Hosai Mojaddidi – The Role of Women in Christianity & Islam
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Bismillah mn offI. I'd also like to say that I have no particular
expertise on the history or role of women in the United Methodist
Church. So I was very grateful for this opportunity, which came as an
invitation to me to study and learn more about my own faith
tradition. And I know that's exactly in keeping with the values
of the goals of this organization. So I'm delighted to participate.
Having said that, though, I have been a woman and professional
ministry in this denomination for over 35 years. And I do have my
own experience to bring to bear.
As I thought about this topic, I knew without a doubt that I would
have to begin at the very beginning, with the life of one
woman in particular, who has a unique influence on the
perspective of the denominations and founders, and she, Susanna
Wesley,
the mother of John and Charles Wesley, the founders of the
Methodist movement, which began with him the Anglican Church.
Susanna became the wife of Samuel Wesley in 1688 in England, and
together they had nine teenage children,
nine of whom died in infancy.
The day after each child turned five years old, Susanna began
their formal education with six hours today, Spanish in lessons,
including the daughters being taught.
On Sunday afternoons Susanna has some of her children's were the
singing of songs, and for hearing the sermon, which is deliver
up to 200 local people began attending her services because the
Sunday morning preacher in quotations lack the diversity of
spiritual teaching, which Suzanna services provide.
Suzanne has husband Samuel, who was a rector at the Epworth
church, and who had been awake for some time while Susanna assumed
this Manage Roles as a preacher challenged Suzanne to justify her
actions. She responded that she believed the life of the church
hung in the balance, and no other course of action was left open to
her other than to take it.
So her son John, who was nine years old, at the time, had a very
powerful example of the kind of leadership women might exert in
church, and it would influence the role women would eventually have
the development of his Methodist movement.
Methodism began as a revival movement within the Protestant
Church of England. In the 1730s.
While attending Oxford University, John and Charles began their holy
clothes, which adhere to discipline, prayer study and
service schedules.
The name method is stuck. Though it originated as a derogatory term
that students at Oxford used to ridicule the rigorous methods and
structures.
As hobbling clubs bring into madness societies and the movement
spread to North America, women participated in large numbers.
Though John Wesley did not encourage women to preach except
under extraordinary circumstances. He did recognize their leadership
in a variety of other ways.
This kind of ambivalence toward embracing women's full authority
to read in the church has remained embedded in our denomination,
of course, has also been changing significantly over the past 250
years.
It wasn't until 1956 That women received full clergy rights in the
Methodist Church.
Today, women account for approximately 60% of total church
membership and roughly 30% of clergy positions.
Here I have to say that in the United Methodist Church, there are
two distinct orders for clergy, elders and deacons
It will require seminary training and passing the scrutiny of
certifying boards.
However their roles are different.
Elders carry the authority to lead or solo to Lead or be solo pastors
in local churches. Elders preach. They administer the sacraments and
they are responsible for ordering the life of the congregation.
deacons on the other hand, serve in team ministry with elders and
local churches are in settings outside the local churches, such
as hospitals or nonprofit organizations, connecting local
churches to the needs of the world.
The order of Deacon was established in 1996. So it's
relatively new,
and provides clergy status for those who carry on or legacy be
done by lay professionals and specialty fields such as Christian
education, music and outreach ministry.
But the order of elders can trace its roots back to John Wesley's
ordination of men for service in North America in the 1700s.
In 2014 76%, of all those ordained as deacons were women,
and 80% of elders or men.
I'm a deacon. And my colleague, Pastor Henry cam is an elder.
As is always the case in women's leadership development, having
role models who are women has immeasurable value.
I chose Christian education as my profession because I felt called
to ministry and I was influenced and powerful and delightful ways
by male hairs, the children's ministry specialist at the church
my family attended in Texas.
Never know if I would have chosen the border nation on the elder
track if Mandela had been the pastor, rather than proficient
managing case.
But that was Texas in the 1970s. And what's important to note is
that the United Methodist Church looks very different in the
Western United States, and particularly here in California
than it does in the southeastern United States.
