Fatima Barkatulla – Feminism 1-2, Blessing Or Curse? Dawahwise Panel with Aminah Chowdhry & Others
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the impact of feminism on women's personal lives and personal lives, including their beliefs on the topic of feminism and the negative impact it has on their personal lives. They also touch on the "vanage of" women's roles in society and their history of "vanage of" women's roles in the world. The "rd works of peace" cycle is a way for women to express their individuality and empower their own thoughts, leading to a "rd work of peace" cycle where they are encouraged to write and share their experiences.
AI: Summary ©
Bismillah R Rahman r Rahim al hamdu Lillah wa salatu salam ala rasulillah eyeshadow Allah either in the La La sharika wash. Ramadan up the hora solo
welcome once again to another episode of da ys live stream bringing you special topics with eminent guests in panels where you can ask questions interactively as well. So just before we go to our second part of this show, I want to say Salaam Alaikum, to South Hashem, how you doing today? Riley? concilium, we're at the labor cattle handler, we got a second part of this topic about feminism. So really looking forward to that.
We have actually quite a few eminent guests today, especially sisters, to hear their point of view because last week we covered this topic in depth with Wistar Daniel, agricultural, where you've heard a Muslim brother or a Muslim man explaining about feminism and some of you may thought like, you know, where are the sisters? Where are the woman's voice on this issue of feminism or you all you might be biased in your view. So today, the second part as promised, we have brought and we will be bringing you in sha Allah very eminent, knowledgeable, no sisters, and highly my especially those who are also qualified on the subject to talk about
to deal with this topic of feminism, especially in the light of the understanding from a woman's perspective, what is feminism? How does it affect the Muslim woman? The Muslim? Is feminism, all about man's ideals of man things? Okay, this an antagonistic position to, you know, patriarchy? Or are we going to talk feminism as an idea and ideology, which is supposed to be giving the rights and the status and the position of women equal to men. So various things we'll be discussing Sharla so I want to bring in the guests first, before we go into what we will uncover part by part from what we haven't done last stream. So let's bring our guests first. So without any further ado, so we will
continue on a stream with packed of information today for everyone's benefit.
Salam Alaikum,
Salaam Alaikum, Salaam Alaikum. America, how you sisters doing.
It's a pleasure and an honor and privilege to have you here on our stream, especially when we are aiming to bring in contents and knowledge and experience onboard which will benefit an empire eventually our Muslim brothers and sisters worldwide. And, you know, we have we have you here today to talk about a subject which is close to your heart and close to an old sister's heart about feminism.
So I'm going to, if you don't mind, go around to ask you to introduce yourself briefly before we go into this topic. Just briefly as he as you can. You don't have to go in as much details. What do you do? What are your backgrounds and what you're passionate about? And then we will talk to you about the very subject Shall I put on mine estaba Amina
assalamu aleikum wa rahmatullah wa barakato. First of all, Giacomo Heron cathedra for, you know, inviting us over here and opening the opening the stage for such an important topic. So I have been living in us for the past 23 years. I do call it I teach at a college and my focus in teaching is religion. So there is a University of North Texas, here in Dallas, and I teach over there I teach undergrad. And I personally have studied with the loss of Hannah Montana has given me the opportunity to study with many amazing scholars Akram nadwi is one of them. shefali Dr. Rashid is one of them. One of them is Dr. Dad, he's one of them. So I've studied Islam with them and the rest
of the education I have taken from American academia, which has allowed me to understand that perspective from a very, very Western, you know, mindset as well.
I'm assuming you're doing your procedure PhD at the moment. Yes. And handling the natural
system mindful Muslim. I don't mind allowing.
introducing yourself. Yeah, so I like to leave with katsu. So my background is in education. I'm a licensed educator as well. I worked in the school systems in the US and Dubai for the past 20 years. I started off as a teacher then he went to be like teacher trainer then I would advise principals
And superintendents all across, especially the United States. And then I went into working with a lot of nonprofits. One of them Muslim and non Muslim. One of them was, you don't say so probably no run by Bill Gates. But um, Al Hamdulillah. Like, worked a lot of work with education. And also that was so on the side, I studied under many scholars, and panela. Right now I'm actually studying under like Mohammed, salah and different other teachers from Medina, I take additional courses as well for Mischka University. And I have mostly do my work where I've shifted now from just doing basic education and to doing this exactly to helping women with these topics, because I found that there
is such a void. So I'm so grateful that you are covering this today. I like electronic because women really need to hear this. And the way I do that, just really quickly to say is, I have a podcast, it's on Apple podcasts and nine platforms that are the other sister here has a podcast as well. It's called Mindfulness, the misspeaks. I do free classes, I create free resources, and tons of other things and mentorship programs to address these issues. Exactly. Hello, nice to have you here with us. And I'm sure we'll be looking forward to learning from all of you shall know Tyler saw the whole thing.
Can you hear us?
I don't know if you can hear me. I can't hear you, sir.
Oh, is that okay? Let me just remove and
sometimes this happens skinnier is No.
No.
Just try that once again.
Can you hear us now at all?
Still not sr, coca cola? I think the best thing to do would be Is it okay, if you just log out and login again. That might help. I mean, if you just close your browser and then come back using the same, I don't think she can hear us.
Let me just walk up to her in In the meantime, and so we can just ask a quick question.
Yeah. Who are friends who are joining us now and watching this is a program on feminism. This is part two of feminism. And we will be going around asking our esteemed panelists on this very topic. So I'm going to start with Mustafa Amina,
would you mind describing what exactly is feminism? How do you understand feminism in simple words? Yeah. Alhamdulillah? That is a very good question. Because this is a very broad term. And people tend to you know, maybe understand it in a very, you know, narrow manner. So feminism is you can say, a political expression of the concerns and interests of women all around the world. So it's basically a political thing that has it's a it's one of the six movements that have changed the dynamics of the Western society. So in a very, you know, simple terms, I'm just gonna say that it is a very broad term.
Okay. So, if you're further into that, then you can go inshallah, yes, yeah, of course, of course, we can, you know, go in more details. later on. Yes. Now, just a mindful Muslim. If I can ask you this question.
If you see the many women are gravitating towards feminism,
what's the reason for this? Why are women gravitating towards feminism?
Okay, so I'm going to come from the perspective of the work that I've done. So I know I'm sure there'll be many, uh, you know, the esteemed panelists, they'll cover
all of the political and the, you know, economic and all these other types of reasons. But the I'm going to take a bit of a different angle, if that's all right, where I give a voice to the women who are actually speaking about, I would like to share with you what they actually tell me after doing this with them for years. And just because I know not everyone in your audience might know who I am. I just want to explain where I'm getting this information from as in like, what pool of women I'm throwing this information from. So initially, maybe about, as the brother said, I was doing education and hamdulillah I back maybe six years ago, I noticed that I had done that with this whole
time with all the women in the community, I was lucky, I would go into the different massages and stuff. But I would notice that it's okay and easy to kind of form relationships with women and talk to them about these topics. However, at one point, I made hedra to debate when I was living overseas and we were going to Saudi and and then I came back to the US and I noticed that during the the Trump presidency, I'm not drawing a correlation, but I'm just saying Around this time, when they came back again to talk to women about this particular topic, it was really hard at
I didn't find the ease in that was like I did before. And I want to share with you, what I did was I noticed that I didn't see our women in certain circles of element things like this. So I said, I have to go to where they are in the internet. So then, so initially, I was doing the Dow in the US, so I'm coming from that position. But then when I went worldwide, and at this point, I think we've reached out 700,000 women in probably 137 countries. So I'm speaking about women right now who are worldwide. When I speak to them, there's about three things that I hear coming up over and over again, that they're constantly telling me and I just want to share those one. The first one is fear.
