Legendary Muslim Women
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Channel: Fatima Barkatulla
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AI Generated Summary ©
The importance of religion and the struggles of women who lost their faith during strict treatment have been highlighted as gifts given to Islam leaders. The speakers emphasize the need to think about the historical context of women and the negative impact of social media. educating children on their rights and prioritizing the well-being of others has been emphasized.AI Generated Transcript ©
From London, UK, she studied Arabic and Islamic studies for a number of years in Egypt and graduated with two degrees. She is currently completing a master's degree in Islamic law. So us she authored the book Abuja Mother of history's greatest nation and has written numerous articles from Muslim magazines and various newspapers. She has been a key contributor to the discourse surrounding Muslim women in the West through documentaries and live shows for BBC radio, and television, Channel Four and the Islam channel. She was director of seeds of change the largest Muslim women's conference in Europe. This other father has kindly given away her book at this talk that we just mentioned, we'll
be hosting a quiz right at the end of this talk, and whoever comes out on top will win it and we'll ask you to private messages, any further details so we can get that sent out to you. So stay tuned and listen carefully to the gems in this talk. And we'd love to hand it over to other Fatima
all will be learning Amina Shivani, rajim Bismillahi Rahmani Raheem, and hamdu Lillah wa Salatu was Salam ala rasulillah dear brothers and sisters Assalamu alaykum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh I'm really honored to be part of your Charity Week, that you know, and I'm really happy to be here. Especially because my husband is actually a former student of Imperial, very proud of that. And he has quite a lot of competition with other brothers. And you know, when they talk about it, they're very proud of the fact that they're, you know, from Imperial Mashallah. So, I feel like, I have a connection with Imperial even though I've never studied that myself. So does that want a home for
inviting me and
Alhamdulillah You're so fortunate to be part of, you know, such an amazing, very highly reputable institution such as Imperial and I pray that Allah Subhana Allah blesses all of you, and grants you success. I'm sure there are other people who've come in as well who are not necessarily students and period. So welcome, everyone.
Today, I'm going to be talking about
legendary Muslim women. I'm just going to share my screen
the topic of legendary Muslim women, why is this topic important to me? And why did I really want to share this topic with you?
Well, we're living in a time when there are lots of narratives, you know, the we hear some of some of them overt, and some of them subliminal, you know, about what it is to be a Muslim woman. And being a Muslim woman has almost been politicized, right. I mean, like, you know, scholars and academics actually study this phenomenon of politicization of the veil, for example, right.
So, and also, when politicians talk about going to war in various countries, you know, they, they do it on the premise on for the reader, they say they do it for the reason of saving these Muslim women, right, who are in need of saving. So, you know, I think it's time that we, as Muslim women, reclaimed what it is to be a Muslim woman. And we got to explain what it is to be a Muslim woman to others. And we can't do that my sisters and my brothers as well, you know, we, none of us, as a community will be able to do that. Until we know who we are for ourselves, right? And what our heritage and our beautiful religion, right, then, that last panel, Tyler, the Creator of the heavens
and the earth blessed us with what he gave us if we're not, if we're not fully acquainted with what he gave us and what our heritage is, we will never be able to articulate it to the wider community, right? So it's so important for us to to know about this. Now, I want to ask you, first and foremost, tell me and you can type in the chat. Who are the great Muslim women of the past and present or you know, modern times as well as pre modern times that inspire you. Please tell us some of their names. I'm going to read them out.
I want to know who are the great women of the past that inspire you all Mashallah, everyone's very quick. the wives of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam right so sapan Allah, Allah Subhana Allah gave
profits on a light when he was alone many ways, and all of them had qualities, and all of them had a reason why the Prophet married them, right, something unique, some beneficial reason
that benefited us, right
Asya arsia the wife of Pharaoh right so the pharaoh from
At the time of Moses Messiah la Salaam.
That's a great one. You know so Pamela she was one of the greatest women, one of the four Greatest Women that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam told us about.
She was martyred wasn't she? For the sake of Allah because Pharaoh was very angry that she was a believer, and that she believed in the message of masa. Khadija inshallah we're going to be talking about for the day today, the first wife of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, the wife of a tube, Mashallah the wife of a tube, who had when her husband was going through all sorts of trials, you know, some of the worst trials are your beliefs and and went through right, one of his children passed away. And he became so ill, right. And obviously, that means all of his wife's children passed away as well. Right? She suffered all of that with him and
and she even got to the point where she had to sell her hair. So Pamela, right, because of the amount of public poverty they were in, but she did not leave his side. So Pamela
Yes, Fatima Dillon had the daughter of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, right the
Zahara known as as azada. She was so innocent and pure. And when she was young, she witnessed her father being persecuted, right? she witnessed people throwing things out to him and, and hurting him right in front of the Kaaba and she would be the one who would go over to him and lift the, you know, the end trails of an animal or whatever it was that they had thrown on the back of the blessitt profits on the line when he was selling his little Fatima would take that off her father's back. And, you know, clean his face, Pamela, she had to witness all of that.
I shot of course, the most beloved wife of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam.
Maria alayhis, salaam, Maria ma Salaam, mother of Isa, the mother of Jesus, right? Many people don't realize that we hold her in, in high esteem, you know, she was one of the some of the scholars even say that she was a prophet, right? Because the angel came to her right. And because she was inspired by a lot. So some of the scholars even said that she was the only female prophet.
Even whether she was the prophet or not, she was a blessing. Bless it woman, right, who took on the huge task. First of all, she was in her in her own right, she was a great worship of Allah. And then she took on the task of giving birth, carrying and giving birth and then raising Isa Jesus right Subhana Allah alayhi salam, in a such a difficult situation where she was accused of all sorts of things.
And her son was persecuted throughout her life and she witnessed
what other options are what other ideas have you come up with?
Sophia? Yes, Sophia.
There are two Sofia's, right there's Sophia the wife of the Prophet, and there's Sophia. Who was the prophets aren't
so my Yeah, yes, Masha, Allah sumiya. The first mater of Islam right the first shahida she was the mother of Amar. And
this hobby Amar and panela. She was more teachers one of the first she was the first woman to be marketed, you know, after the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was sent. Why? Because she believed in Allah and she rejected idols. She rejected polytheism
lots of repeats now. Mashallah. Okay, you you've all given loads of options from the past. What about the present? The mother with your mama Bahati? Yes. And many of the scholars of the past right, their mothers were pivotal and key in their
development. What about today? What about women of today, women
since that time, are there any that come to your mind?
I'm not gonna read that. That's kind of egotistical if I read that.
Okay, so some of the ladies who are quite active publicly saying Apple has any right
and yes, you know, Subhanallah there's, there's so many sisters, you know,
who are holding true to their
Do you are holding on to their Deen? And they're doing all sorts of things in society? Right, Yasmin? Well, Jaya, Mashallah, yes?