The race and gender divide is much more pronounced in places like
Mississippi and Virginia, Alabama and Texas, for instance, than it
is in California.
In 1984, Bishop Lantian, Kelly was elected the first black woman to
become a bishop in any Christian denomination.
And she was elected by the Western jurisdiction of the United
Methodist Church after running with great disappointment from
consideration in the southeast, where her where her home church
was, because it was clear she could not be elected there.
The United Methodist Church as an institution that reflects the
racism and sexism, and homophobia, don't get me started, have the
context in which it
it also contributes its own layers.
A clergy sister once told me that on the first Sunday, she led
worship in a small church in the Central Valley of California, as
the first woman pastor in its history. The organist rather than
playing a hymn or a piece of sacred music, played the theme
song from the Miss America Pageant as she processed down the aisle,
Indian worship.
In the decades since women were first ordained elders, they have
faced many challenges, as they have sought to carry their
authority authentically.
They have consistently asked themselves, how do I take
authority while leading in a way that empowers others?
Over the years as women have continued to live their answers to
that question, it has become a foundation for leadership style
shift throughout the whole Church.
Today there's membership in the United Methodist Church and in
other mainline Protestant denominations in the United States
continues to decline. And as upkeep for aging church buildings
become more difficult.
Innovative young clergy are creating new ways of seeing the
Church by returning to relationship and hospitality as
the heart of ministry.
house churches are forming around lead baking ministries, caregiving
ministries, workplace based ministries are inviting seekers to
an experience of church that holds promise for them. And is not the
style of church their grandparents attend.
I think the influence of women in ministry has been a significant
contributing factor to this kind of attendance to the changing gate
of society.
I also think that generally, historically, the new
contributions of women in the church have been mostly resisted
at every step, and only more fully appreciated again, in hindsight.
And as more and more women have become leaders in the church and
prominent ways
women in the church have been and continues to be bringers of food
for potluck supper, visitors of the sick,
the prepares of wedding and memorial service receptions,
committee members, worshipping in the pews, teaching Sunday school,
leading small groups directing choirs, printing bulletins,
answering phones advocating for justice speaking prophetically and
pastoring churches.
It remains to be seen what new roles and new ways of being in
ministry, women will create and zoom into the future.
pretty impressed with the with the turnout.
With that said, I, the topic for tonight's talk is really something
I wanted to first focus on before actually getting into the talk.
Because I'm sure it's been repeated. But what is the role of
women in your face? Right? And how has it evolved over time? The
wording is important. Because the focus is on the face. Right? In my
experience, especially in post 911 with a lot of the rhetoric that's
sort of, permeated in our, in our culture and our society about
Islam and Muslims, I found that I don't often in a position where
I'm very defensive about not so much what my faith says, But what
the people who claim to share my faith do. And so I really value
opportunities like this, where I can actually focus on what the
actual faith teaches, as opposed to having to explain what other
people might do. Right? Because many times, for example, I've been
asked,
Why can't women in Saudi Arabia dry? Right? Or? I'm from
Afghanistan, born in Afghanistan, so why can't Why can't girls or
women in Afghanistan get an education? And so again, I have
to, you know, defend? Well, it's not has nothing to do with my
faith. It has to do with the fact that unfortunately, people who
again claim to be acting on behalf of my faith are not acting on it.
And they have usurped the rights of individuals. And you know, it's
offensive to different tangents. So anyhow, like I said, I really
appreciate the fact that I can actually just focus.
You know, the time that the talk today on Idol Islam actually says,
and this is happening, especially about Muslim women, it's really
one of my favorite topics to talk about. I speak regularly on
different topics, because it takes me back to my own journey coming
into the faith. See, I was born into a Muslim family of very
conservative, conservative, I was a culturally conservative family.