A lot of them say that they fear becoming like their mothers, what happened to their own mothers, or would happen to, you know, they fear that they'll be held back, if they marry a husband, this is the constant thing. And, of course, we can know that this is coming from the agenda. But it is also I would say coming from the way that the Muslim family is structured and a lot of what they've been told was Islam, cultural versus Islamic. Actually, it is. And the second one that I noticed for the women, in all honesty is that they are having a complete lack of understanding at times, not all at times of the appeal of how Islam is actually structured, where women's places within the realm of
Islam, and from that lack of understanding, they then go to other people for that information. So when I ask them, Well, where do you get your understanding of this from, they say, Well, you know, I talked to this, I follow this instagrammer and I follow this YouTuber, and you know how it is out there. This is the internet is vast. And so they're taking all this information from there. And so that pay that is an issue. And then the third one that I'm finding, and just it might seem unrelated, but because I've done this for so long, I want you to I would love our community to really take note of this is that there is an issue with low self esteem that is happening with our
women, about 80% of the women that I speak to cite some issue with themselves, whether it's body image, or whether it's just like lack of self worth. And a lot of times because we know there's two things against them is one is the agenda again. But also honestly, after I delve deeper into their families, it is oftentimes very much related to the parenting styles of many of us. And so that really hit home with me. So as a mother, I am paying much more attention to creating self worth and self esteem with our children, we understand from the spirit and the core and all of that. So I would say that these are the three things that are coming up over and over. And the reason just,
I'll end with inciting the last one is because they're coming from a place of weakness with the lack of self worth and self esteem, not by their you know, biological makeup as a female, but because of they're coming from a place of pain and feeling of less than worth, they are so much easier to be approached by the agenda. And that's why it's so easy for them to take to the feminist movement, because they're already coming from a place of disempowerment. And they're seeing as a way to gain their identity back.
So it shows clearly that, you know, the lack of self esteem is an important part of all of this, they fear, they know that they cannot, you know, relate to they cannot even identify themselves who they're supposed to be. So if you don't have this confidence, and the self esteem of what you're worth, of course, you're going to move towards somewhere gravitate towards where you think you might have this support and this help, where you will feel more at ease and more comfort. So we will come in and talk about this a bit more because we want to know how we can improve this self esteem and give the Muslim the confidence in the Islamic values and ideals so that you don't have to go to
other ideologies like feminism is an ideological movement and this is what we will be discussing to understand that. So I want to return to just like left and I want to return to start off Altima sorry for having this technical difficulties. Now, if you don't mind just introducing yourself very briefly. First of all, what you do okay, yes. Bismillah Alhamdulillah wa salatu salam ala rasulillah salam alaikum brothers and sisters. I think most people know of me through the Ellen feed podcasts. I'm one of the presenters of the M feed podcast. Um, but my background is that I'm I was born and brought up in London.
I studied in Egypt. And then I also
studied at two seminaries here in the UK, one with Chef, Akram nadwi. And another called Ibrahim College, where I from which I graduated in, you know, Islamic sciences and an alumier degrees to animate degrees. And at the moment, I'm studying Islamic law at the University of London. So part of my study is actually human rights and Islamic law.
I believe that in modern times, feminism is very much connected to the entire Human Rights Project. So, yeah, that's just a bit of introduction, we can maybe go into that a bit later. Marshall, I just want to state that, I really appreciate that you guys have taken the time off from your families, your children, to discuss this really important matter. And as statements were mentioned, earlier, we wanted the sisters themselves to represent this topic, which, which obviously, is about women. So it would be fair, I think, to say that this is something that not only affects both
the sisters, but also the brothers, because feminism is something that has taken all of the community and the society both in the West and in the east. So it is a lot higher and for that.
So if I, if I don't mind, if you don't mind, just want to ask Mr. Starr the ultimate question.
Having understood feminism in, in a very general broad terms, what consider or see the dangers of feminism
that it can cause in terms of harmful things that you can cause to our society to the Muslim, the Muslim mind, especially what what what are the some of the harmful things that you might think that feminism itself? The the ideology, can cause?
Okay, so I think,
first of all, I do want to say that I think a lot of Muslim women who are attracted to feminism,
a lot of them do it with good intentions, you know, like, for example, maybe they have seen certain things in their community in their society in or they've had some bad experiences in their own lives. And so, when they, especially when they go to university, I think because the feminist movement is very pervasive in universities.
To the point where I feel like every, every single one of the humanities is affected by feminism, feminist theory, and also critical race theory. And in my university, which is, so as the School of Oriental and African Studies, Marxism is very prominent as well, right? So you have these ideologies that have kind of like,
I would say, an intellectual
position in academia, and through that they articulate their ideology. So what are the harms of that ideology? I think one of the problems is that feminism is conflated with women's rights, right? So people who care about women care about women's rights. We as Muslims care about women's rights, we care about, you know, the rights of human beings.
But what happens is people think, okay, if you care about women's rights, you have to adopt feminist narratives. But I think part of that is because
they're the only narratives people have access to, or they're very powerfully articulated, right? And they're all around us.
And so, you see Muslims, unfortunately, adopting the language of feminism, and some of the premises which are fallacious, that underpin feminist ideology.
An example of that is, for example, this idea of
toxic masculinity, right? This idea of toxic masculinity, which
if you really unpick it is pretty much masculinity as a whole, right? Like, masculinity as a whole is seen as a negative thing.
Men, this whole Treorchy as well, right? That the entirety of history throughout the entirety of history, women have been oppressed by the evil patriarchy. And you'll be surprised you won't be surprised to know that when we study human rights in Islamic law, for example, some of the prominent all of the prominent voices in this field are so called Islamic feminist. And they all start with the premise that Islam Islamic law
was
influenced and created almost right by men.
All of the structures in Islamic
For the rulings the patients, they have a male bias. The Quran has been read, you know, through a male lens only. And this has affected Muslims, right? So, in other words, there is an intrinsic suspicion of men
that can never sit comfortably with a Muslim, you know that, that if you were to look through a feminist lens that Islam, Islam will never
match up, you know, it will never be what feminists want it to be. Because I remember in one of my early classes I was like, but all the prophets on men, you know, like, right from the beginning, right? You're going to come up against issues because feminists have a problem with men,
in and of themselves, you know, so, so this idea that we could have profits chosen by Allah, Who, who are men, and that Allah subhanaw taala, has charged men with being responsible for the protection of women, that Allah has made men, the head of the family,
none of that is ever going to sit comfortably with feminist ideology, because feminist ideology is intrinsically suspicious of men. So that's just the beginning. You know, one of my friends named Robert, she highlights that, you know,
another problem is, anyone, any woman that wants to have a loving relationship with a man, right, she wants to marry a man, which I'm assuming all Muslim women want to inshallah is always going to have a problem if she sees the world through the lens of feminism, because every time he expresses masculine energy, right, which might present itself in various ways, we're not talking about abuse, we're not talking about, you know, abusive relationships, we're talking about normal, you know, masculine behavior, male behavior, she's going to interpret it as toxic masculinity, right? You can't have a loving relationship, especially not a Muslim marriage, easily or successfully. If
you're looking at the world, through that lens, and you're looking at men through that suspicious lens. So those are some just, I've just scratched the surface. Those are just some of the harms. But I also want to say that when it comes to women's rights, just as for the problem of the economy, we don't say we are communists, we don't say we are capitalists, right? Although we might adopt some of the principles or some of the, you know,
the ways that capitalism or communism looks at the world might be in common with Islam, right? We don't say we're capitalists, we don't say we're communists. Similarly, for the problem of women's rights, we should not adopt this ideology, which has been formed by human beings, mostly academics,
fraud, human beings.
wholesale. And so really, that's, that's the case that I usually make. When it comes to feminism.