I smell.
Okay.
So
I hope that was a good warm up, you know, it's got us thinking about all the great women of our past. And
before we go into for women who I'm going to be focusing on in our session today, right? And I had to focus on on a number because you know, so Pamela, there's so many, there's so many from our history. So what we did is we chose to women from the time of the Prophet sallallahu, Alayhi, wasallam, and then two women that are relatively recent, right,
especially for the contribution and some of the really great lessons we can learn from their lives. Before we go into the lives of those women, I want us to think a little bit about this topic because Subhana Allah, our Creator, above the seven heavens, he revealed this religion to us, my sisters, and he clarified to us what the purpose of our life is, right? And when people ask us, when people try to question or try to impart imply that, you know, this religion is being
somehow degrades us, you know, sometimes we we don't give them very good answers. And what that means is that maybe we haven't internalized in ourselves, what the amazing gifts that this been, has given us all. So let's think about some of those. And I'm only going to highlight five, five of the really amazing gifts that Assad gave to women that were not given to women before, right or that women were not experiencing to the same level before.
The first gift that I really want to highlight is that Allah gave us a direct relationship with our Creator.
Now, that might not seem to the average Muslim, that doesn't seem like an amazing thing, maybe right? Especially if you were born in a Muslim family, and you grew up in a Muslim family. But actually, you just have to look back and see what the status of women was like, before Islam or even in places where Islam was not their right to to realize that actually, women did not have a direct relationship with God, they always have to have an intermediary, right? So whether it's a priest, or you know, the fact that they couldn't access the book, right? The Bible, for example, it wasn't accessible to the average woman. It wasn't accessible said average man even right, because it was
not in it was not translated until quite late. And before that, people were not really learned enough to to read it.
And also, it was not really seen as the place for a woman to study the Bible. Right? And,
and yet, when we look at our history, when we look at our Islamic history, we find that so Pamela, the first earliest copies of the Quran, were kept in the safekeeping of hafsa. Right, bint, oma, the daughter of amo women were memorizing the Quran right from the beginning, they had direct access to it. So finally, they even witnessed the Quran being revealed, right, I should have given her the Prophet said that the Quran will be revealed while he was lying in the bed, right in the house of Ayesha of the learner. So, you know, they witnessed the women were fully part of the kind of experience of Revelation. And they had a direct access to Allah's words to God's word, and also they
had a direct relationship with the Creator. And that's emphasized in the program, if you notice, right, if you notice the way Allah Subhana, Allah talks about the mother of Moosa, right, he says, that, you know, how hot became empty, and a lot. It's as if I've lost one of the fields or sorry, you know, it's an inappropriate way to talk about a lot that he feels it but he understands he fully understands the pain of this mother and to the point that he mentions it in the Quran, right? That he knows that and he, he understands that pain and because of the pain that she felt when she had to put her baby into the, into the river, right, because Pharaoh was persecuting and killing all of
the, all of the sons right? That year that were born that year.
Because of the pain she felt Allah Subhana Allah said he gave her this peace is the sense of peace. And he returned her baby back to her, right? By getting her hired as the wetness for Musa alayhis. Salam. Why? Just to so that it would make her happy, Allah says in the Quran, so that her, you know, it would be the peace, it would be the coolness of her eyes, right? And that she wouldn't feel sad. This is how much our Creator cared about the feelings of a woman. In certain machalilla we find a Lost Planet, Allah answered the complaint of a woman right? directly. And Allah says, you know, he has heard the complaints of this of the woman who came to petition the prophets on the law, and he
would sell it. So again, and again, the Quran shows us that we have a direct relationship with our Creator, we can talk to him whenever we want directly without anyone in between. And that's one of the greatest gifts that Islam gave us as women.
Along with that, I would say, giving us a purpose to our lives, right? How many people are walking around purposeless, right, they don't know what the meaning of life is. Imagine living a life like that, you know, the Prophet Muhammad came, and this is why we love him so much. He came to tell us what the purpose of our life was to worship Allah to recognize our Creator and to live an upright life in the way that our Creator wants us to. The second gift that I want to highlight is the gift of
being equal, and yet distinct from men, right, equal to men spiritually, in our dignity in our status, right as human beings,
and yet distinct to men, right? So Islam doesn't pretend that we're the same doesn't pretend were the same. And that's a great thing. You know, because pretending to things that are different are the same. It causes injustice, doesn't it?
And yet, Allah Subhana, Allah gave us that equal potential for gaining his reward for gaining status with him. Right, and a healthy relationship with men. So we understand what our roles are, we understand that we complement with one another, we don't need to be in competition with one another constantly, right?
The third gift that Islam gave to women is the freedom to embrace our femininity. And our true nature as women. We don't have to be in competition with men. We don't have to pretend to be something that we're not right. We are different, we know that we're different, right? That doesn't mean we're better or worse, right? Except in good deed. Except in our, you know, our duck walk. But when it comes to, you know, our potential, we know that we as women, were equal to men spiritually, but we're different. And it's okay to be different. You know, we are the mothers, we are the ones who, you know, we have periods.
And we have a different biology. We have a unique emotional intelligence. You just have to read the books from, you know, various scientists who've written about this today, right? People like Dr. Leonard Sachs, who's written why gender matters. And people like I think my name is Leon Breslin, Dean who wrote the book, The female brain, to really understand that women and men are different and beautiful in that difference. And Islam allows us, my sisters to embrace that femininity, right and to be ourselves. Yes, it's okay not to feel okay. When we are on our periods, right? We don't have to pretend that everything is okay.
It's okay to need to be provided for, you know, when you've just had a baby. So Pamela, right. And not for that burden or financial responsibility to be placed on you, after you've just had a baby and you're just, you know, going through this huge process of, you know, pregnancy and childbirth. Our DNA guarantees for us that will be provided for right in our marriage contracts. It allows us to have
prenuptial agreements, right. So in our marriage contracts, we can stipulate things. These are unique things that were not given to women in the West until very recently, you know, so Pamela I saw an Instagram post from Oxford University celebrating
100 years that women have been allowed to study at Oxford, right?
Women were not allowed into university in this country
100 or so years ago, we have to realize that the things that are considered progress today, I've happened very recently, very recently. And yet, Muslim women like Fatima and affinity were setting up universities. Right, hundreds of years ago, Muslim women, like I showed up on her were the greatest scholars of Islam, right? over 1000 years ago. So what we have to realize is we have a different history to the history of Western women, right.
The fourth gift I want to highlight is
that Allah designed Islam and Islamic law
to serve us as women from the cradle to the grave. It doesn't leave us alone, you know.
Now, that's not to say that some Muslims don't, you know, fulfill that properly, right, or that some Muslim societies don't
fall short of that. But what I'm highlighting here is what Islam actually says right? And you have to differentiate between Islam and Muslims. Sometimes Muslims don't live up to Islam. But in terms of what the last kind of Allah revealed, the way the Sharia is designed, is to serve us as women from the cradle to the grave when we're born. Our fathers are responsible for us, right? They have to provide for us.
