted. So as an Egyptian to bring that blood into the
patriarchal line is kind of my soldier nation. That's the worst
kind of mixed marriage. So the logic is, she has to go off, she
has to be ejected into the wilderness because she's the dry
branch. The true seed in this amazing Genesis, sort of fork in
the road is the elderly woman producing a baby. And so, the
firstborn who everybody thought was going to be it turns out at
the last minute, not to be it, but the symbol of rejected Agnes.
So,
we find in
rabbinic commentary,
the idea of this woman as being a kind of emblem of everything that
is not right.
That's that's the sort of Talmudic narratives.
So, in one hygienic narrative, Hadar cleave to Abraham and gave
birth to Ishmael. But in the end, she returned to her stench. And
other Texas has got I got a very sheet says that she is fertile.
Not because of a divine blessing. But because she's a Gentile, she's
Egyptians. They're naturally promiscuous.
They're like donkeys.
This again, is to do with her servile slave proletarian origin,
like a donkey. She's made for hard work.
Sometimes they also came up with the legend which presented her as
Pharaoh's daughter
who was necessarily enslaved by the true people. So
we have
this image already before the rise of Islam and when Islam comes
around, this becomes part of the rabbinic discussion of who the
Saracens are the Ishmaelites Yishmael Ilim. They seem to be
very numerous, like the stars in the sky. They seem to be ruling
the world from the Pyrenees to get to China and just about
everywhere, where Jews could prosperously live, but they come
from this
Egypt unchosen this Gentile status. servility ticking all of
the boxes that indicate that you're not part of the people. All
of the boxes are represented in her and in the idea that the
Israelites are the Muslims who may be now ruling the world, but it's
still a kind of fairy onic world, it's not the world have chosen us
and this becomes very comforting to
many, so one modern rabbinic specialist says, in general, the
rabbi's have rushed to blame the victim. She seems to be the
victim, but actually, that she is the one on whose head all of the
polemic should fall. So one contemporary writer
Aviva Zuckerberg, saying why is Sarah chucking her out to almost
certain death and getting rid of the sun? Isn't that unethical. But
Sara is characterized as a righteous woman. It's a preemptive
strike, because she knew what what a hassle, the Ishmaelites would be
for the chosen people. And therefore it was right to kill
them in advance because of what would happen 1000s of years later,
as a result of his survival.
Then we get
just a few more images.
We're getting into the late 19th century sentimentality.
Again, this difficulty in the Western mind is she's an entirely
positive sympathetic figure in the Jewish Christian scriptures, but
she is also presented as the emblem of otherness and of
rejection, his more recent image.
What could be more
admirable, this is not the Virgin Mary, sort of fleeing to Egypt.
Instead, something is happening the other way around.
She's got her son, Ishmael, but she is Egyptian. But she has been
ejected from the promised land so much metaphor is going on here
that of course, the image continues to attract the attention
of artists and there's her
little break in the corner them. So then we get
the world of the New Testament. What are they going to make of
this story and we have one, we have this text which is in
Genesis,
which then becomes taken up by the church as an example of otherness,
and in the eyes of Paul, the otherness of Israel.
Ishmael do we know what the word means is hark. He laughed, or she
laughed, because of the improbability of his birth. You
smile God heard in other words heard
Abraham's prayer
that you have this is one of the nicest pictures of his Koro again
and the angel just discreetly visible
doesn't really doesn't really look like Micah does it but he was
didn't leave France I think so the best you could do.
Okay, so the Christians looking at
these texts in Genesis, always looking at them, and particularly
starting with support as examples of what is going to happen
in future years, and so they had to
get their heads around this text. Again, it's very pro Hadrian, pro
Ishmael light.
Again, the angel is speaking to her Joe.
What troubles you Hi Joe, do not be afraid God has heard the voice
of the boy. I will make a great nation of him.
For St. Paul for Augustan, for origin for to Italian for all of
the Church Fathers who spend a lot of time working on the scriptural
archetype. This is another headache. What does it mean a
great nation.