There's like a
very important points made there. So it seems like clearly there is this ideological differentiation. So you have Islam with its ideology, how it views women and men, what are the roles it actually assigns within the society and at home? And how the western ideology of feminism and why I say Western, because, you know, there is an element of Western influence there,
from the start to, so their ideals and the ideology seems to be geared in a different way. So if I were to ask now, Mr. Amina,
do you see having this perspective in mind the ideological differences and difference of the world view? Can feminism be slamet? Can Islam have feminism within it?
Or are we conflating the terms or asking about something which is totally contradiction to the ideology of Islam? No, thank you very much. It's a good question. So before I get into the answer of this question, I want to sit situate the issue a little bit, because my, my focus is religions and I teach different
religions at the university. So one thing that if we understand is that
feminism has three waves. And if you look at the first wave of feminism, and why it originated, you are compelled to see that the woman in those times had no other way. Because if you look at the history of that, in the Christian world, women were created, you know, not equal. do, we do know that they did not have the right to vote, they were not able to enter the universities, they were not able to own the properties. And then, you know, because the background of the West is, you know, Christian Christianity, you know that. And the way it was interpreted in those days, the Bible that was embedded in those days, we see that there's a verse in Genesis, verse 316, in Genesis, where
this is mentioned, that women will be given these severe birth pains, because Eve is the one she was considered as evil, who thought or you know, Adam to do the thing that was, you know, that was forbidden. And then we see in the same verse over there, that God is quoted in the Bible as saying that because Eve is the evil and she tempted Adam, of course, as a result of that all the women now are going to be born, all the daughters of her, wow, the E, are going to be born with original sin. And their punishment of that will be that they will have childbirth pains, and a man that this is the worst from the Bible, that a man will be a ruler over them. So this was their perspective. And
this perspective was applied to the worst because one issue that I've seen in teaching so many faiths is that when we say religion, and this is a this is a mistake that Muslims were men and women, both, our experience of religion is not the same as a restaurant experience of religion. That's the issue. When we say religion in the West, we have to understand they are referring to the religion that they know. They don't know Islam, they don't know other faiths. So religion is not a broad term that can be applied to every faith. So our our experience of Islam was never that. But yes, we have to agree that the people here their experience of religion was oppression. And the
women were not given equal rights. So they had no other way. But to do this. So this must first wave feminism. And first wave feminism is justified because even in the Quran, Allah tala tells us led up just so what these women did in order to gain the political rights to vote, which should which should be right that should be given to them, they threw themselves in front of the course, they will do suicide, because they knew that the key to the other rights was going to be the political rights. So at this point, first race for feminism we see and the other rights that they demanded, at that point, were also if I can take the list out over here is that, you know, married women's
property act 1870. Then suffrage, the right to vote and custody of infants act 1839. So you can see that these were the rights that are justified for these women, and because of their experience of religion was oppression, this is what they had to do. Right. So this is the thing, first of all, we understand, but first wave feminism, we're not against femininity itself. Until that it was good, it was great. They have no other choice. These women were not allowed to enter universities, it was said, a woman can enter a university only one way and that is to clean it. These are the kind of, you know, things that you see that you see in the books. And it was, you know, instead of pursuing a
career, you should pursue a husband. That was the kind of thing that was being told to the woman in when a married woman had no access to her property that she would have given by to her by her parents, it was her husband, who would become the owner of that. So we see that this was not justified. And these women had no other choice but to stand up and do this. So this is so first wave feminism, I would say that, you know, this is my stance on feminism. And I think, you know, this is what I've understood is that we agree with feminism in terms of practical side, the issues that it has raised, some of them not all of them is are the right issues. But yes, we disagree with the
solutions to feminism is presenting. Because as Muslims as the followers of the Quran and the Sunnah, we do believe that the that the solutions feminism is presenting to solve these problems are going to create more problems as as the other two sisters have just you know, elaborated on because yes, the solution is something that we can't agree on because of the Quran and Sunnah that we found
But the problems many of them, no glass ceiling, women are not paid the same. But when they go to college, women have to pay the same to get the same degree. But they don't. But But when they go to work, they're not paid the same. Secondly, even in America, I'm not familiar with what happens in England, but in America, there is no place for motherhood. If women wants a career, then there is no place for her to have because motherhood is looked down upon. Right. So these are the kinds of things that we see. But then the second wave feminism came, and this is around the 1960s, and 80s. Now, what happened during these times volleyballs were happening. And now the society was telling
the woman to go and join the workforce, because when we're out there fighting, so there was more, this was strong push that you now you're chained to the same breed this chain come and work at the at the factories, but before that, women were never given a job at the factories. Now, when the world wars ended, and the people in the men came back, then the women were told that you know that now no more but then now no more financial independence for you, and you have to go back home. At this point, then they reverted and this is no, no, we are here now we're not leaving. So this is the point where the feminism started becoming a little iffy at that point. Because along with these
kinds of things, you know, the sexual rights came up. And things like sexual promiscuity became like a norm kind of thing. So there are certain things over in second way that we cannot agree as Muslims, but still, you see what was going on first, they were pushed out of their homes to work in the factories. And later, when they found financial independence, they were pushed back, that now leave the jobs and leave it for them. And so now we see another tip, then the third wave, feminism came in. And you know, and that is very multifaceted. And that's where we see a lot of issues that are we're not compatible with Islam at all. But again, third bay for feminism highlighted the issue
of glass ceiling, that Why are women not paid the same. And these are, this is a real issue. And this is one of the things because just imagine a woman and you know, a Western society, she has to work, she has to pay the same fee to go to college and university, she has to work and do all of that. But when she comes to work, then she's told that, you know, you're going to be paid less, because you're a woman, or if they find out that she's about to become mother, she doesn't find the job. So you see that, that we agree as Muslims with many of the issues that that families and as, as you know, brought to the point. And again, this is not our experience, this is the experience of the
people who followed, you know, of the Christian world. So we Muslims have to understand that when we say religion is oppressive to women, this is not our history. This is not who we are. So we have to differentiate because when I teach that, you know, faith, different faiths, in our in my class, too, I tend to realize that people they refer to all the fates as the same. And that's the problem, not all the faces same. And I'm really glad you guys are doing this kind of a podcast that maybe it will help people understand. Islam is different from the rest. It's not the same, it's not in the same category. So these are the things but then it means we come to see that that Okay, so as Muslims, we
agree that there is injustice at anywhere there is injustice, Allahu taala has asked us in the Quran to do p just so I'm sure all my brothers all my Geno's, you know, my fellow Muslims and brothers, you know, will understand that we have to be just but the problem is, is the theoretical side of feminism which says, what a woman can what a man can not support. That's a feminist critique, that is a problem because Okay, we are here we understand the problem. We understand that in, in, in, in justice that is done. But then we get stuck into this feminist critique, which is, if a man can so can a woman and that is a problem. And also I'll tell you that this thing about man being the
superior was about a white man because as the sister mentioned, critical race theory. So the bourgeoisie, you know, we're all familiar with word bourgeoisie. Is that right? That when enlightenment happened, and Europe came out of the dark ages, as you see that after that, that was a time when the bourgeoisie class came up. These were white men, and they said, white men are going to be hierarchal to all the races and they said, even on women, so white men, really, I mean, white men, the white race men is superior to the
We met and the rest of the people of the color. And we know that and what enlightenment brought was liberal humanism, all the values that we see now feminism included all of them all the ideologies we call this liberal humanism. That's the original religion of the West. Now, what is liberal humanism? liberal humanism is like in Islam we say they This is the question that the brother asked Can it be Islamic Islam, the center of everything is Allah Subhana Allah, we derive our word from Allah Subhana we derive our lives and how should we live? Allah subhanho wa Taala liberal humanism says the center of everything is human being and his capability, especially rationality. This is what
liberal humanism says. So man is at the center of everything with his capabilities, and that is mostly mind, not spirit. So the Western culture at this point does not have too much stress on the spiritual side of a person. They're more about rationality. So this is the this is the difference that we have. In Islam, Allah subhanho wa Taala is the center of everything. Men and women drive their word from Allahu taala, and the grace and equal grace from him. West, its liberal humanism, all that you see, you can lump it up into liberal humanism. liberal humanism is man with his abilities is at the center of everything American Constitution, when the forefathers were writing
American Constitution, they said, All men are equal, you know, under God, these all men meant by to meal, not women included. So you can see this perspective, but our but many of the people now they don't understand this history at all. They don't understand that. Well, if you look at this now, look how Islam came into the world. Women were being sold and bought, they were a property they had Islam came and did what? So we have to compare the histories of the two faiths. Before we go on and understand anything else to talk about, I believe, shaker, shaker Fatima wants to make a point on that. And then afterwards and go to sister mindfulness or mindfulness is just like I heard, yes,
yes, I think it was great of study Amina to highlight that.