They have to take care of us. They are encouraged, you know, Pamela,
the first man in history. I can't think of any other man.
Any other leader who stood up and spoke about the rights of woman of women. At that time, right. The Prophet Muhammad Salah when he was alone, encouraged the raising of daughters, right, the court and came and condemned the killing of baby girls. The practice of female infanticide is rife in India and China in various places around the world, even today, and the UN, right, no matter how many declarations it passes, and you know, promulgates, it hasn't really affected female infanticide.
What about in Arabia, in Arabia before Islam? Female infanticide was normal, because they preferred boys, and they saw girls as a burden.
But when the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam came, you know, he came with the verses of Quran that condemned the killing of girls.
You know what you're reading order to see, let's be a thembinkosi. Let's Allah says, when the female baby who was killed will ask for what's for what sin was she killed, Allah condemned the killing of baby girls. And within 20 years, within two decades, female infanticide was wiped out of Arabia. Right? No matter how many un declarations have been passed, and human rights declarations and the rights of children, etc, etc.
That hasn't happened in the countries where this practice is rife. Where, but Islam had the power to wipe this practice out of a whole nation.
And so after in our adulthood, you know, the Islam incorrectly tells us that when we get married, our husbands are responsible for taking care of us. When we become old, our pet our children, our sons are responsible to take care of us. So from the cradle to the grave. Allah Subhana, Allah designed a system for us and my sisters, that is designed to take care of us. The fifth big gift that Islam gave to us as women and that we often take for granted, is a global family, and a sisterhood like no other.
And we sometimes don't realize how amazing our sisterhood is right? But I was just sitting with one of my friends, you know, sister, Lauren booth.
Sister Lauren, she was saying to me, do you know, I never felt this closeness to women. Until I became a Muslim. She never felt that sense of sisterhood until she beget became a Muslim. And I've heard this from other sisters as well, you know, converts to Islam who will say, you know, we always had a relationship of competition with
Other women until we became Muslim. And then suddenly, we had this amazing sisterhood, this feeling that as soon as you meet a Muslim woman from anywhere in the world, she's your sister, she'll take care of you. And my sisters, that's not a little thing. You know, that is a huge gift to Panama. And I've experienced it myself. I've traveled all over different countries in the Middle East, etc. And I can guarantee you that I could take a rucksack and turn up to any Muslim country, right? I know, I did this in Palestine did this in Egypt.
Turn up, they're virtually empty handed. And I will find a family who will take me who will want to provide for me who wants to feed me who want to house me, right? And they've got nothing to do with me. They don't owe me anything. The only thing that binds us is the fact that we are sisters and brothers, right? So Allah Subhana, Allah gifted us. And these are just five of the amazing gifts that a lot of have Allah gave to us, I want us all to really internalize those, and start to notice and feel gratitude for those great blessings.
So I'm going to talk about our first legendary Muslim woman now. And as
one of the sisters mentioned, we're going to have a quiz. And I don't know if you can see this, this is my book, how the mother of history's greatest nation, and this is going to I'm going to be giving this away as a prize at the end. So do you listen up in sha Allah? So how do you john Atlanta, who was she? Can you tell me in the chat? Tell me some of the facts you know about for the job of the olana.
To embrace Islam, excellent. Exactly. The first person to embrace Islam.
You know, she was literally the first person to hear about Islam, right? The Prophet salallahu alaihe salam comes down from the mountain. And he's shivering and shaking and Who does she is? Does he go to go straight to Khadija and Khadija come in? She takes him to whatever, uncle.
He says to him, oh, this was the angel came to you. Right. And I wish that I was a young man, so that I could help you when your people turn you out your city, and the profits are low and it was settlement. They look at each other in horror, because, you know, they're like a celebrity couple. Right. in Makkah, the prophet Mohammed and Khadija were like an elite celebrity couple. Everyone loved them. You know, people used to keep this their belongings in their house for safekeeping. She had the largest one of the largest caravans right, which is, which meant like her business, right was a huge business. So Pamela, they looked at each other, are we actually going to be thrown out of
our city? And what I said to them, those words, he said,
there's no one who's coming with a message such as yours, except they were persecuted by their people. That night had ages, sense of safety. Her you know, status basically changed, you know, with her embracing Islam.
She believed in the Prophet the most when he faced hardships, right? So you know, the prophets Allah, Solomon, Khadija, and their close family and the blue Hashem, right, his closest clan members were literally thrown out of their homes. And they were thrown into this little valley had to live in tents. And it was like a boycott. It was like a like sanctions, you know, like countries do sanctions nowadays, in order to penalize one another. It was like that nobody was allowed to buy from them. Nobody was allowed to sell to them, nobody was allowed to marry into them, etc, etc, right. It was a complete boycott, and they were starving. The Muslims were starving at that time,
and they had to even eat the leaves from the trees, which is how hungry they they became right.
Out of the land I was there. She went through all of that she went from being one of the wealthiest women in Makkah
to having to endure that.
She believed in the Prophet the most. She funded Islam at the start. We are all a product of her hard work and investment. Excellent. Absolutely. She was the bank roller of that hour, right.
She was the Comforter of the profits as she was a hoarder but all Yes. So
names. She was a businesswoman. Yes, she was. So she was somebody who was already successful in her own right. And she was mother of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, his children, right. And four daughters that she gave birth to. And she also gave birth to, we believe it was two sons. But the four daughters that survived were
Okay, yeah, Zainab, on good form and fight them. Right.
And it's through Fatima that the progeny of the profits are lower insulin continued.
Look, she asked the prophet to marry her. Yes, she actually sent somebody to kind of hint to the Prophet that she wanted to marry him. And then he sent somebody
to propose for.
So just like law fair, and all of that. So what are some of the big lessons that we can learn from the life of Khadija, I'm just going to highlight five of them. I believe that one of the biggest lessons we can learn from her and that we can internalize, right? Because that's what we really want to do. We don't just want to hear stories. We want to know like, how can we take these great women's lives and learn something from them? So the first lesson I think we learned from Khadija is to live for something beyond our own lives, live for something beyond your own life. So Pamela, we're only here for a few decades, sisters, have you ever thought about that? Right? And before we know it, we
will be a memory. And before we know it, you know, a new generation of people will have replaced us. So what are we going to do today? That's going to have an impact beyond our own lives? had aegir Pamela she never lived to see the fruit of her efforts. Have you ever thought about that? You know, all that suffering? She went through the boycott, and then you know, quite a lot when her baby died. Okay, when her son passed away, the entire city was mocking her, right was mocking her family, calling the Prophet sallallahu Sallam a bit of cut off that he doesn't have any male children. Imagine how that would have felt people used to throw the garbage over the walls of her house while
she was there. Right because they had an open part of the house. You know, part of the house was open, like courtyard.