No matter things of course in his sera book has this is chapter one,
the great nation. Of course, greatness is greatness in the
Spirit. That's all God is interested in. So truly a great
nation, the present moment of the religion, whose center will be the
ancient house in Makkah, which is her sanctuary.
But what are the Christians going to do with this? Well, what we get
is a
One of the strangest rhetorical stumps pulled by St. Paul,
is to turn that on its head, to say that actually had her and
Ishmael are a coded symbol representing the Jews who wouldn't
accept Christ.
Nothing could have been further from the minds of those who wrote
those texts in the book of Genesis, but this becomes the
normative Christian doctrine still is the Evangelicals when they
think about the story.
It's in his letter to the Galatians.
Okay, so he gets it gives you the,
the idea of the dichotomy.
Okay, according to the flesh, just the DNA is inherited. But the DNA
of Isaac is spiritual as well. And this great fork becomes even more
intensified. But he says Hotjar, because of her kind of Arabian
southern identity
represents slavery, and hence, Judaism.
In other words, those Jews who have rejected Paul's
interpretation of who Jesus was,
are actually following the Israelite
fork in the road. And it's the Christians who are the true
descendants of Isaac. And it's the Jews who are the descendants of
Ishmael. And that's really what the story is about. For him at
last is able to make sense of this thing that seems to lead nowhere.
But the Jerusalem that is above the church is free. And this links
also with his idea of freedom and slavery, which for him, represents
whether or not you submit to the Mosaic law, that rules
circumcision, and so forth. Because for him, you'd be baptized
Gentile converts don't have to do all of that stuff. That's part of
slavery to the law. But the Christian is in a state of gospel
freedom, and therefore, is the natural psalm of Isaac. Whereas
the those who are descendants of the slave, are actually now
identified with the Jewish people, not with the Ishmaelites. And the
Arabs. And this is very extraordinary and original moment
in Paul. And this text in particular is right at the heart
of modern right wing American Theo con evangelical reflection on
Islam. They like Paul, I'd like the rabbi's want an explanation
that's biblical for what's going on now in the Middle East.
And so they hit on this text with their own
take on it. This is from an evangelical website, which puts it
very clearly.
Very, absolutely. On the left, red traffic lights, all of this is the
bad stuff.
Earthly enslaved,
race, just genealogy, disinherited. In other words,
it just like little river, going off into the desert, sinking in
and leading to nothing. And then
on this side, you have all of the good stuff, culminating presumably
in the Bible believing modern Trump voters. This is the kind of
mindset that millions and millions of them are currently working
with. And if you ever cross swords, metaphorically, with any
of them, you'll find that this dichotomy is the biblical point
where they think that they have cornered Islam. Muslims say that
it centers of hijab, they even go to where she's buried. And that's
Arabia. And that's the law, Sharia law, which were banned in
Tennessee now, of course.
So, Islam is anticipated in the biblical text by these narratives,
whereas
God has given the green light
to the country that stretches from sea to shining sea and the
American special vocation to the world as a Christian civilization,
etc, etc, the normal narrative of triumphalism and they use this
dichotomy, that Ishmael Isaac dichotomy, and
this has become very significant in our time, and you find the same
thing in
the Russian Orthodox Church as well.
Because, after all,
Islam is post biblical, and if you've got a biblical worldview,
you're going to find you do have to resort to this kind of
allegorical interpretation in order to get anything
biblical about Islam, whereas Muslims of course have lots of
stuff in the Quran.
About earlier prophets, we already have an abundance of information
and theological perspectives, but for them dealing with later
religions is a problem, but this is the text that they have found.
So it leads in this direction. Hotjar is about foreignness,
alienation, flesh, law, enslavement, desire.
Whereas the narrative that leads up to, usually white American
Evangelical
Christians is the line of gospel freedoms America, the city on the
hill, land of the free, etc. It all fits as part of this
narrative, which is hugely influential in today's world and
affects voting patterns and foreign policy. And
it's an example of the enduring power of these ancient stories.