Today, modern day feminism, whichever wave we're living in, is basically a subset of the liberal project, you know, individualism. I mean, some people have called it actually gendered individualism, right? So it's, and when you study human rights, one of the things that you notice is that just as there are people, you know, within the human rights regime and the human rights,
advocacy, that are using the Human Rights Project as a project to spread liberalism in the Muslim world, especially. I think feminism has been seen as like a useful tool to spread liberalism as well, especially in the Muslim world, right through women. And so we do have to be aware of that. Regarding the waves. You know, I think it's great that turtle Souther highlighted those waves, one of the things I would add to the second wave feminism, actually, even before that,
another aspect of Britain of Western or euro American history that people don't talk about, is that actually between the 15th to 17th centuries, they used to have so many witch hunts against women there, okay, that they actually called it a holocaust against women. A lot of people don't know about this. But there have been books written about the witch hunts between the 15th to 18th centuries where the church see this, they have this negative connection from religion for religion and women, that is constant throughout the history.
The church was literally responsible for killing 1000s of women 10s of 1000s of women, being accused of witchcraft, was very much gendered, you know so much about women because a woman could be accused just like that, for being a witch, right, being involved in witchcraft, and that was seen as a type of Satan worship or whatever. And so then they were put to death with very little
evidence. So with that kind of anti woman history, it's no surprise that, you know, eventually women fought back. But I would say about the second wave of feminism in particular, that I think it was more
You know, then we think it was because it was very much linked with the sexual revolution, the idea of free love, promiscuity. You know, there are images of women protesting, right. And they were saying things like, we don't want marriage any more. You know, marriage is a type of human sacrifice. Okay. They were saying
maternal instinct is a myth. motherhood and breastfeeding is slavery. You know, these are the types of placards and these are the type of messaging that was being put forward and asked for the ideologues. People like Simone de Beauvoir, in her book, the second *, she argued that women have always been denied the humanity throughout history, which is a myth, of course. And she also says that men have invented and shaped everything. I mean, can you imagine what a terrible way of looking at history that is, as though women have no part in the creation of civilization, right? I mean, it's like the ultimate devaluing of the complimentary roles that men and women have played
throughout history, right. And then she goes on to say, one is not born, but rather becomes a woman. Now, that's very important, because now begins this whole idea of gender being fluid. Okay. And I know it's not a PC topic to talk about. But I believe that the gender confusion that we see happening in our midst today, right, where a man who is physically a man in every single way, can turn up and claim that he's a woman. Right? he feels like he's a woman. That kind of confusion and the kinds of stuff that's going on, right. But even Western commentators are, like, don't know what to do with any more. That has its roots in feminism. Because feminist feminist ideologues, were the
ones who came up with this idea that gender is just a construct. There's nothing biological about male and female, it's just been constructed by society, right?
Which is obviously not true, right? We know that, of course, there are some aspects of being a woman and being feminine, that are encouraged by society. But not, not intrinsically right, not completely. And so I think we have to be careful because I think the second wave of feminism.
Also, like I said, it was anti family, it was pro abortion, it was all about sexual freedom, blurring of the lines between the genders, to the point that women abandoned breastfeeding, right. And now you go to the NHS, when you're expecting a baby, and what happens, you see these billboards, where they're literally trying to encourage women to feed their own children again, right, breastfeed their children, because
that became the norm, not breastfeeding. Seeing breastfeeding as a chore, seeing motherhood as a chore became the norm. So you have to be really aware that there was a lot more going on, in fact,
the CIA, and I'm not just making this up, you know, I'm not a conspiracy theorist at all. I've just, I've done a lot of research into this.
One over the heads of the women's liberation movement in America, I forgotten the name.
A few years to be the editor of MS magazine. She actually says in her biography, that the CIA funded them, right. So for some reason, there was a, there was a political kind of movement as well, to encourage women out to out into the world, anti family, anti,
I would say, anti community.
And I think also that the meter movement that we're seeing today,
is as a direct result of second wave feminism and the harms that it brought onto society, because what did second wave feminism we're talking about? between the 60s to the 80s, right. And this is the period of time when so many of the women who are coming forward, who were abused, who were harassed,
and sometimes it was because they kind of went along with it right? Or they felt pressured to go along with it. So many of them happened to them during that second wave of feminism. Why? Because the message that was out there was, you don't need men. You don't need your father. You don't need protection from men.
You don't need marriage, you should just go and experiment, be promiscuous. It's liberating. It's all about your freedom, right? * became, you know, everywhere it was everywhere. And even today, we see that that hasn't stopped. So I think
we must have been lying. You know, there are ideological things that have now caused human beings to
basically, you know, adopt all sorts of strange things that of course, Islam seeks to prevent, because Islam says men and women are different. Right? Men and women are distinct. Men and women are not competing with one another, we complement one another,
that Allah even curses men who dress as women and women who dress as men. What does that mean? It means that there is a distinction, right? And that distinction is to be celebrated. It's not to be raised, as it's being done, you know, in Western societies at the moment.
So I think, all of those things.
I mean, like recently, and you have to also understand that feminists don't agree on so many things, right? Like, there are feminists who are against this whole trans movement. And they consider it to be men trying to invade women's spaces, right? And then there are feminists who are like, No, we should be treating these men who are saying that they're women, as women, right? So even between them and feminists are fighting, and they're not clear on what their principles are, and what they believe. So we as Muslims should stand back and say, Well, okay, let them fight it out. You know, they're, obviously, human beings, flawed human beings who are just fighting out their ideas, okay?
Let them in the meantime, Allah Subhana, Allah has given us guidance. The reason why Muslim women suffer in some communities is usually due to culture. It's usually because Islam isn't being implemented. It's usually because people aren't living up to, you know, the standards that the prophet SAW solemn, put forward, especially in his final speech, in his farewell speech, when he said, Take good care of women, because Allah will ask you about that on the Day of Judgment.