And you know, Abuja labs wife abou labs wife jameelah name was
she used to have the slaves of the city throw garbage, rubbish over the walls of her house, because they hated the message so much. The profits on the lower if someone had come with. So she went through all of that she funded the DNC funded everything in the early parts of Islam.
And yet she died before the hedgerow right, she died before they went to Medina. So she never even saw the photo of Makkah, she never even saw the conquest of Makkah. She never saw the establishment of, you know, the Sharia. in Medina, she never saw
us sitting here today, right? having accepted the being
here in London, right? And the millions and over a billion Muslims all over the world, she never got to see the fruits of her efforts. And yet she made those efforts anyway. And she will be rewarded for that, beyond her life.
lesson two that we learned from Khadija is to seek our status with Allah, you know, forget about your status in this life. If you make your focus, having a high status with Allah and doing the right thing, which is what a leader did, right? You know, even though she had worldly status, she was considered a celebrity, she was considered like an upper class woman of her time, right?
She gave that status up, she knew that if she if she accepts the message of the profits and a lot of what he was selling, she's gonna lose that status. And yet she was willing to do that in order to gain status with her creator. And when you do that, my sister is when we do that when we put a love first above the opinions of other people, then we end up being loved by a lot and the people because Alaska Canada establishes our love in people's hearts. So seek your status with Allah. The third lesson we learned from Khadija is patiently persevere in the face of ignorance.
Right Subhana Allah think of all of the ignorance that she
faced and we're living in a time when Muslims
face ignorance. People do ignorant things. People say terrible things about us as Muslims, you know, the Islamophobia industry is rife, people misinformation is rife. People mischaracterizing us, describing our Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam in terrible ways. But if we patiently persevere and what that means is not just being quiet and sitting down, no. patient, perseverance means that you continue to obey Allah, even though society is pressuring you not to, and you continue to stay away from sins, even though society's telling you not to, and you are willing to speak truth to power, right?
That's what patient perseverance means staying on course, stay on the path, in the face of ignorance, and you will be successful. That's the third lesson we learned from
Abuja. The fourth big lesson we learned from the life of Khadija is that we should try to be a tool for Allah sake, you know, we want a last 100 Allah to use us in a way that will further his cause. And that's exactly what he did. Right? She was a tool in allows for Allah sake. And the fifth big lesson that we learn, and that we've highlighted is be the backbone of your family.
And I mentioned that because it's very easy for in our times for women to constantly be encouraged outside the home, right. That's the trend nowadays, to encourage women to be active outside the home, you know, for your career to be everything, right? That's why you're at university, apparently, right?
That's the narrative anyway, right? But actually, you know, one of the greatest qualities of Khadija began her was that she was a support structure, she was that kind of the backbone of a family. And she was the Comforter of her husband, the profits on a loved one he was selling them. And that's not something that we should consider to be little, you know, supporting the men supporting our families, is very, very important because there's no such thing as a successful society without a successful family.
And so I want us all to really internalize that. And understand that that was one of the great things about deja vu I'll be
the second lady that we're going to look at is
Vince IV Becker, I show the daughter of Walker mother of the believers. So I want you to tell me some of the things you know about Alisha,
tell me some of the things from her life or characteristics of hers that you know, just type it into the chat.
And we're gonna highlight some of her
other great qualities.
Haha, so we got she rated many hobbies. Yes, she was the second most prolific narrator of Hadith, the sayings of the prophets of Allah. She was a scholar of Islam. She's very intelligent. She was the mother of the believers, even though she didn't actually have biological children of her own right.
She was very knowledgeable. She was the most beloved person to us on the last little lesson. She was the only virgin who was married to prophets, Allah, so then
the Sahaba would come to her for decisions. Absolutely. These two literally refer to her right, she was a reference point.
She was the daughter of abubaker. Ah, this, that's a very good thing to have highlighted, because one of the things you'll notice about all of the women that we're looking at today, and many women who have really like,
being women of substance, and you're going to hear me say that term, right, being women of substance.
One of the things you'll notice about them is that they had strong father figures in their lives, you know, either a strong father or a strong father figure. Right. So we look at the Lana, from what I've researched her father because he was a wealthy man, he was a nobleman of Quraysh. You know, he was somebody who really encouraged her, and would have been pivotal in her development. But even apart from him, there was what I got right. I had a huge influence on her. And he used to teach her wisdom and used to teach her from you know, some of the things that he had learned from other scriptures, etc. So, she had a strong male figure in her life.
Arusha, abubaker deep right? who literally taught her who made sure that she was educated? She was one of the most eloquent women. She knew poetry, she knew. And that's basically, you know,
what an education was in those days, right to be able to recite poetry, to know poetry,
to know the genealogy of different people and tribes, she was knowledgeable about that she was knowledgeable about medicine, right, the medicine of that time. And of course, she was the preserve of the Hadith of the Prophet salallahu, alayhi wasallam, she wouldn't have been able to do that with a father who was suppressing her right, or preventing her from expressing that. So she had a strong male figure in her life as well. She was slandered, but Allah revealed iaat in her favor. Absolutely. She was such a special woman, that even though she went through such a difficult test, which was to be slandered, that's like one of the worst things that can happen to a believing woman,
right? When you're a chaste woman, you're somebody who's been careful. Who's been looking after your chastity, you know, you're gonna think of doing her own thing with a man, right?
And then to be accused, you know, in such a horrible way, and for rumors to be flying about you, you know, and you're the wife of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam.
It was a huge test, and money. I'm Annie Hassan was also tested in that way, right? When she turned up with the baby. And she turned up with baby Jesus, Lisa lamp.
And I told her to tell her to get it to make a motion and explain to people that she was fasting, and how fast was fast from speech, right? So she was not speaking. And she pointed to the child to speak. Why did she have to do that? It's because they were literally accusing her, of, you know, they were slandering her, and they were accusing her of basically being an unchaste. Woman. Right? How can you have a baby without any male intervention? They couldn't believe it. Right? So I think this is what made I should have been on her status so high because she suffered something similar to the kind of accusation that Maria Molly has Salaam also suffered, right?
So to have gone through that, and then for Allah Subhana, Allah to reveal verses from above the seven heavens, to clear your name. That's what I should have done that experience. And you know, Subhan, Allah, when those verses came down, do you remember what she said?
She said, I didn't think I was significant enough for Allah above the seven heavens to mention me, you know, Subhana Allah. And yes, she was significant, she was significant to the point that we today, you know, in our prayers, all around the world, when we're reciting Quran, we recite verses about Asia or the liner.