It wasn't quite religious, we weren't really practicing, but we
had a very strong identity as cultural Muslims. And so it wasn't
until my first year in college when I actually started, I think
having mania, existential and spiritual crisis and started
asking a lot of questions about my existence. My purpose, I lost my
grandfather. So that was the very first sort of, you know,
experience of reality about thinking about existence. But
after that, I had another incident at the school that I attended,
where I was actually asked to gather or kind of rally around
some some Muslims to come to a talk on campus where there would
be a female speaker and she was going to talk about female genital
mutilation and she was she was
I was told by the
teacher or the professor at a time that she was a Muslim woman. And,
and it would be really nice to have members of the Muslim Student
Association come and attend and just support her. And you know, to
be there for so I, you know, I was actually at that time very active
in the club, and also students association. So I asked some
friends to join me, and we attended the talk, to go and help
and support her. But we found that she had actually left Islam. And
she began to talk about sort of her own personal feelings, you
know, things that she had conflicts with, but also saying
things that were categorically just wrong and flat out, untrue.
And so I found myself in a position of having to speak out
and, you know, and kind of question what she was doing. And
it kind of turned into this moment, like, I felt like it was
kind of in the twilight zone, where I really remember that
moment, because there was an audience full of mostly women. And
they were there to obviously also support her. But when they saw me
speaking out against her, they kind of, you know, they felt like,
like I was offensive, although I didn't say anything necessarily
offensive, I was just more defending my faith. But I think at
that moment, when I saw the response on the audience, I
started thinking about who am I, and what's my identity as a Muslim
woman, because I didn't cover as I do. Now, I wasn't doing my five
daily prayers, I wasn't really, you know, embodying all the things
that I believe, but I just, I just hadn't arrived at that place where
I wanted to really seriously, my favorite, the practice. So when I
saw that reaction, and I, you know, I just was in that moment of
thinking about deep
reflection about who am I, what's my identity, that sort of sparked
my journey into studying not just my own faith, but also other
faiths as well. So I started with actually shifting my studies into
religious studies, and I took different courses on all the world
religions. But when I landed on Islam, it was revelatory for me,
because I didn't realize how many prejudices and misconceptions I
carried about the role of Muslim women. And things that you know,
even growing up as a family that I thought they later found out were
very cultural practices. They were all kind of, you know, again,
coming into life, as I started studying your faith. For example,
the first thing that I remember,
you know, I read a list that had comparison of all the rights that
Muslim women were given 1400 years ago, compared to women from other
faith traditions, or just, you know, around the world. And one of
the first things that the list mentioned was the right of Muslim
women to marry and divorce,
you know, all on their own. Now, by show of hands,
please work with me here. How many of you have or have been led to
believe that Muslim women do not have choice when it comes to
marriage and divorce? Right?
So again, this is something that in that list, I started, you know,
reading more and more, but there's a story that I'd like to share one
of the companions of the Prophet Muhammad, his name was it many of
us if interest in the sun, so the sun of having the best, he relates
that once a young girl, she came to the public comment, and she had
just been buried off forcibly by her father, and she was very
upset. So she came to complain to him. Now, in that moment, that
moment, the marriage ceremony had already happened. So he paused and
he ended up getting this is important to reflect on what you
know how he engaged her, he asked her, now that this has happened,
you have a choice? Do you wish to stay in this marriage? Or do you
wish to leave the marriage? Her response? was, what do you think,
brought some? Yes. How did you not think she said, I want out? Bring
me out of this. She complained, right? How many people think she's
sick?
Right. And
she, she actually says, I do wish to stay. The reason I spoke up is
so that I let other women know that no man has the right to force
them into a marriage. So this story to me was really profound
because not only is she exercising her own
choice, right in the matter, but she's also clearly showing that
she is looking out for other women and so she made a really
responsible decision to speak out but she could have just, you know,
kept quiet and got into the state in America without anybody ever
knowing that she's had a problem with it, but she wanted to make a
clear point. And in fact that that was related.
I'm just one of many that dispel this myth that also women cannot
marry or divorce. And that's why, like I said, but another, right?