There's no political leader in history who said that right to his to his congregation. You can't find anyone who said that. So we know that
it's a cliche, Islam is the answer. The point is that Islam has within it, the Islamic framework has within it, everything we need to protect each other's rights, and to fulfill our duties. It's because we're not implementing that. It's because people abuse the rights and responsibilities. It's because people act out their cultures, that the harm exists, it's not because of Islam. And so if we want women's rights to be restored, if we want justice to prevail, for both men and women, if we want a balanced society, the way that Allah designed us, then we have to return to the Islamic principles. Until I have just heard and great points from both system and as Sheikha Fatima Swan
Mashallah. I think it's quite important to understand the history, how it impacted this moment, the feminism moment and other ideologies that crept in as well amongst the Muslim societies and as well i think so. Sister, mindful Muslim, I want to ask you, do you know there are just as Shekar Fatima mentioned about the abuse of the rights of the Muslim women was prurigo I think, Brother Mohammed I wanted to make a point. Oh, is it okay? I think it's system Muslim. I want to ask the question, but I'll let tell brother Muhammad, just to for the audience to know that people are not familiar Brother Mohammed Mashallah is
is our new admin. So, he's going to be in the background going to be popping in and out Sharla making a point to here and there
really appreciate your sister mindful muslimah for being so patient because I know it's her turn. She's been waiting patiently. So read environment, can you please make it brief inshallah. I will do slightly. So I want to pick up on a couple of points here. The first one is It is no coincidence that this
freedom of choice that was given to women coincided with the Industrial Revolution, and the post war
machinery that was designed to create the consumer society and forward, really sort of this idea of individualism and capitalism. And it is clear, I mean, in the in the political literature, it is clear that they saw as the men came back from the war that wanted their jobs back, the women said, No, you know, we have now achieved a status that we don't want to give up. And so it was recognized politically. And they said, this is great 50% of the labor force wasn't working, how do we get them back in now? How do we keep them there now. And so you saw these ideas, very insidious ideas being
promulgated throughout society, of things like reproductive rights, okay, very bizarre concepts as if women had not given birth before. Right, then the idea of well, you should decide it's your body or to do with it, as if we as human beings had not taken, you know, sort of an agency of our over our own well being before. And but all of this was fundamentally around creating the capitalist engine. And I think it's important to understand these waves that were driven, ran almost parallel to these industrialization waves that have happened as well. And technology today is a key sort of proponent of this, if you look at the biases that are built into AI, for instance, if you look at
the biases that are built into many of the automated systems that we have, whether it's social media, etc. It just essentially promotes what the biases that are already built into this engine. So I just didn't want I didn't want to miss that point. Make sure that everybody sort of appreciated that and maybe comment on it from the from our esteemed panel. Thank you.
Salaam
Alaikum, salaam
Raja, thanks for joining
us tackle? Can
you close your YouTube perhaps?
Yes, I better. Yeah, I think that's better. So like I said, thanks for joining us. I know it's quite late in Pakistan, I really appreciate you making the effort. So
if you just hold, hold on a second, I think I just want to make sure that our system mindful muslimah gets a tone. He wants to make a point and waiting patiently. So just bear with us for a minute, we'll introduce you and or yourself, introduce yourself and then we can take financial.
So system mindful muslimah, please, quiet?
No, I just I I can completely connect with what the two sisters were saying. And when I think about concepts that are really key and understanding as women like for myself, as a woman, one of the most beautiful things that I think I learned about was the difference between equality and equity.
There is an immense wisdom in that and equally, you know, equality, as is everybody gets the same thing as we, I think we've, you know, let each other know at this point, but equity is the one that most women are not familiar with, they think, you know, because it's sold to them so well, that equality Trumps equity, and or they didn't even know what equity is. and equity, is it for those who are less familiar is that everybody gets what they need. But the problem is that the feminist ideology likes to act like equity is oppressive. Yeah, and this is a beautiful picture that you find all over, I think, will perfectly, you know, show what I'm saying like a picture shows 1000 words,
right? So equality is everybody has the same thing. And that doesn't serve everyone. And equity is everybody gets what they need. So I'll give you two practical examples in life, while white equity is actually brilliant, and it's much better and it serves women better, but I'll give one particularly general example. And then just one that that is very specific to the care of women. The first one is, for example, in education, like I'm an educator, for example, in New York state, in particular, in many states, United States, we fought long and hard as parents and as educators to make sure that children that they got, you know, differentiation in curriculum, like for example, if
there was a child who had Down syndrome, like my sister, my sister has a child that has Down syndrome, that that child will be afforded a parent or an aide, and the curriculum would be differentiated based on their biological terms, and it was no child left behind in I'm going to make sure that this child is
is getting catered to its needs. And in this particular instance, the state was pushing equity as being superior and equality. Like Imagine if this child, on the contrary, was given the same curriculum like we didn't know that that child had, you know, this biological thing that was holding them back from achieving the same thing. It's not that the child is worth less, it's not that the child has any lower position in society, it's just that this is something that cannot be ignored. And therefore we should cater to the child and meet their needs. And this is what we're taught is justice, equity on their terms when they say it is justice. But when we save in Islam, it's
considered oppressive in injustice. And the last example I'll give is on a more personal note, in terms of the care of women, sister Anna and Fatima, she, they both brilliantly touched on this is that the care of your children and you know, your job as a woman is seen as something oppressive or less than. And so I'll give you the perfect example on I was divorced, I had children and then I had to remarry. But in the time where I was divorced, and like this happens in American society, I can't speak for UK in particular, but in American society with non Muslims were told as women, we should be equal to men. And therefore if I'm divorced, I should go and fend for myself, I have to work I
have to provide, I should shove my child in a daycare, and basically, let someone else raise them most of the time, because I have to, you know, make sure that there's food on the table and pay the rent and so on so forth. And therefore I have to be like a man and you know, go out into the workforce. And and then also maybe, depends on the child support that is supposed to come to me that is often doesn't come to women at all in a broken system. And that's the story for many women. And work one and two and three jobs were on the contrary, Islam says that women should be provided for especially in such a sensitive case, not because they're less than but because it just makes more
sense. So that they're freed up to cultivate the child's psychological, emotional, and spiritual needs, and that the woman herself will have less burden. And so the whole family steps in and cares for the woman. And that is equity. And I mean, as a woman has gone through both lifestyles, I can tell you, I would choose equity every time and having done that, and that is from Islam.
Salaam Alaikum. Again, once again, pet Raja as the old Huck, who's joining us from Pakistan. Just want to perhaps Introduce yourself briefly. Before we ask you a question or two inshallah.
Okay, first of all, for having me on the show today.