So what what are some of the great things we can learn from Asia, has strong connection to Allah and has sense of duty. So you know, this token, Allah one of the things you realize when you study the life of Asia, and
obviously, I can't go through her whole life here today. But if you are interested in her life, please do join me every Sunday at 5pm. When I actually have a class on the life of a show, you can go to my YouTube channel, you can see the previous videos on that. And you can email, there's an email address there, you'll find
and you can join our class. One of the things you notice about her life, when you study her life, is that she had this strong connection with a laugh from a young age, right? Even when asked when the slander happened, and you know, people were like, you know, no verses had been revealed yet. And you know, when the verses were revealed, and her mother said, Go and thank the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, she said, No, I won't thank him. I will thank Allah. She was constantly connected to Allah. When she was suffering from the slander, she said, I'm just going to do what a what
a human face and I'm dead, right? No, Sir jacobellis and I did write the Prophet Jacob. When he said for sovereign Jamil, I'm just going to have a beautiful patience. There's nothing else I can do. I'm just going to be patient and Allah is going to help me, right. She had that strong connection with Allah. And she also had a sense of duty. So especially after the death of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, she felt it was her duty to educate the believers to tell them the information about his life, that they would not have known except through her right
Because there's so many things that only a wife will know, in that kind of intimate relationship, right?
She was inquisitive and bright. She was inquisitive and bright. So panela she was
so curious, right? She was asking questions, and she would ask follow up questions. And, you know, it shows you that we also should be people who ask questions. If you ask questions, you get more information, you get more knowledge.
She didn't hold grudges. One of the things you notice is after her slander, when certain people had been accused, and it was clear that they had been spreading rumors about her years later, or even years later, when she recited when she narrated the stories about those incidents. Some had alleged she never held a grudge against those people. She doesn't talk about them in disparaging terms, you know, she actually makes excuses for them.
And even when it came to her wife, her co wives, even though she had rivalry with them, when it came to speaking about them, so for example, when all of a sudden, my pastor, sorry when Xena passed away, right? And when other of her co wives passed away, she actually praised them. And she said, You know what they were great women used to give sadaqa. And they were truthful. And she really praised them. Even though in the life they had some lot of rivalry. She didn't hold any grudges against them. She preserved the Sunnah of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam. And she was a reference point. And that's a huge service that she did for us, right? So many things we would not
know about the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam
if it wasn't fired, sure. And that's why the other Sahaba, as somebody mentioned, including the kailis used to refer to her, right, they refer to her as a reference point. She didn't allow mistakes and difficulties to stop her moving forward. And the reason why I mentioned that is, you know, one thing you'll notice, if you study her life is there were certain times when quite big things happen that could be seen as like calamities, right, seen as really big, like,
they could knock a person's confidence, right. So apart from the slander, you know, there was there was, of course, after the death of the Prophet salallahu alaihe salam there was
the killing of man, the man who was assassinated, I shouted him out, I felt very strongly about it, that the people who killed him should be brought to justice. And so she went out at the call of some of the other Sahaba, right,
in order to kind of protest and to rally support for the killers of man or the llama to be brought to justice. And Amira, Delia unwhole, he also had supporters, and they met at a particular place. And due to set some misunderstandings and problems, unfortunately, the situation ended up in a battle, right. And what happened was, you know, there were some hypocrites, and they caused a lot of fitna, and this is what caused a lot of harm in that situation. I showed it and I really regretted going out to that place that day. And you know, Alia Delano after everything. At one, it was all peaceful and calm. He went and he accompanied it change, he made sure that she was accompanied back
to Medina, in a dignified way. Because none of them had intended for it to have turned into a battle, right was just some troublemakers who had caused it to become a battle. And I should have been on height in that situation, just imagine how you'd feel right? When you feel like, you know,
you were a key person that might have, you know, contributed to a very terrible situation for the Muslims is like the first time that Muslims were fighting one another, right? And she remembered that the Prophet sallallahu Sallam had told her not to, or Well, he hadn't said it explicitly, but he had said, what will be the situation of one of you when the dogs have bark? Right, and on the way to this place, she had heard the dogs barking and she asked, Where are we? And somebody had said to her, we are in holub.
And she became very upset and she said, Take me home Take me home,
because she realized that the Prophet salallahu alaihe salam had expressed disapproval of going out in that way. Right. So So Pamela
She felt very sad after that incident. In fact, she never really forgot that incident. And she, even on her deathbed, she would say, you know, I made a big mistake.
And yet, even after that incident, it didn't mean that she's completely fell apart and stopped doing anything in society, right? No, she just adjusted herself. And she doubled down and started focusing on teaching. And she established her own group of students who became some of the greatest scholars of Islam, right. So she didn't completely fall apart. She just moved on. She learned from her mistakes. And she moved forward, or the law under her.
And now we're going to move on to
Zeno, bizarrely, so this is somebody from more recent times, right? Anyone, bizarrely, who is she
don't know any information about her, you can type it in the chat. So she was born in 1970. Okay.
So this is basically seven years before the Ottoman Caliphate was abolished. And we have to understand is the the, the ending of the Ottoman Caliphate, or the caliphate was very traumatic for the Muslims, you know, and we are still living in that kind of period, right?
We are still affected by the ending of the caliphate, because now we have all these nation states.
We have interesting leaders who lead this nation states, right? We have all the way from barbaric dictators to, you know, sportsmen, right? leading the Muslim countries. And we haven't ever really recovered from the ending of that caliphate. Right? So panela, even though we're seeing an amazing revival, and Zainab ulhas Alley was one of the key people involved in that revival. Because in Egypt at that time, which is where she grew up,
and again, she had a strong father, a father, who really encouraged her right, a father who was a graduate of Alaska. He was a teacher and cotton merchant, he empowered her from a young age, okay. And he used to tell her the stories of the great women of the past, to encourage her.
And at the beginning of her life, in her teenage years, she joined the Egyptian feminist movement. But then she became she realized that they didn't really have anything for her, you know, anything really, truly empowering for women in the way that Islam did. Right? So she left, she left the Egyptian feminist movement. And she formed her own organization called the Jamaat Jabbar to say that and Muslim at right.
And this was at the age of 18, can you imagine? So, from a young age, she had this strong connection with Allah, the Quran, and she could see in the society around had become so secular, had become so distant from Allah. And she knew that the future for Egypt, and the future for the Muslims was that they must reacquaint themselves with Allah, they must re establish their connection with Islam with all these foreign forces in this post colonial era that Egypt was in with, you know, socialist, so called socialist governments and then demolish the Nasser. Right, who was the president at the time, who basically was he was really he was a, he was head of the army, and then he became the president,
Islam and Muslims and the religious Muslims were being suppressed in Egypt, right? Because Islam was seen as a counter to their political ideals, right and to the keeping of power.
So, the organization the Muslim Brotherhood was formed around that time. And designable has early, she formed her own organization for women. And then later she joined together with which she became a collaborator with the Muslim Brotherhood, whose aim was just to revive the Muslim Ummah right to revive Muslim connection to Islam.