Again, just you know, that might surprise you is that Muslim women
have a right to an education. Again, by show of hands. I mean,
I've talked about getting stung, we went through the world, we've
heard it all, we've seen it all, I think there's a very common
perception or misconception, that girls, especially in Muslim
countries, are deprived of an education. And this might be
somehow rooted in the faith, right? Have you ever been led to
believe that? Okay, so, again, another thing of a prophet
Muhammad, he said, the seeking of knowledge is obligatory upon every
Muslim, and there's no distinguishing there about male,
female, or even age or backgrounds, just just a very
simple statement. But what that, you know, tells us as Muslim
women, especially, is that at any point in your life, you have the
right to learn, you have the right to go and do whatever you want to
pursue the power hour, or whatever your dreams are. And it's not just
you know, the, there's no limits, you know, that it's only the
semester is only for young girls, or single girls. So as someone
who's married, and I have children, I think, you know, this
is really important to me, because, currently, yes, I have
children right here, you might see them in the back, I'm a stay at
home mom, but I didn't have most to go back and possibly finish up
some school schooling that I want to pursue. And so it just again
invalidates this point that this is a myth that unfortunately, has
been perpetuated. But another thing that might surprise you is
that women don't have the right to own property, to work within to
earn their own income.
And there's nothing in Simon law or so much about the rights of
women in regards to this. But one thing that I remember being really
impressed by is that a one Muslim woman, whatever income she
receives, by working, is her own income. So there's no obligation
on her to actually contribute to the household. And she can do with
it and whatever she wants. Men, I'm sorry to say, that's not the
case for the Muslim men, they actually the duty and
responsibility to carry the household is not in Islam. So they
do have to work and their income is to go to the hospital. So
there's, you know, this is something, again, a lot of times
to private school, it surprises people to find out that Muslim
women have the right in their marriage contract to actually
stipulate if they want, for example, someone to come and cook
meals for them, or clean their homes, they can actually make
those stipulations in their marriage contract. But these are
all ways to, again, honor the rights and the needs of women,
especially once we have children, as many of you I'm sure, in
Kerrville, if you have children, or grandchildren, it's a lot for a
single woman or a woman to do it all by herself. And they say it
takes a village, but unfortunately, I'm sure you've
seen in the villages sort of disappeared, right? And modern
times. And so you have all these women carry, you know, not 123
multiple children on their own. And so it becomes really hard for
them. Whereas here in our tradition, this was taken care of,
you know, before it wasn't even had you had children, and that
they were given the right to say, You know what, if these are things
that concern, you can stipulate that and if it's in the production
contract with a man has to honor it. So again, another thing that
people are surprised to find out about Muslim women, they have the
right to vote, right. I mean, here in this country, separate women,
right 1920s, we got the right to vote 1400 years ago, Muslim women
were given the right to not only have rights to to participate in
elections, but actually to be analyzed to be nominated into
political office. And we have so many examples throughout history
of female leaders. And we're gonna actually listen to you for a
little bit. But there's something that people don't know often
about, historically, the position of Muslim women kind of directly
have a right to be respected and treated well, probably the same
said, the best of you are those who are best in treatment, to
their wives, and theirs. This is just one statement with many other
stories that relate this importance of really honoring the
position of a woman in society, a woman in her house, so a lot of
things that people again, don't know, but like I said, in my own
journey, these were things that I was surprised to find out because,
you know, culturally, things are not always in line with the faith
and this is something that someone who else speaks on the tradition I
have to, again, always kind of clear up for people that there's
things that you might find out or hear or see and witness, that are
expressions of maybe someone's personal beliefs or someone's
cultural beliefs. But it's not in the tradition in the, in the, in
the faith itself.
Just to kind of, I don't know how much time I have, but I wanted to
just present some famous Muslim women in history, to give you
clear examples of how these women exercising their rights, need to
be awaited, is the first white or wasn't the first life of the
prophet Muhammad. peace be upon him. But she her reputation
preceded him, she was known as a very wealthy and very intelligent
businesswoman. She was entrepreneurial, she actually had,
she was a trans woman. So she had a business of true selling and
trading goods, that she employed men and most of the men who would
travel as far as Syria on her behalf. And to be a woman in pre
Islamic Arabia at that time doing something like that was pretty
extraordinary. But it just, she's an exemplar in faith. And she's
considered one of the four perfect women that that we study in terms
of just her story. But she even after, you know, he had received
prophecy at the age of 40. They were married at that time. But
even after Islam, she continued to use her wealth in extraordinary
ways to help to help Muslims. And so she was in her own right, a
very established like a woman and she's an icon of the faith. And
there's another woman Her name is Amara, and she was also a female
companion. The problem from when she was actually went to join one
of the great battles at that time as a nurse to attend to some of
the wounded but she found herself on the frontlines of the battle.