I've been actually part of the tower scene in Pakistan for about almost 10 plus years now. And Hamdulillah, we've been trying to educate the youth in particular, working with different schools, colleges, universities, and dealing with a lot of the social issues that people go through, and trying to give them solutions from the Quran and Sunnah. So that they can find their way towards Allah subhanaw taala. So you might be surprised that you know, in a country such as Pakistan, where it's a majority Muslim country, still, we are living in times where as we actually find all over the world, secularism, liberalism, and all of these values have taken over. So we basically kind of lost
touch with our own heritage and our own Deen, for that matter. And so hamdulillah we're trying to sort of get back and you know, educate the youth once again. So myself, basically, I did my bachelor's in computer science from the UK. And then I traveled to Australia, where I did my master's degree in also Information Technology and management. And I was working with different multinational companies, in the meantime, and then there was a point in my life when I began to ask those big philosophical questions like, you know, who am I? What's the purpose of life? Why am I even here, and Alhamdulillah I'm very pleased that I was guided towards Islam. And so I then began
to formally practice Islam and then I was very fortunate to actually come back to Pakistan to find some very good teachers of the cod, so on and so forth, and then learning from them. And then basically dedicating my life towards Dawa and calling other towards the last month or so it's been a journey of about over 10 years now. And we've basically made some very good impact in Pakistan so far now we're looking to inshallah open up internationally as well. Mashallah, you got a great channel is it was a call youth club, youth club, youth club here, you guys are doing a wonderful job, Mashallah, in educating the youth and everyone else, actually. So with regards to this topic, I
wanted to ask you the question, do you believe there is some sort of a Do you believe that feminism and women's rights are synonymous? Right, that's a very good question. Because oftentimes, when you talk to women or men, about feminism, the thing that if you say that feminism
has problems are there are there holes in feminism, then they automatically assume that you're talking about women's rights, although the two are not synonymous at all. As a matter of fact, I've appeared in a number of TV channels as well. And I've had the opportunity to talk to some leading feminists from Pakistan. And also people who have recently organized, we have an audit March here every year, on women's day. And that's gone through a lot of controversy. But just keeping that aside. So I've had this opportunity to talk to these people. And I've said that look, whatever rights Islam has to offer to women, I don't think there can be anything else that can be demanded
after that. So for example, I put some things on the table for them. And I said, Look, if you want to go out there, and if you want to ask for certain women's rights, then inshallah we will be at the forefront to help you guys out and inshallah champion those rights. Like, for example, Islam gives women the right to education, it gives women the right to inheritance, a share in the inheritance. Islam says no to domestic violence to any kind of abuse that's taking place. Likewise, women cannot be married without their consent. Similarly, there have been traditions where women are married to the Koran, in the name of religion, we're completely against that this is not an Islamic practice.
Similarly, honor killings, or what is actually known in Pakistan is caracara. Something that, you know, people kill women, for example, for the sake of honor, we are against that, we believe and support that women should be given the Maha when they get married, as opposed to the dowry. That's normally the culture in India and Pakistan. Similarly, we say that the women should not be should not be mistreated. And as a mother, as a wife, as a daughter, as a sister, they have their special place, as we all know the Hadith
of the Prophet salallahu salam, whereby the mother has been given three times more of that love and affection and care and time from the man. And likewise, we find that the Prophet sallallahu Sallam he talked about when he talked about wives, and when he talked about good character, he said that the best amongst you are those who are best in character, and, and from those who are the best, or those who are best to their families, or especially best to their wives. And likewise, we have the Hadith of the Prophet said, I'm talking about women, in terms of having women children, that if you have three daughters, and if you raise them properly, then you and I will be like this on Yom
Okayama. And so any Muslim who loves the prophet SAW Selim, as we have to, it's part of our Iman would would love that opportunity. And may Allah smart Allah be pleased with the companion who actually asked the question that yours will allow, what if we have two daughters, and he says him too. So this is for the woman, not for the male child. And so all of these things are there. And so Likewise, we accept that, you know, once a woman is living under her father and her mother, in that household, her father is supposed to provide everything for her, you know, her food, and her clothing, her education, all of that. The responsibility lies with the Father. And once the woman
gets married, all that responsibility transfers to her husband, now he has to take care of all of that. So, and Hamdulillah, Islam gives women all of these things. And on top of that, they have the right to vote, they have the right to have their own finances, the right to work, all of these things are there. So I when I put these things on the table, and I say, look, Islam is already offering all of these things. What else do you want apart from this? So oftentimes, we realize that what is
required is something that is other than what Islam is offering. So for example,
they might throw in the LGBT rights in there, or they might ask for certain other things which are not basically part of Islam. So my sincere my sincerest plea to the organizers of the audit March and to the feminist movement heads here in Pakistan has been that, you know, if you really want to create impact, and if you're really, really going after women's rights, then I can give you access to the religious side of Pakistan. And this is a huge majority, by the way, we have so many massages, we have so many imams who are preaching, there's Juma foodbuzz going on. So I can give you access to these people. I'm actually teaching at the International Islamic University of Islamabad,
I teach Islamic worldview and civilizations, IT professional ethics, so I can give you access to the scholars at the International Islamic University. And if you have this religious body with you on board Alhamdulillah so much can be done. You know, a lot of the atrocities you talk about a lot of the injustice is you actually talk about, we can help you solve that problem because the same men that you're going after all of these men are attending Juma hotbar. Anyway, so what better way or what better avenue to give them this dose every single week. But when I give them this offer, they back off because they realize that some of the demands that actually a lot of the demands that they
will ask for and they are asking for are demands that are basically very, very pro LGBT.
And you know, things that are never going to be acceptable from the Islamic domain, meaning that, you know, women should have the right to abort their children, they should have the right to dress up any which way they like they should have the right to have whatever sexual partners that they want. Obviously, nobody in the right mind, who has an Islamic perspective is going to agree to these terms. So this is where the kind of dilemma comes in, whereby you have, on the one hand, you have actual women's rights, and then you have the feminist movement bringing in something other than what is what is actually known as women's rights. Because I just want to bring this point about gender
roles, because it's important to understand what is the understanding of gender roles and stamps, if I tend to start the Amina? I mean, clearly, there's a difference between the understanding of gender roles in the western or, you know, the liberal mindset, as compared to the Islamic perspective.
If we see that Islam provides all of these, the brother, as I mentioned, Islam provides all this
beautiful and just things to women. Why is there a disconnect? Why do we see Muslim societies are considered to be oppressing women? Did our Muslim scholars not touch upon the roles and status of women in society? Isn't there a legacy of scholars in Islam? Who are women? mean? what what what's going on? Why is that become an issue? When Why do we see the understanding from the Quran and Sunnah as the brother and sisters illustrated earlier on, that Islam is giving you all this just and balanced understanding of the gender roles between men and women in society and at home? And yet we see in the society in a practical manifestation is bit different. Why Why do you think this is? So?
Yes, that's a very good question. So first of all, why is Muslim societies doing that, and this is what I believe, teaching in a very Western secular academia for the past 15 years, I have come to realize that our issues is not Islamophobia. Our issue is nothing. Our issue is the ignorance of Islam.
I think the biggest tool, non Muslims for people who want to harm Islam, the biggest tool is in their hands is the ignorance of the Muslims themselves. And I'm glad that whether Roger is doing this work in Pakistan is educating people. And I think that's the basics, that we ourselves don't know what Islam is. And we tend to become, you know, very much entangled in culture. And culture is something that does not do with human nature. That's the problem. You know, how we say Islam has been a federal defeater for human being is something that will never align with culture completely, because culture is oppressive in many ways. And I'm talking about all the culture not only not only
Western culture, or culture.
So this is one thing that I think is the issue is the is not having the education. And I do think that, you know, one of my teachers, I was asking him this question once that why do you Why are we ignoring? Why is it like, so and then, you know, and especially when we're talking about men, why don't men understand and the women I teach, they always tell me, why don't you go and teach this to the men too. So one thing that I would say, men are ignorant because the women are ugly. We should remember that Allahu taala. You know how many times you get entangled in this question, why women are not imams why she's not leading the prayer, right? And lo and behold, in America, we have
massages where women are now becoming a man. So you know, that's a problem. But why don't you understand that, you know, standing in the front and leading a prayer is not a preference. Allah, Allah has told us the preference in the eyes of Allah is the one that was more pious. So many women have different roles. But this difference is not preferential. But now the issue is that the dominant culture of the world is that Western culture. And the problem with the Western culture is and this is what I'm saying, you know, this is my experience in teaching in academia for so many years is that Western culture, tanks that are more religion a social order has, the less their
social order has a place for women. This is what they say they say it Muslim, Muslim cultures have the most religion entangled in this is why Muslim cultures in general are pressing because the thing religion is oppressive in itself. And why do they say that because their experience of of religion is it's man made. It's made by men really real? And because this their experience of religion is such an art and I just showed you there are verses in the Bible and you know, these things that you know, they think anything at the end the religion was, you know, created by men.