However, not everybody who reads the Bible finds this kind of
violent dichotomy within it.
They are somewhat taken aback when they engage with Muslims. Because
Muslims after all are supposed to be the great dichotomize is that
you infidels, them in us, black and white differentiation. Donal
Islam, Darren, horrible. American Christians seem to be absolutely
in that mode. The good guys, the bad guys, if you're not for us,
you're against us. Bush was very keen on quoting the Bible.
And for a lot of western church goers and synagogue goes, this is
a bit
of a disappointing thing to find in Scripture is this, ethically
the best that the Bible can do when dealing with the fact of
Ishmael who is now a quarter of the world's population and
counting,
and vibrant and active and the midterms, another couple of
Muslims were elected to Congress and Islam is everywhere. And you
can't just say it's the Antichrist and evil. Dealing with it through
drone strikes, we need something a little bit better. And when they
encountered the Muslim account, which is that we don't accept ever
any kind of dichotomizing between the two songs, they become quite
thoughtful.
Because we have never had
this kind of polarization. We don't read those stories in those
terms. Were really not very interested in that strand of
biblical narrative, which is one of the biggest strands which is
about chosen this.
God chooses those who he chooses. The Holy Prophet is called a
Mustafa, the chosen one even though his from
Hotjar, and not from Sara. so
taken aback, wrong footed embarrassed, and they want to know
whether they too can have an inclusive model, is there some way
in which hardware can be rehabilitated? Some ways in which
you can, as
Tory cabinet puts it, have your cake and eat it, you have the book
of Genesis, but you also have some kind of inclusive model of
religion, even though those Genesis narratives were really
deliberately and fiscally constructed, to divide and to
differentiate, well, interesting story of how her gel is received
in modern, Jewish and Christian readings. So let's whiz through
a few of these, usually, as you can imagine, in kind of feministic
readings of scriptural tradition.
Okay, so here you have a kind of
postmodern reflection.
So Augustine, who, as you'd expect with his love of dichotomies made
a big deal of the unsureness of agile and
accepting Paul's identification of Hotjar as the the Jewish temple
still in the grip of slavery to the law.
You have this
very interesting reflection that
as he abandons the whole Judaic template of allegorical reading,
necessarily, the allegory that Paul is using has to be rejected
as well. Paul was schooled in rabbinical context and the way in
which is rereading the Old Testament as allegory is
absolutely recognizable in terms of first century Palestinian,
Hellenized, Judaic way of allegorical reading of the
Scripture. So she's kind of turning the tables on this turning
of the tables by saying that you can't even have that Judaic
insistence that everything has to be a typology
and of course, the denial of
Palau
Art is one of the key themes of post modernism.
There's an ironic reflection, which is quite symptomatic of
what's happening. Here's another. And again, this is an African
American feminist writer.
And for her, one of the interesting things is the Egyptian
this of hijab.
And for a lot of black feminists, that means the African this and
therefore, in some sense, whatever the exact color, pigmentation of
her skin, African this blackness, it's the
African continent. And so for a lot of African American authors
now, who are interested in overturning these biblical
archetypes, hardier has become not the heroine of a story that
becomes the wrong story, the story of unpleasantness, but instead, a
heroine.
One of the big things that's happening in feminist exegesis of
the Bible is that their favorite character in the whole Bible is
actually hijab. Even though for the evangelicals, and the big
church down the road, she is the matriarch of those pesky Arabs.
That's one of the tensions in American culture now, particularly
in these African American contexts where there is a lot of reflection
on the legacy of slavery, exclusion, racism, broken
families, single parenthood, inner pain, trauma, anxiety, depression,
suffering. And so it's a kind of issue in theodicy, she becomes the
biblical image of the oppressed woman. So here's some random
quotes from this book, which kind of focuses on Hotjar and is about
solidarity with Outcast woman.
Now, first of all, she points out, and there's been some interesting
studies on the figure of Hotjar, in American fiction in the early
mid 19th century, that she's often a slave name.