So she's kind of one of those warrior women who just went right
out there and you know, fight and she was she's another amazing
example. We have Fatima infinity. She was a ninth century woman who
established the paddlewheel mosque in Fez, Morocco, which is actually
considered to be the very first university in the world. This was
done by a Muslim woman. So again, things that people don't associate
with Islam, first of all, but then with looking Some women are things
that are like this, we have looking at a photo but she was an
evolution Andalusi, an intellectual and mathematician of
the second half of the 10th century, and she was famous for
her knowledge of grammar and the quality of her poetry. We have
Mario Astro the UGVs. That was a title because she was a great
mathematician and scientists were worked on Astro babies, which
again was in the 10th century invented by Muslims, zeta Moshe
from the south century. She was a great calligrapher and teacher.
Razia Sultana from the 13th century was the first female
sometime on Delhi, Queen Amina of Zaria of the 16th century, she was
known for her military expertise, especially her brilliant military
strategy, and in particular engineering skills, and erecting a
great wall of camps during her areas campaigns. So she's actually
credited for doing something that our own president has not yet been
able to do.
The main story a wall in Nigeria, so I think he's elected.
But there's so many other extraordinary examples throughout
history, and also women who've done amazing things that again,
just to kind of show the role of women as long as been pretty
consistent from the onset, it's a matter of, you know, you know,
having that strength of knowing who you are, knowing what God
expects of you, and then acting on it. So when this question was
posed about how has the role changed?
In Islam for women, and I, I would say in my lifetime, honestly, it
hasn't necessarily changed in a small it's been consistent. But in
terms of Muslim women in the public sphere, yes, it's changed.
You know, when I started speaking publicly, about 20 years ago, you
know, there was in our local mosques and our Islamic
organizations, we'd have, you know, talks just like this, or
banquets or dinners where they would have speakers that would
come and present and very few women were doing it at that time.
This was just about 20 years ago or so. Ironically, though, when I
was training to be to do to become a speaker, I was actually trained
under two women who are still here in the Bay Area have amazing
women. They do a lot of interfaith work. And you might have actually
heard about that because they are, you know, sort of the trailblazers
in terms of Muslim interfaith work in America. Their organization is
called Islamic networks. You bring it up, yes, there you go. Have
some but my LGBT community
Got a personal friends of mine actually worked for img for a
couple of years. But they're amazing women there, they kind of
started, you know, a little shift, you know, there was definitely a
shift that I personally witnessed, where more and more women started
training and becoming comfortable speaking not just to female only
audiences, which was a little bit more common, but it might, it's
just like this sort of way to actually come and talk. And so
now, you can find hundreds of female speakers everywhere, in
addition to, you know, speakers who do this type of work. We also
have famous women, I mean, just last week, if you're paying
attention to the fourth part of the political scene, you know,
right, when to our very first two Muslim women in the House of
Representatives, right, Ilhan Omar and Rashida to leave. So these are
just two examples of but in addition to them, we have so many
other people that you might not even know or Muslim that are in
the fields of journalism, film, media and music. Even though, you
know, we had our first US Olympic events or who represented the
United States, and she was in full, he'd have, you know, full
cover gives you an edge moment in 2016. So there's so many examples
of Muslim women that are just, you know, they're coming, I think more
and more into the public sort of domain because maybe perhaps, it's
because our we kind of are, you know, more visual, so in general,
and in terms of, you know, media, internet, social media that we
just kind of use these platforms for, I don't know, but I do feel
that that's where I would say there's been a change, and I'm
proof of that myself, many of my friends who do the same work and
proof of that, that in recent years, we've seen that change, but
historically speaking,
as the examples I shared with you and any other stuff that we didn't
have time to go over, like I said that the role hasn't been
consistent.
Thank you. Thank you.