to, you know, to garner towards the interests of the men to solve. The second problem, that is a really big problem is the history of colonization, we should not forget that, why we started thinking like that. So a general term that is used just to give you a thing. We say that this is an English term we say so and so is a housewife. If a woman doesn't does not have a career, she's not working outside the home, or she's not earning money, we tend to use the term housewife, if you go into the history of that, because I teach epistemology as well. housewife was a term coined by the French colonizers because housewife is what right, who maker is the term, but this is kind of like a
derogatory term, as a brother said, you know, you're a housewife, you should come out and can contribute to the capitalist society. And modernity meets us seems like men and women are what they do, the more I do, in terms of you know, our career and things like that the better word the better word I can. But if I am raising children, and you know, contributing to the family, which I think is the biggest job, what could answer, generalize under the feet of them with the process of themselves journalism? Can there be if you think logically, can there be a bigger designation for women, and Allahu taala give it to the woman. And also we see that this idea of imams gonna come back to that
women have been given the leadership of the next generation. She's the man of the coming generation. And what we did a mistake, the second mistake that we did as a as a Muslim civilization, we did not educate our women. And that is the problem. We did not stress upon their education. Look at that. Many massages in Muslim countries, do not allow a woman to come come in. So it's okay for women to be marching in the malls and all of that. And there is no fitna there, right. But when they come to the masjid, we say, woman coming to the master is going to create fitna,
this is a problem, they will come to the must have to learn this, they should have access to Islamic knowledge. If you're not going to teach the mothers, we are not expecting any change anytime soon, because mother is the Imam of the next generation. She's much her duty is much higher than a man who's reading the prayer at the masjid. So education of my third colonization, if you read the history of colonization, you will see
what I was talking about before, West did not see women as equal to men, and this is around 1800s. At the same time, restaurant colonizers are coming to the Muslim lands. And they're seeing women in roles of education. We know that Muslim women, we're educating filters that are not the purchaser. So they're seeing roles of Muslim women. And they're kind of like, what are these women doing in these rooms? Believe it or not, if you go into the history of colonizations, you will see it was the French colonizers who threw women out of the massage. And later on because we develop the slave mentality, we kind of think that this is something Islam has taught. And we
will come back to English inshallah, to develop this thought about the colonization mindset. I'm quite mindful of the time that Schaffer Fatima has, I just want to take the opportunity to ask some questions before she will leave us. Yes. So yeah. So so the Fatima. So we are talking about the language here in terms of what we should be using or not clearly become quite, you know, evident, that we should be very mindful and clear about the languages that we use.
Would you want to elaborate more on this mean, the idea of, you know, Islamic feminism and feminist, can we even use this language appropriately?
Yeah, I guess, I think I've covered some of the points that I wanted to regarding that, and that is that, you know, language is very loaded language is very powerful. So when we adopt certain terms, and unfortunately, what I'm seeing at university is
Muslim students will adopt certain terms and use certain ways of describing things
without really thinking them through, you know, without thinking through what the implications of those terms are. So, if you describe Islam, if you're gonna rail against patriarchy, right, according to feminists, Islam is a patriarchy right. So, you know, what are you railing against? Are you railing against the fact that you're not alone made the prophets men that Allah Subhana Allah gave men certain leadership roles, and gave women other types of roles little even leadership roles, but other types that
You know, the great scholars? Of course, they will female scholars as well. But many of the most prominent scholars were men. And feminists have a problem with that. So, what before we adopt words like patriarchy,
misogyny, you know,
toxic masculinity and these kinds of terms, I think we need to be very careful
that we're not becoming mouthpieces for any other ideology. Because at the end of the day, I think two things we have to bear in mind. One is, what's the purpose of our lives? as a Muslim, you just have to keep returning yourself to that question, what's the purpose of your life, the purpose of your life is to live it the way Allah wants, right? To worship Allah, to, to please Allah in such a way that when you leave this very, very short life, you will live the eternal life, in happiness and bliss in general. So if that's the purpose of our lives, we look and we see that and that's kind of that's provided us with the blueprint for how to live that life, he created men and women. He knows
what our nature is. And so the guidelines that he's given us, it's for our own good, it's going to bring out the best in us as women, it's going to bring out the best in men, and create the best type of society and community right.
And so I think, before we adopt any ideology, and the language of any ideology, we have to ask ourselves, does the perfect religion does the perfect way of life revealed by God revealed by Allah? Does it need another ideology? to support it? Does it need another ideology to fix it? Of course, it doesn't. So I think that's really what I want to highlight about language, you know, the use of
justify me ask you a further question, because now, we do see our Muslim sisters, when they go to university or colleges, they are exposed to all these isms and beliefs and ideas, which challenges their belief values, you know, you know, the morals and everything that you have.
And they find that quite shocking, often, because now they're exposed to all these ideas quite freely, and they're forced upon them in a way like, how can you not be like this? How can you not be secular liberal? Of course, they don't use this language, but they, you know, they frame it in a way that is how you should be as an educated person, and you're here in the place of institution of education. What advice would you give to our Muslim youth or Muslim has practically to help them to solve this issue in terms of when they have the shock factor in the first place?
Yeah. Okay. Great. I think that's a great question, because
it's not just with regards to feminism, I mean, I've seen in, in University at the moment, Muslim students are scared to talk about anything, you know, they're, they're afraid to kind of assert
their own beliefs, that they're just afraid.
And I think it speaks to the lack of self esteem, you know, the lack of therapy, that we're giving that generation, you know, I think one of the things about our generation
is that we, we kind of had identity crises, and we had to sort of discover our own Deen. Right. And then we, I think we would study the fundamentals. And we were quite, quite firm and knowledgeable about the fundamentals. So when we were exposed to these ideas, we could push back, right, because we could smell a rat, right? But unfortunately, with this new generation, I don't think enough.
effort has been put into getting the fundamental principles, you know, in terms of the fundamental beliefs, what goes against the fundamental beliefs
and why you know, why we believe what we believe so all of the those kind of important aspects, I don't think they have been conveyed well enough. And so I think in terms of students, the advice I would give is,
don't just go to university and let University be your only education. You need to go and study with scholars, you need to go and study with our olema as well. Parallel to your studies at university, you know, have some connection.
Without tradition, and with knowledgeable Muslims, because,
you know, the ideological onslaught at university is real. And if you're not equipped, if you don't get to hear the alternative narrative, the truth, then you're going to be very easily led very easily kind of affected as human beings are, right, because we're social animals, we are social beings, we completely get affected by our peers and our surroundings. So that's one thing, you need to get an education and to make sure you have an Islamic education and a connection to our tradition, from scholars who actually believe in the tradition, right. And the second thing is,
university is there for you to make interventions, you know, the professors, they're always encouraging people to make interventions, that that's actually one of the good things about Western academia is that, you know, the professors are not considered to be so kind of,
you know, beyond reproach, you are allowed to question things, or you're allowed to, you know, question even the premise of a professor's arguments, so, have the courage to do that. And the more you do it, the more confidence you have.
And if you can't do that, at the very least, don't become like sheep, and just, you know, just copy and, you know, repeat what other people are saying, use your critical thinking faculties, you know, and one more thing I would say is that, I definitely think that in academia, the Orthodox voices, the voices of Muslims, who are not secularists, and who are not liberals, so called,
are missing, you know, from a lot of the discourse, especially in Islamic Studies, and Islamic law, and those kinds of
areas, which now are being studied along with subjects like human rights, finance, etc. So, I think it's really important for Muslims who have a good grounding
in Islamic knowledge, to enter those fields, and to write, to produce literature to provide the alternative voice because
it was very frustrating being in classes, where we were studying women's rights and Islamic law, were the only voices The only books, the only literature that was there, you know, that was actually at the high level was from so called Islamic feminists, who, as Brother Raja has highlighted, we're basically asking for something that wasn't Islam, right?