And Subhan Allah, she went through a lot of hardship, because millions of women became members of her organization. And she used to teach in the masjid of urban to learn in Cairo, I believe. And so Pamela 3000
women would turn up to her classes. So because she was so influential
Egypt at that time, and even until today, had a lot of, you know, secret services everywhere. And they were infiltrating her organization and trying to influence her, trying to bribe her to give up her that way, and to join the Socialist Party of
Jamal at the NASA
to the point and she refused, right, because she wants to keep her independence, she didn't want to become a tool of the state, especially the state that was secular that was not
not promoting Islam,
to the point that she suffered a car crash, and was unconscious and was in hospital. And she know in her book, return of the pharaohs, she, you know, she highlights how she she feels that she believes and there's evidence that it was actually the secret services that tried to kill her that day, right? Because they saw her so influential. And they saw the revival of the revival of Islam as a threat, Angela, and then they try, they even arrested her eventually, right, as they did to many of the members of the Muslim Brotherhood. And they tried to they tortured her handler, and you have to read her book to understand how you know the type of torture, you know, Ron's full of dogs. Were set
on how dogs were set on her. Right. And, you know, some amazingly miraculous things happen to her, because even even though she was subjected to torture, she said, I lost her somehow gave her a feeling of peace during some of the worst moments of her torture, right. And it's really harrowing, just reading about the things that she went through. And all they wanted her to do, is to basically leave her that our join their party, and to sign certain statements, you know, basically denouncing her cause denouncing the dean, joining the cause of Jamal of the Nasir, etc, etc. Right. And she refused to do that. And because she refused to do that,
she was subject to all of these things to Panama. Just want to mention one more thing.
Okay, so some of the lessons we've learned from her is that she did what was needed for the cause of a lot in her times, based on knowledge, that's really important for us right to internalize. What does Allah want us to do? Now? That's the question we should all be asking ourselves.
How can we further the cause of our line our times, she didn't ask for permission to do what is right. She didn't ask anyone's permission. You know, sometimes we're waiting for people to just allow us to do things that we know that we should be doing. No, you don't need permission for those things. Things that you do for the sake of Allah, do them with conviction, like she did. She was willing to suffer for her convictions. And we have to realize that, you know, as they say, faith that is not tested, cannot be trusted. faith that is not tested, cannot be trusted. And that's why Allah Subhana Allah tests our faith, right? He tested her faith. So all the trials that she went
through, and she was willing to suffer for her convictions. Question for us is, what are we prepared to do for our convictions? She also brought her family on board, and I'm going to show you something that she said, which will illustrate that. And she was on bribable. Right? She could not be bribed away from her Dean. And we need to be that kind of person. Right? No matter what the donor offers us. We should not give up on our principles.
And I'm just going to read this beautiful quote, which is something that she stipulated in her marriage contract, would you believe she believed so deeply in her cause? And the cause of, you know, furthering the message of Islam to people who had all been lost that conviction? No.
She believed in it so strongly that she even made it part of her marriage contract. And this is a statement that is attributed to her, you know, in a marriage contract that she said to her husband, if that day comes, when a clash is apparent between your personal interests and economic activities on the one hand, and my Islamic work on the other, and that I find in my married life is standing in the way of Dawa and the establishment of an Islamic State. Then each of us should go our own way.
I cannot ask you today to share with me this struggle, but it is my right on you not to stop me from jihad in the way of Allah from struggling and striving in the way of Allah.
Moreover, you should not ask me about my activities with other day again,
and let trust be full between us a full trust between a man and a woman, a woman who at the age of 18, gave her full life to Allah and Tao. In the event of any clash between the marriage contracts interest and that of our marriage. Does she say, Sorry, I'm eligible. And now I will always remain rooted in me. So Panama, just kind of shows you the conviction that she had right? But she made sure that when she got married, she was like, Look, I need to you need to know this, right. You need to be on board with what I'm about to do. And it was this plan that empowered her to be able to do that, right. So Pinilla.
Next lady, Charlotte, this is the last lady that we're gonna mention. And then we can have some questions and answers. The last lady that I want to highlight somebody quite recent, actually.
And it is sister Ella Collins, sister, Ella Collins.
Ella colic. This is Ella Collins here on the right, okay, she is the eldest sister of none other than unhedged, Malika Shabana Shabazz, Malcolm X.
You must have, we'll see if I got it, yep, I've got it.
I've got like five copies.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X is a very well known book, right? I'm sure you've either read it, or if you haven't read it, make sure you read it. Because Subhanallah when I was a teenager, growing up in London with no hijabi is no visible Muslims around in my area of London anyway.
This man, and this book really changed my life. And the lives of many of our generation, you know,
Subhan, Allah, Malcolm X, the western Muslim leader, right? Of course, he was a civil rights leader, and fought for civil rights for especially for black people in America.
And his life story is so well known. I'm not going to go into his life. But we know that due to Malcolm X, embracing Islam,
Well, at first he had embraced them, you know, he joined an organization called the Nation of Islam, right, which was kind of like a mix between Islam and Christianity and
Medea, and God knows a few other things, right. And they believe that there was a man called Elijah Mohammed, who was a messenger that he was, he was divine, and this is why Muslims don't consider the Nation of Islam to be Muslim, right.
But he had joined that organization, often many, many years of, you know, going through years of being a criminal and going to prison. And even before that he had lived in poverty. So panela, you know, his father was murdered by white supremacists. And so Allah, Allah and Malcolm, they shared the same father, right? They were half brothers and sisters are different mothers. But they have the same father. And again,
he was a very strong father figure, because one of the things you notice when you read about the life of Allah is that a father really encouraged her and was very proud of her very proud of how Oh, little, I believe his name was. And he was a Christian, like, Pastor, right, Baptist preacher.
And he was killed by a white supremacist because he was trying to encourage black people in America to kind of, you know, be independent and reconnect with their African roots, etc. And so what happened when he was wounded, Ella
came to Lansing, which is where Malcolm was living with his family. Unfortunately, the whole family, Malcolm and his brothers and sisters was split up. And then, you know, his mother was taken to a mental institution. Because, you know, she was under so much pressure, you know, so Pamela, and so Malcolm was basically and his brothers and sisters were all divided into different foster families, etc. And it was Ella who stepped in and said, and offered to Malcolm, he come and live with her. And then she became his legal guardian, right. So he basically traveled to Boston, which was like, you know, Metropolis is the
First time that he was out of like small town America, I think, I believe, and he said about how she had played a very significant role in my life. No other woman ever was strong enough to point me in directions. I pointed women in directions.