And that, because of her civility, and the fact that her civility is
characterized as a right thing for an Egyptian to be in, that it was
one of the big arguments in favor of slavery in America.
And the idea of Ishmael as the kind of the legitimate,
legitimate, reject the outcast. Remember, Moby Dick begins with
the words call me Ishmael, because it's about his sense of outsider
status, and that would suddenly be understood by Bible reading.
America.
And then African Americans, as they have read the Bible, are not
going to go along with the established exegesis of the slave
owners and their latter day heirs, but instead have to reread the
Bible in ways that might reject August in the patristic consensus,
the demonizing of the African, the single mother, the refugee, the
woman, all of these negative things, and actually rehabilitate
them in a kind of form of
liberation theology.
Okay, so one of the things that she wants to talk about is the
falsity of the civility of the idea of the civility of Ishmael
and hygiene is, of course, a concern for Muslims as well hijab,
while she concubine, slave girl, bit on the side, legitimate wife.
It's a polemic and particularly in Muslims who are fighting against
the evangelicals who want to say that talk about the illegitimacy
of slave descent, this has become an issue. So she comes up with
observations like this, that according to the authors of the
book of Genesis, the idea that Abraham and Sarah might have
feared that there might have been a real inheritance through Ishmael
indicates that Hotjar can't have been a slave or concubine. But if
she had had that status, there's no way in which Ishmael would have
inherited anything.
So what we're starting to see is,
without there being much reference to anything Islamic, a kind of
parallelism to what Muslims have found in these ancient narratives,
and sometimes the parallel is remarkably close.
So she has now become crucial.
All of these modern tickbox issues race, * class, she's from
all of those criteria for unchosen this which the
Pre modern Jewish and Christian consensus assumed made her the
icon of unworthiness are actually the kind of things which would
have left inclined American activists are most concerned
about.
So it's quite a radical overturning of the former
consensus. The fact that she is African, the fact that she is
female, the fact that she is a slave, the fact that she's
servile, proletarian subjects, single mother, all of those things
indicate that instead of being the kind of mysterious antihero of the
Bible matriarch of unchosen, this, she's actually
their favorite figure of the entire biblical text. So again,
one of the biggest things that has happened
in biblical interpretation in recent years now, here is
the mainstream if you'd like Steven Kipnis, got a significant
Jewish thinker, reflecting on this. And of course, with one eye
on the catastrophes of the Middle East and the haves and the have
nots, eyeballing each other through the Gaza fence and the
extreme polarities of
the modern reality of this ancient Abrahamic dichotomy.
This is
a way in which he reflects on this, it's not the major theme of
the book, which is quite
synthetic in general. But of course, he has to refer to it.
How the Other
in Hebrew how God the other, who comes from Egypt, land of exile
and slavery, the wife of the patriarch Abraham, through whom
all the people of the earth are blessed. If Islam is rooted in the
Hebrew Scriptures, what this opens up is a new possibility to see
Islam as not opposed to the Judeo Christian tradition of monotheism.
But indeed as a part of it. To Hydra. And Ishmael Islam finds its
places simultaneously the first child of Abraham, and the third
stage in the development of monotheism. Well, medieval rabbis
would have not found that recognizable, because the essence
of the story whereby otherness Gentile status is constructed for
the biblical writers is this idea of the driving out of her and her
son, but now it's been reread rehabilitated through modern
hermeneutic turn under scriptural reasoning, whereby you read
scriptural texts in order to find the most pragmatic and benign
outcomes.
And this is what he has now found. Now, of course, the Judeo
Christian tradition, that's a very bogus concatenation, because the
Old and the New Testaments didn't really fit together at all well,
and those two principles have
had more of a hate relationship than a love relationship down the
centuries and Islam metabolically in many ways, structurally,
legally, monotheistic Lee is closer to Judaism. And
Christianity is you might speak of a judo Islamic tradition,
possibly, in medieval Spain, for instance, Judeo Christian
tradition, after those dichotomies that Paul is insisting on, that's
more difficult, but anyway, he's happy to use this, I guess for his
ironically minded
readers. But you can see that's the enormous scale of the
overturning, which has happened here.