I think we need to provide those voices, we need to be writing, we need to enter that space. And if we don't, then it's no surprise that then those voices are the ones that then filter down into society, right, and then become affect the masses.
So
that shows the importance of this, you know, Muslim women to join and participate and raise their voices. Because if you are not vocal if you don't raise and participate, and of course, no one's gonna hear and at what our positions are. So, like, look at once again, I would just want to return to, you know, start I mean, so for this introduction, we were talking about the effect of colonization that it had on Gandhi mindset. I don't know, just carry on, you know, it's okay. So, yes, so, the reason that we are still ignorant is number one, that our ignorance of Islam is the biggest thing that goes against it. A second thing, the history of colonization and that and how
that has affected the Muslim mind is to be taken into regard as well. Because if you see what happened over there, how the colonizers came, and the history and so forth in my sister Fatima st over here, are truly think that people who are disconnected from their own history are going to have no grounding. So I think the first thing I guess we learn up either, and the pillars and all of that, but it is very important that Muslims learn their own history as well. What really happened and the history of colonization is going to fall at this point. That how the colonizers have affected the mindset that Muslims have now. The issues in Pakistan, I'm from Pakistan myself, I was
raised in the Middle East, and in both places, but I saw my most prominent was a colonized mind.
a mindset that cannot think independently. And by itself, it only knows how to follow. That's a big problem. So if you see the history of colonization, how to colonizers came to the Muslim lands, how they saw the rules of the Muslim women. And they were very, like, they were not happy about that. And one thing, you know, once I go, I did a big research on the hijab, and why this is a big issue in the Western media. And you will be surprised to find out that the books that you see that when the colonizers came to the Muslim land, and they saw Muslim women that they were hiding from their gaze, because they were getting the job and they're reading the path, they kind of took it as we are
the masters, and these are the slaves. How come? You know? How dare these women who are from the slaves hide themselves from our gaze? And that's because one thing about liberal humanism is about everything has to be put on the show. Right? So when this colonizes, did you go dig into the history of this came to the Muslim man at the salt, Muslim women bring the carbon your job, they kind of got offended to them. And they said that, you know, these are the slave women, how can they hide themselves from the gaze of the Masters? So this is why from that point on, the job became a big problem. Secondly, we do understand that colonizers, you know, because they entered into the Muslim
boundaries, they invaded governance, you couldn't do nothing about that. But then the Muslims became more kind of, you know, insecure about the intimate boundaries. And as a reaction to what was going on the kind of, you know, made their women go into, you know, those places and you know, took them out from schools, no education and things like that, because yes, we were the people who were insecure. And when people become insecure, they do these kinds of things. So you can see the history that after colonization happened, the Muslim women becoming scholars, the Muslim women, you know, going into things like that, then completely done. And there was a point in I think it was 1920s.
When except for countries, except for Muslim countries, the entire Muslim world was colonized. And just imagine Pakistan, Pakistan,
has been independent from colonizers for the past 17 years. That's a very small amount. The colonizer mindset is still there. So Muslims have to understand that what colonization has done to us, and how should we decolonize those thinking, that is also very important. So these are my reasons that I think that we are still engaged in these kinds of things. And we are not, you know, learning what Islam has to inshallah, you know, say to us.
I want to ask a question to Brother Raja, similar question that to start to answer also.
Some network issues here. Can you guys hear me? Yes.
Okay. So brother, Roger, you know, the question that I would like to ask is with regards to this identity crisis for our youth who actually go to universities and colleges. And I don't know if it's the same, the cases the same to
in Pakistan, where they have this sort of identity crisis when they exposed to this
ideologies and different isms. And when their worldview is kind of shaken. In the US, they're forced to question themselves about these different ideologies, and where they stand as people who come from a background of
Muslim Islamic faith. And then they are forced to question themselves about these different isms and where they stand in front of their peers in front of the teachers who talk about these different ideologies and try to promote it as well. I believe America spend millions of dollars trying to promote feminism in Pakistan, even though people in America starving, so they would have noise use promoting this kind of ideologies in Pakistan, which is kind of deliberate from that side. And obviously, this is something that is prevalent, I believe, in the colleges and universities there, especially in the English speaking side of the population there.
Is that's actually a very valid point.
What's happened here is that obviously, Pakistan right now, we have the RAND report that came out a few years ago. It came out in 2007. It actually talked about the different categorizations of Muslims, for example, they said that, you know, those are the there's a small group of fundamentalists, those people who think that the Quran and the Sunnah, the sources of Islamic knowledge, they have to be adhered to. That's the fundamentalists for you.
Then they mentioned that there's another group out there, who are the traditionalists, those people who have some inclination towards Islam, but they're not fully practicing for them. Islam is more of a cultural thing, rather than a way of life. And then you have the modernists, those who are trying to reform Islam, change Islam, if you will, and trying to come up with these new concepts that will be far away from what was the classical and understanding of the Olimar. And then you have At last you have the secular or the liberal Muslims, those who pretty much want nothing to do with Islam, they just want that, okay, fine, labeled me as a Muslim from from the point of view that I was born
into a Muslim family.
But for all practical purposes, and following a completely liberal philosophy in life. So these are the four categories that the RAND report primarily mentioned. Now, in this, I would say that a vast majority of the Pakistani population is actually traditionalist, there are people who have a love for Islam, there are people who will, you know, basically go out into the streets and protests every time there is any issue of blasphemy or something like that. So there are people who have a lot of passion for Islam, but when you look at their lives, and when you look at what kind of things are up to, you find that there are a lot of an Islamic practices taking place. So at least at the very
least, I'm happy that Alhamdulillah there are people who at least have this love for Islam, even if their life is contrary to that. And this is what you know,
we find is a kind of like a state of, even if half maybe where people are kind of living double lives and so on. But I think that, having said that, there is a population now, which is increasingly moving more towards understanding Islam, especially now in the US since the last I would say, seven, eight, maybe 10 years or so. I'm seeing this rise in trend of the young population, the youth of Pakistan, slowly going back to their roots, wanting to, you know, learn the Quran and Sunnah, asking questions, asking ALLAH, why we do a certain thing, why this is halal in Islam, why this is haram in Islam, at least there's that interest because a few years back, if you
go like 20 years back 30 years back, maybe the youth were completely disconnected from the religious discourse, all of that was happening only with the Olimar. But now Alhamdulillah, it's actually gone further down. And now there are youth who are actively engaged, but at the same time, we have the modernists and we have the secular liberals also, who are very actively now trying to further their agenda through the influx of media, mainstream media, mass media, social media, print media, all of these things are we're being bombarded by this content, as we see this happening all over the world as well, that you know, with Hollywood and Bollywood and XYZ, all of this stuff that's coming
through a lot of the concepts and the ideologies that are coming in are highly secular liberal and you know, promoting that type of agenda. So, there is this constant struggle and I feel that in the next few years, perhaps this polarity is going to become more visible. And in the end, it will be the traditionalist in the middle who will have to either go one way or the other way either they will stick to those people who are adhering to the Quran and Sunnah or they will have to go and stick to those people because this divide is now becoming very prominent, but inshallah man I have my firm belief that inshallah This is part of our heat as well that the Dean of Allah smart Allah
will prevail. And so we just have to do our part in terms of guiding people, and we leave the rest of us Mandela