And I'm just going to highlight some of the great lessons from HELOC. These are some other pictures you can see. This is Malcolm and Ella standing outside Ella's house. And Ella's house has actually been preserved. It's in Boston, I believe. And Roxbury. I think that's the exact location. And it's, you know, it's become like a protected landmark. And this is Ella, she set up an Islamic school where she used to have bring in Arabic teachers to teach for an Arabic. And this is Ella in her old age. Right, so Pamela, and she actually embraced Islam, you know, suddenly Islam, mainstream Islam, she embraced Islam before Malcolm did 1959 she embraced Islam. And
she became a Muslim because she used to go to the Orthodox Masjid. And they taught her about Islam. And she realized that, you know, the teachings of the Nation of Islam were not were contradicting the Quran. And so it was her actually who first became a Muslim. And she kept encouraging Malcolm to do the same. And then eventually, she paid for him to go on Hajj, right. You know, the famous hedge, which changed his life was Ella who funded that hedge.
Some of the things we learn from her life, and if you're interested, I encourage you to go to the Islam 21 c.com website, where I've written a full article on the life of Allah Collins, it's called Ella Collins, the woman who led Malcolm X. And so she was secrets soldier of a lot. She really was, you know, she was working for Allah, even though she wasn't necessarily the most visible and the person in the front line. And you know, the Prophet sallallahu Sallam said, Whoever guides someone to goodness will have a reward, like one who did it. So you don't have to be she didn't have to be Malcolm X to get the reward of Malcolm X, right? She had to support him. And that's what she did at
every stage of his life. She, you know, she was there, she became as a legal guardian. She didn't have to do that, you know, they were her half brothers and sisters in another city. But she went over there to see how they were. She brought him back.
At every stage of his life, when he was in prison, she used to send him books, she used to visit him. Sometimes he rejected her, right? Because, you know, he was going through different phases. But she kept constant in her love, and in her care for him, and sometimes tough love as well. Right? And, and it paid off in the end, right? It paid off because he became
the greatest black Muslim leader in America, if not the greatest Muslim leader in America, right. And he had the potential to be even greater.
She was rooted and unapologetic about her heritage and confident in her skin. And that's one of the things that Malcolm says, The first time he saw her, he says,
you know, it's quite funny, just reading the way he mentions it. But the reason why it's important is that you have to understand at that time in America, the Jim Crow laws were in place, right, which basically segregated black and white people, they didn't allow black people to go to certain places to enter certain jobs. I mean, this is literally just very, very recent, only in like 1965 that these Jim Crow laws were abolished, I believe. And so in that setting, it was very difficult for black people to feel proud of who they were because they will constantly do degraded, right? And so Ella, Malcolm says about her Ella wasn't just black. But like our father, she was jet black, the
way she sat, moved, talk did everything bespoke someone who did and got exactly what she wanted. This was the woman my father had boasted of so often, for having brought so many of their family out of Georgia to Boston. She owned some property he would say, and she was in society. She had come North with nothing and she had worked and saved and invested in property that she built up in value. And then she started sending money to Georgia for another brother or sister or cousin or nice to come
to come off to Boston, or that I had heard
It was reflected in Ella's appearance and bearing. So it was the first time he met somebody in his circle, who's really proud, and unapologetic for a heritage confident in her skin, right. She was never trying to be anything else. Even when Malcolm was, you know, cocking his hair, which is basically putting this poisonous stuff in his head in order to make it look more white. Right when he went through those phases, she wasn't she was always very proud of her heritage, and she never tried to hide it.
And it shows, you know, when you like that, it encourages the next generation encourages the next generation to also be proud of their heritage. She was a role model. So even when Malcolm fell into crime, she was an honest businesswoman who was very proud of being, you know, financially independent and stable, to the point that she would send the money to all of her relatives.
She stayed connected and invested in the lives of her family and community. So she funded projects in different universities, right to promote kind of the teaching of black history. Also, she set up a school, she sets up Arabic and Quran classes for her community. And she used to help people set up businesses.
She used her wealth to lift others up to Panama. And lastly, she refused to be a statistic. And what I mean by that is, Allah used to feel very strongly that African Americans should be independent, should have their own, you know, communities support one another, to lift themselves up, right, and not to be dependent on the state. And she she really felt very strongly about that.
And despite the Jim Crow laws, and despite the oppression that, you know, black Americans were subject to at that time, especially, even though hasn't gone even today. You know, it was even worse at that time. Despite that, she refused to be a statistic. She was very resourceful. And she did her best to lift herself out of poverty, to the point where she could even help others. Right. So I think these are some of the great things that we can learn from some of these women. I'd like to add with Ella Collins to panel that when she learned about the truth, she followed it right, even before Malcolm. And she recognized that him going on how much it was more important than her going on hedge
because the impact that that would have was huge.
And so what did she do, she the money that she'd been saving up for how much she gave it to him. And she he ended up going, going to Africa going to different countries as well, as well as realizing that, you know, the mall was one and that Islam would be a great solution for America. He came back he set up two organizations. One of them was Muslim mosque Inc, which was for the spreading of Islam in America. And after he died,
or he was assassinated, she made sure that he had an Islamic janazah she took over his organization, and she paid off his debts and you know, any business expenses, his organization for African American unity.
And he had come back from his trip with some scholarships, 35 scholarships from Al Azhar University and the governor, the University of Ghana. And so she became the custodian of those scholarships. And she would make sure that, you know, students got those scholarships that they can go abroad and study. So she took care of Malcolm's legacy in that way. And SubhanAllah. So many people have been impacted by both of their legacies, even until today.
I just got this at the end, which is
it's an interesting thing I just want to share with you, and it is basically
the text of the Shahada certificate that Malcolm X
got from Al Azhar University when he went there. And this is from a book which is about Malcolm's life, okay, which is about sorry, Ella's life written by her son. And he says that, you know, as a sign of his appreciation to Allah, Malcolm gave this certificate to her from the rector of allows her University just to kind of show her that he had become a Muslim, right. So Pamela,
so it's just something I wanted to share with you.
And shows you how much he honored her. He considered her to be his mother figure, right?
So, does that Camilla Heron? I owe
her okay for the time.
If there are any questions,
please do ask away in the chat in Sharla. If managed to be in, and Rob, if you want to
interject with anything, please do. Note,
the amazing talk, you covered so many, like different aspects of their lives that I absolutely had no idea about before. And so just to kind of segue on to the Questions section, everyone, and if you have any questions at all, feel free to pop them in the chat, and so forth more inshallah be addressing them. So we do actually have a few coming in, I think, as well as a few thanks. Are you able to access the top to answer them? Or should we Yeah, yeah, I'm just looking. So when the question when the kind of, Yes, okay. is one on Xena Bella Sally, and as in did she get married and sort of older? And then we talked about her marriage contracts? Regarding cage? She did.
So Zainal is it she did get married? I think she married she got married and divorced. And then she married somebody else as well. I don't know, the full details of her marriages and afraid but I do know that. Husbands were also very active, you know, in her cause? And I do believe that they will also persecuted, you know, along with her. But I don't have the exact details of that. But yes, she did. She did get married, you can look it up quite easily online. And you can also read her book, which is the return of the Pharaoh.