Okay, now let's rewind and think about the Muslim narratives. Okay,
there's Rembrandt again. He liked this theme.
Now, the funny thing and I don't have a clear cut answer for you
about all of this is that even though
the Jewish and Christian traditions have always identified
Muslims as Hadrian's and as Ishmaelites, and we also identify
ourselves as Hadrian's and Ishmaelites and the Hajj doesn't
make much sense unless
you recognize that you're recreating her
thirsty steps, reenacting that moment of self sacrifice. We are
Ishmaelites there's an interesting circumstance that it's not really
very, she is not really mentioned in the Quran, unlike the Virgin
Mary.
And the Hadrian aspect of that story is not really in the Quran.
Not really sure why that should be. Maybe because it was kind of
already obviously no. But in any case, it's certainly salient in
our historians. So here we have
tubers,
The narrative,
the first true regret Tafseer.
Which is again, the angel time identified with Gabriel,
Gabriel, the angel of Revelation, the same one who comes to the
Virgin Mary, not any old Angel. Gabriel, Muslims have always
agreed that she saw Gable and
spoke to him.
And then you have this dialogue,
which is quite similar again to the Quranic narrative of the
Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin
where he is questioning, and she gives a very Muslim answer. To
whom did he entrust you?
You're all on your own in this desert place, Abraham.
let you down. And she replies, what Kalani Illa KEF,
entrusted me to one who is sufficient
that the angel says, entrusted you to one who is enough, the boy
ropes is robbed the ground with his toe, zooms and appears and
that story begins.
The symbol of salvation in the desert is water, and the water of
life which is revelation, salvation ensues.
So
that's just one
bit from the Muslim historians where they talk about this, but
what we need to bear in mind is that she liked the Virgin Mary is
always characterized as somebody who accepts divine providence.
When the Virgin is in the desert,
giving birth, beneath the palm tree, she cries out because of the
pain, late to name it to a cobbler. Heather, welcome to NESEA
nman Sia, where she's not angry with anyone.
And she's not angry with God.
And then the miracles are given to her. One of the miracles is, of
course, the well that comes from beneath her to Allah buki tataki,
Surya,
which is not, of course, biblical account doesn't have the palm tree
in the desert. And it's
the three wise men and the shepherds and the manger its
narrative is quite different.
But again, the hearing resonances are very clear, and the fact of
the miraculous deliberation through the water and the dates,
which in Islam are differentiated, because the water is a spiritual
thing. It's from the first Shahada. It comes from heaven,
whereas the dates come from the earth from the oasis from life.
And so it's to do with second shahada and Jerusalem, they come
together in the story,
but
she is paradigmatically, the one who accepts and surrenders
despite the apparent desperation of her plight.
So
in the contemporary period,
we find that the story, which is
occasionally there in our heritage, and again, it's a bit
mysterious, perhaps that say Jalaluddin Rumi in his copious
poetry has lots of stuff about Virgin Mary, not much about her a
few lines here and there, that she hasn't quite even though she is
our foundress caught our collective imagination the way the
Blessed Virgin did.
It's an interesting circumstance, that in the modern period, there
has been a lot more interest.
And it generally is an interest pretty disconnected to the revival
of interest in her and the repressed donation of a memory
that we find amongst sort of American
minority feminists. But some of the same issues are
to be found. So, for instance, Ali Shariati in the 1970s and named a
conduit amongst Muslim revolutionary activists killed by
the shore secret police. This country I think, who writes a book
on the Hajj after his experiences of the high
and his experience of it as a radical leveling of human beings,
rather as Malcolm X experienced it as a place where people are
dressed the same and race doesn't matter and
all of the hierarchy of
American society just abolish it. Surely it had the same kind of
idea in a kind of almost socialistic idea. Because much of
his rhetoric when he was teaching, dodging the secret police in
Tehran was about Islam as an anti elite movement. He read the Quran
as being a series of stories about
prophets who are from the people who experienced the poverty and
the disempowerment of the people being oppressed by the tyrants,
whether it's Nimrod, or Abu Lahab, or Pharaoh, or whoever he saw, it
really is a kind of narrative of class struggle.
And his
point is, I think, a perfectly legitimate one that the tradition
would not object to, which is that God tends to work through the
despised and the brokenhearted.
So as his they're doing his toe off thinking, Well, what is this
about? Well, her tomb is here.
And has mass are, is there. And this is a ritual of which she is
in many respects the founders. Who does God choose? Not the Shah of
Iran. He just had his enormous party that costs billions,
Persepolis,
building palaces for world leaders that only used that each leader
had a palace and it was only used for two nights
gigantic extravagance and contempt for the values of the masses. So
he, on his tawaf, in front of the Kaaba thinks this, this is who God
really chooses.
From among all humanity, it was a woman, from among all women, it
had to be a slave, and from among all slaves, a black maid.
So he sees this as the socialist method message of the hunch. It's
about it's the ritual of the poor. It is the shrine and temple of the
poor, where they can be
in the front, like anybody else, all of the normal disabilities and
hierarchies are swept away in the world of the tawaf. Everybody is
there and it doesn't matter whether you're stepping on the toe
of a billionaire, or a Pakistani sweeper, it's just another human
being, is very inspired by this. And this has been a theme with
quite a lot of particularly Iranian
Revolutionary writers. So one of the most popular
religious women's magazines in Iran pay army hogwash is, miss the
message of Hotjar seen as a kind of patroness of revolutionary
women, God with the outcast that rejected the refugee, the asylum
seekers are ethnically impure, all of those boxes are ticked, that's
where God is and is not in the palaces of the wealthy. And wealth
is a burden
hanging around one's neck, pulling one down to the grave and to the
earth.
So this has been
significant
but not for everyone. Here is a Syrian writer who comes up with a
very different interpretation, more old fashioned. What does
hijau represent? For modern women, well mannered woman who obeys her
husband believes in God whose husband settles her in Morocco is
at peace with their status a second wife, who bears a child who
is grateful to God for His blessings and never complains the
model of the righteous and believing woman.
That template as well.
There's been something of an outpouring of literature about her
in the modern Middle East, and some books in Pakistan as well,
and also in Turkey, where her meaning as the patroness of Islam
is explored in terms of contemporary arguments about
women's roles.
And he's a bit of an Arab nationalist as well. So we
actually can't quite accept that she was a kind of very onic
ancient Egyptian. He says she was actually a pure blooded Arab from
Arabia. He has a chapter on this which doesn't actually give you
any evidence but seems to be something that
resonates with him.
arroba
so
then modern Muslim feminists,
referred Hassan who is from Pocket stone, like quite a few
contemporary feminists, or at least women's writers, women's
issues writers in the Muslim world have, I guess rightly seized upon
her as a kind of emblem, rather as the feminists in the West Reading
the Bible have seized upon her. So the image of autonomous femaleness
she's constructed in those terms because she's on her own single
mother, looking after her son and experiencing angels and being an
agent.
Autonomous is important not just for Muslim Daughters of hardware,
but for all women who are oppressed by systems of thought,
or structures based on ideas of gender, class or racial
inequality. Like her, her women must have the faith and courage to
venture out of the security of the known into the insecurity of the
unknown, and to carve out with their own hands a new world from
which the injustice isn't inequities separate men from women
class from class race from race have been eliminated.
Sounds very similar to what some of those African American
feminists have been saying.
And there is a convergence and reflect Hasson is occasionally
invited to contribute to volumes edited by American feminists. But
still, this is perhaps another of her Juris enigmas, ways in which
she is veiled in that for the Western imaginary, whether
evangelical or not, the Muslim really is the emblem of otherness.
The Muslim is the Taliban, Muslim is Darish, the Muslim is the dark
other, the get the Gentile, that unAmerican principle. And this
idea of that radical othering of Muslims has become one of the key
features of populism across the western world now. Whether it'd be
Pauline Hanson, in Australia, or Breitbart News in the United
States, or Viktor Orban in Hungary, or Marine LePen, their
anxieties about rapid globalization and social change,
and the death of tradition, tend to focus on a culprit a human
culprit, rather than just globalization, which is usually
the foreigner. And usually the foreigner, as represented by the
Muslim, the asylum seeker refugee, the emblematic foreigner, the one
who is present in such disturbingly large numbers, who is
fertile, who is traditional, who is religious, who is all of the
things that your once was, and now isn't, but on the right, there are
certain
nostalgic voices that wish that what's more, we were those things.
So this is at the center of many of the psychic tensions of the
modern West, populism accelerated by this issue of the Muslim mother
and the veil. And hijab is kind of the emblem of that because of
fecundity, because of that otherness, of racial difference
have poverty has had once again is the symbol of untruthfulness. And
the idea most recently of the migrant,
the ancient story continues today.
There she is even now heading out of Iraq or somewhere
oppressed by something or other. This is present in our world. on a
massive scale. Generally, it's the women who bear the brunt of armed
conflict. They're the ones who are left to fend for themselves.
They're the ones who are open to abuse and exploitation. And
they're the ones who are the real leaders, in many cases, because
they're the ones who have sub
ledger, a leader, because she had sober
and exemplar, the one around who's to whom we swell.
And
as a result,
we remember that these stories are not just pretty tales of long ago,
ancient epics, and legends, or saltiel or welline, that are in
fact, representations of eternal human possibilities and situations
that are absolutely with us today. And we need to remember this,
Alicia reality's insistence that had just about solidarity with the
poor, something which the modern Saudis seem to have forgotten with
her
insistence on putting the poor people as far as possible, out of
sight and out of the way while you have these gigantic five star mega
structures everywhere and a kind of plush Ritz Carlton experience
of the hundreds that's not what it's there for
the point of the Hajj is to emphasize that most unpopular
reality in the eyes of the G 20, which is God is with the weak, the
brokenhearted, the disregarded the despise the other race, the other
gender, all of those things that the feminist and the Muslim
thinkers have simultaneously identified, that it is not just
about justice and equality, but is about where God's final
vindication is likely to be found, because she had the zamzam and we
revere her name.
And so it is always in secret history. The leaders, the real
leaders are often those who are almost invisible and seem to be at
the back of the crowd somewhere while the demagogues are
thundering at the front. But it's prayer and patience and pure
heartedness that in the grand vision, truly make history and
trigger the divine response. So perhaps that's the final lesson
that we should draw from this veiled leader.
That's what I've got any questions?
Anyone still awake?
Well, there's a lot of legendary material, there's nothing that's
there in sort of reliable Muslim scriptures.
There is in some of the
Muslim legends, the idea that she was Pharaoh's daughter, we do find
that some of that isn't ideal yet that seems to have come from
Jewish ideas which were there to kind of represent her as the
essence of the oppressive otherness of Egypt, mother think,
of any possibility of establishing something like that historically.
That you showed,
projected her as
the fact that if you were in Italy in the 17th century, that was the
only way you could ever possibly imagine a woman is looking.
And Christ would always be blonde, and that was just how things were.
Is there anything about her activism?
Unfortunately,
I'm not sure that I recall the stories. I think if you look at
the Sierra of evolution, and also at Tavares history, they're both
in English. You can find various accounts of Abraham visiting them
in the desert, bringing them provision subsequently have
traveled down from Palestine in order to see them. And then
presiding over the marriage of her son, Ishmael to a woman from
Georgia, which was a local Arabian tribe, and then being buried
though, that's all I recall, but there's a lot of legendary
material that's out there.
Anyone else?
Are we persuaded by this idea that this founders of Islam actually
happens to be America's famous biblical feminist icon is an irony
or strangeness didn't
make anything of it.
Okay, plenty of food for thought to ensure that give your patients
Cambridge Muslim College, training the next generation of Muslim
thinkers