And you can see the full details of that there. You know, in Sharla
just looking at some of the questions.
How can women regain respect and position that Islam has placed for them in their local community? issues such as press spaces, unwanted advances from men?
How do we improve these issues?
Okay, that's a very good question. So
I think
I think we have to do things with wisdom, you know, because we live in a time when
we have to understand that we haven't been in this country, I am assuming that, you know, the question is from Britain,
or the West, and in western countries, we haven't been here that log in, like, literally our parents generation, or our grandparents generation are the ones that came right. And so there are still a lot of cultural things that some people had brought back from their cultures, you know, here, and they became the norm, right. So things like a mosque being only for men and stuff like that. It's kind of very common in the Indian subcontinent, right, Asian subcontinent. So, I think what we have to do, in order to change that, especially the things that are just cultural, they're not, they're not Islamic, is to get involved.
Rather than doing things in a very kind of harsh way. Okay. We should do them slowly, but surely, through engagement, through building good relationships with men, and especially with male scholars, with men, who are the leaders of those mosques, etc. Right? Well, one of the most powerful ways that we can do it, and I know that this is a long term thing,
is to teach our own sons, right? teach our own children to have the right attitude. Because, you know, they're going to be the leaders of the future, right? They're the ones who are going to build the mosques of the future or lead or take over the mosques of the future. And if they have the right attitude, and believe me, so Pamela, this is why as women, we are so influential, that we are half of the format and we give birth to the other half, right? Whatever attitude we instill in the next generation will become the prevailing attitude. So we have the ability to do that. And I know that's a long term thing, and it's going to take patience. But I would suggest that one of the ways to
really change things from the inside, you know, to educate the next generation to have the right attitude.
Unwanted advances from men. So Pamela again, you know, I lived in Egypt and
you don't want to hear the stories. Right? what it was like it that even when you're wearing hijab, right? Unfortunately, though, you know, it's just shows you that duck one right duck wha
Something that has to be instilled in people, you know that even when you're dressed in a job, even if you've got a beard, you know, the toque doesn't necessarily come automatically, there has to be instilled, there has to be something that you nurture within yourself. So
I don't know what the short term solutions for those things are. But long term, we just have to influence the next generation. And that's why it's so important that either as mothers or as educators of the next generation, we get involved, we care about the youth, you know, the up and coming youth and also our own generation, you know, trying to influence our own generation, especially those of those of you who are young, you know, to have a different attitude. We have knowledge and wisdom, right? Because if you have knowledge panela you can convince people, if you're just using emotion, it won't work. So it's really important for us as women to get educated
islamically. And just like, you know, there's a story where, oh, my brother, Daniel, he was trying to limit the dowries of the women, right? He was saying, you know, women are demanding these huge diaries, and it's making marriage really hard.
So he tried to put a cap on the diaries of his time when he was a cave. And you know, one of the ladies she stood up in the masjid, right. And she challenged him on that. And she said, But Allah says in the Quran, that even if you give them a pin bar, which is like a huge amount, then you know, you must honor it. In other words, a woman can ask for whatever she wants for marriage, or you can't put a cap on that.
And when overheard that verse of the Quran, right? So in other words, when that woman used knowledge in order to, to change his opinion, he accepted it, you know, and he said, Subhanallah, you know, everyone is more knowledgeable than Omar, right? And he said, the woman has
spoken the truth, right? So you see, we've got to change things through knowledge and through wisdom, and not through hotheadedness, not through emotion.
Okay, aside from the two books you mentioned earlier, what other books would you suggest reading both Western books on gender differences and also Islamic books,
of women's history, women in history? Well, you know, the average Islamic book shop does have quite a lot of books.
You know,
off the top of my head, you know, read books all about the difference, hobby arts.
Read, Sally's book, read The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as well as
his as well as Ella Collins son's book, I forgot what it's called. I can look it up online and sha Allah.
His name is Radha Nell, I believe Collins.
But I would encourage you to go to your local Islamic bookshop, especially, you know, book shops, like in central mosque, etc Daraa, salaam bookshop and some of the book shops in East London, if you're in London, and just look at the, you know, the section on women, and you'll see this, like, a lot of books now. hamdulillah. So, you know, the more we read, I think, the better and it's really important that we are grounded in our classical knowledge. You know, I would say before we venture into, you know, the kind of academic writings that there are, because sometimes the academic writing sound very good, but they're not really grounded in traditional
teachings, right.
So, I hope that helps. How do we empower our younger generation of women, as mothers, teachers, siblings, etc.
I think the best thing is to be great role models ourselves, you know, because believe me, there's so many people who like, when we grew up, you know, my mom was the only hijabi that we knew a lot of the Asian 90s or the women. They didn't wear hijab, even though they were Muslims, right?
They just thought, well, we're in Britain now. So you know.
And yet, their children later on, you know, when we grew up, they would say to me, like when we'd all grown up, you know, your mom is to a job and used to you guys used to a job. So we really got inspired by that. We wanted to wear a job because of that and we wanted to be you know, more knowledgeable about Islam, etc. So, you don't know who's watching you. The youngest
Animation are watching us, right all the time. So we've got to make sure we make the right decision so that we are great role models for them.
For those of us who don't have male figures in our lives, how should we compensate for this and avoid any negative results? Yes, I'm, yeah, I'm conscious that not everyone has that. But
you know, I would encourage people to have mentors. You know, I think mentors are really important.
It's better to have maybe, mentors who are quite senior, right? Not too young.
People who are a little bit older, you know, father figure type, people, sure you're,
but I've obviously got to be careful.
Meaning that, you know, you want to you want to make sure it's an upright person, somebody who maybe you can study with, right? So
some of the great sheoak in our times, you know, they are have been really good mentors, Mashallah. I've had a few of them be my mentor, I would say, people like chef Akram nadwi. You know, you can attend his classes.
Salaam Institute,
show Haytham as well, you know, shahidan has been a great mentor.
and various other scholars, you know, if you can build a good relationship with them by attending their classes in Charlotte, Allah, you'll find them to be good role models, and good mentors. Otherwise, you know, you can always and obviously other sheep as well, you know, there's, there's many sheep in our communities, but also the male figures in your own families. You know, sometimes it might be an uncle that might be an elder,
grandparent, something like that. Somebody who really cares about you, or an elder brother, even
how do we foster stronger sisterhood? Post University in particular?
No, keep in touch, I guess keep in touch keep visiting one another meeting one another. And
I think I really believe in how lockers you know, like having a regular halaqa that keeps you connected.
Because it's like a reminder, whatever stage of life you're going through. We all need reminders.
And we all need a space to connect.
can't see any other questions?
Just a handful your comments
subhanak Allahu morbihan dig a shadow La ilaha illa Anta stuff hirokawa to be like a Salaam Alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh