Ingrid Mattson – Joint engagement for the sake of the community
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Yeah. Welcome to our lecture series, and a
special warm welcome to our guest, professor Ingrid
Madsen.
As you know, patience is a central virtue
in Islam, and we waited really patiently to
have professor Ingrid Metzen here with us.
We met her in,
2013
in Berlin
and, later invited her to our lecture series.
And the last semester didn't work out, but
this semester it does, and we are really
grateful
to have her here. And also that you
take, took the long trip from Canada
and all the struggle with jet lag and
things like this.
So we we benefited already,
from your knowledge, experience, and insights yesterday, and
all students who have been in the program
since yesterday can testify to this, I think.
Professor Ingrid Matson holds the London and Windsor
Community Chair in Islamic Studies at the University
of Western Ontario
in Canada.
And before that, she was,
as well a professor for Islamic Studies at
Hartford Seminary in
Connecticut.
And besides her academic
work, she's an active, an activist in the
Muslim community
and in society,
North America,
for 9 years in
the post 9 11 era, starting with 2,000
and 1,
which
may be a difficult task. And after this,
she served as president,
for several years.
Her main areas of interest are the Quran,
ethical questions, and interreligious
dialogue.
And we get from all of this, something
in this week. Tomorrow, there's another,
lecture with professor Madsen,
on interreligious dialogue organized from the, Muslim Students
Association
or,
and she has, of course, many publications,
of which I want only to highlight her
book.
It's called The Story of the Quran, Its
History and Place in Muslim Life. It appeared
already in the 2nd edition
and was translated into several languages.
She also received numerous awards as well honorary
doctorates.
For example, she's a senior fellow of the
Royal Al Al Bayt Institute
for Islamic
in Amman, and she was named as one
of the most, the 500 most influential Muslims
for,
4 years,
in in series.
And today, her topic is,
under believers, men and women are protecting
protecting
friends one of another,
a verse of the Quran,
joint engagement for the sake of community.
So we are curious for your insights and
experience to share with us.
Can
I put this down here? Yeah. You somewhere?
I think you should put it over your
head. Make I don't know.
You can
try. How does this sound?
Or
how does it sound here? Good? Can you
hear? Alright.
Well, good afternoon. Assalamu alaikum.
I'm so happy to be joining you here
in this beautiful city.
I am in addition to,
spending the week here teaching, I am raiding
all of the coffee shops in Osnabruck
and have a good list so far. I'll
tell you at the end of the week
which makes the best cappuccino.
In my view, of course, this is an
area of difference
of opinion.
I begin in the name of god, the
most merciful, the most compassionate.
Praise be to God, the Lord of the
worlds.
Muhammad, and may God's peace and blessings be
upon our master, Muhammad.
I also I wanna begin by apologizing for
lecturing you in English.
I know this is a hegemonic,
language
globally.
And everywhere I go, I just assume people
will understand English.
So this is part of our linguistic privilege
of the English speakers and our global *.
I apologize
for that.
I
community that there are
many kinds of imbalances and power in the
world.
It it is not only that there can
be imbalances between men and women, there can
be imbalances in power between different classes in
society,
those manual laborers, professionals,
between those who are citizens
or who are,
official nationals
and those who are not given citizenship or
have access to education and those who don't.
So I think one thing that's important to
understand
is that when we look at at any
particular,
imbalance in a relationship and try to rectify
it, is that
it is not the only lens we should
look through.
We are human beings, and we should always
try to look at the totality
of our humanity.
I do not look at myself in any
way as a as a
victim or as an oppressed person,
although in some circumstances,
I experienced discrimination as a Muslim. In some
circumstances,
I experienced discrimination,
as a woman. On the other hand, I
am part of the
privileged class
because of my citizenship, because of my access
to education,
because, I'm white,
which makes a big difference,
in this world today.
So,
I want us to to continually
think about this and think about this as
one aspect of our humanity that we need
to look at.
This was something important to me when, from
the beginning, when I did my doctoral thesis,
which was on slavery and social status
in early Islamic
society and law.
And there, I looked at, even among women,
the different statuses among women.
So for example,
many elite women would try to empower themselves
and have access to more freedom and autonomy,
historically, as now,
by disempowering
other women.
So their freedom was often bought at the
expense of other women.
For example, they might be able to study
and pursue business,
because they employ a woman
to do other work,
for her in her household,
taking care of the kids, shopping.
There's nothing wrong with a division of labor
if it's just.
But to employ another woman
at less than a living wage,
to overwork her,
to,
take her passport away so she can't be
free to visit her family. All of these
things
is the participation of women in structural injustice
as well.
So this is why
I have no problem with using the term
feminism if we say sometimes we have to
take a feminist angle to look at
the issue of women's autonomy and equality. But
we should never make any one of these,
lenses
the totality
of our identity
Because I can take refuge in that and
then ignore
my positionality in society where I, in fact,
as a white person, as a Western person,
as a national,
am participating
in systems of injustice
and oppression against other people.
So I'm not just this one thing. And
today what I talk about today is not
the only
situation that I care about. I care about
also
about the many, many disempowered men
who are suffering as the result of my
privileged lifestyle.
So we all need to to acknowledge that.
And this is part of ethical teaching and
formation.
We should take our own experience and any
experience we have with marginalization and disempowerment
and use it to help us develop principles
and empathy
so we could help others.
This is true as Muslims too. Wherever we
experience disempowerment,
we it should not result in us saying,
okay. All we care about is the disempowerment
of Muslims, Muslims, and we ignore the disempowerment
of every other people in society.
If we do that,
it simply becomes a case
of religious
tribalism.
It is another form of asabiya,
where our being a Muslim, it's like joining
a gang or being part of a tribe.
It's it's our team that we're rooting for.
This is not what Islam means. Islam means
about
our our self and our spirit, our moral
formation, character formation
for the sake of becoming close to Allah
And that means critically examining ourselves,
critically examining our community,
and
trying to reflect that rahma of Allah
that is the dominant
attribute, the the attribute that we want to
see reflected in creation to reflect that for
everyone. This is not,
rahma, like love, is not a limited quantity
in the universe.
If we give mercy to people in our
community, it doesn't mean we we've we've used
up a store of mercy. Allah's mercy is
is,
infinite,
and we should reflect that that to others.
I wanna begin with this talk about women
and men in the community
with, with a comparative
analysis
of the story of the matriarch of our
religion,
one of the founders of a religion,
Hajir
alaihis salam, may peace be upon her, who
was a a great figure in Islamic history,
who was a founder of both,
sacred space and religious practices that we have
until today,
who according to, depending on what your categorization
of prophecy is, could be considered
a prophet in the sense that she she
had,
an angel sent to her.
She had,
established
a,
a form of
that we, until today, repeat.
This is semantics. If you say women can't
be prophets, then then that's it it doesn't
really matter to me. This is, to some
extent, a semantical issue.
The major issue is to to understand
that she is a spiritual matriarch.
And it's important for us to understand
where these women are in our tradition
so we have a clear picture of what
Islam says about the role of men and
women.
And to do that, let's have a comparison.
Here, we have a passage from Genesis
in the Bible,
in the Hebrew Bible,
and it's translated here, and it talks about
the
place when,
Ibrahim,
Abraham,
may God's peace be upon him,
took or sent her and her son away.
So let's let's look. Who has good English?
Very good. You do? No. No? Oh. Oh,
come on. Come on. Okay. Someone.
Come over. Come on. Jump over one of
you women over here. Jump over the side.
Jump over. Jump over the desk. Okay. I'm
gonna come on. Someone get out and try
to get in here. Come up beside me.
And then I want one more volunteer. Is
there a man?
A man who can speak good English, who
would like to volunteer?
Just stand beside me. Wait for your turn.
Anyone or I will pick you. Okay. Come
over here. I would like you to read
this for us.
Early the next morning, Abraham took some food
and a skin of water and gave them
to Hajar. He set them on on her
shoulders and then sent her off with a
boy. She went on her way and wandered,
in the desert of
Beersheba? Mhmm. Beersheba. Beersheba.
When the water and the skin was gone,
she put the boy under one of the
bushes.
Then she went off and sat down, about
a bow shot,
away. For the thought, I cannot what watch
the boy die. And as she sat there,
she began to sob.
God heard the boy crying, and the angel
of of called to Hajar from heaven and
said to her, what are the what is
the matter, Hajar? Do not be afraid. God
has heard the boy crying as he lies
there. Lift the boy up and take
take he him Take him? Him Mhmm. By
the hand, for I will make him into
a great nation. Then god opened her eyes,
and she saw a well of water.
So she went and filled the skin with
water and gave the boy a a drink.
Thank you, Zekal Lokeb. Okay. Next.
Can
you do this?
Just reading? Yes. Come on. Come on. Come
on. Yes. Thank you. Just take a look
at
Come on. You can I I know you
can read because I saw you in a
in a university, So
I am pretty pretty clear?
Can you read this
in a loud voice? Okay.
Abraham brought her and her son, Ishmael, while
she was circling him to a place near
the Kaaba under a tree under a tree
on the spot of Zamzam
at the highest place in the mosque.
During those,
during those days, there was nobody in Mecca
nor was there any water.
So he made them sit over there and
placed
placed near them,
leather bag containing some dates and a small
skin containing some water,
and set out homeward.
Ishmael,
Ishmael's
mother followed him saying, oh, Abraham,
where are you going?
Leaving us in this valley,
the where there is no person
has, whose company we may enjoy,
nor is there anything here.
She repeated that to him many times, but
he did not look back at her.
Then she asked him,
has God ordered you to do so? He
said yes. She said, then he will not,
nid neglect us. Neglect us. Neglect us,
and returned while Abraham proceeded,
onwards. And on reaching the Athania
where they could not see him, he faced
the Kaaba and raising both hands invoked
God saying the following prayers. Oh, our lord,
I have made
some of my offspring dwell in a valley
without
cultivation by your sacred house in in order,
oh, our lord, that they may offer prayer
perfectly
perfectly.
So fill, so fill the hearts of people
with love towards them and provide them with
fruits so that they may give thanks. Let's
take a look at it. Oh, yeah.
Okay. So this is the first part of,
a hadith where the prophet Muhammad
tells the story of Hajjar.
And it continues.
Ismael's mother went on suckling Ismael and drinking
from the water she had. When the water
in the water skin had all been used
up, she became thirsty, and her child also
became thirsty.
She watched him tossing in agony and left
him, for she could not endure looking at
him, and found that the mountain of Safa
was the nearest mountain,
to her on that land. She stood on
it and started looking at the valley keenly
so that she might see somebody, but she
could not see anybody.
Then she descended from Safa, and when she
reached the valley, she tucked up her robe
and ran in the valley like a person
making a great effort,
until she crossed the valley and reached the
Marwa mountain where she where she stood and
kept looking, expecting to see somebody, but she
could not see anybody.
She repeated that,
running between Safa and Marwa 7 times.
The prophet Muhammad said,
this is the source of the tradition
of the running of the people between the
mountains of Safa and Marwa. And you know
the rest of the story. Then the angel
Gabriel,
was sent to open up the well of
Zamzam, which became a source of water,
for them
and for all people.
The story continues that because there was now
water, a passing caravan
saw, from a distance, saw birds circling, and
they knew that those birds only only
would be present where there was water. They
knew there was no water before, so they're
curious. They went over there. And they see,
there she is, Hajjira
and her son Ismael,
there beside the water. They say, this is
wonderful.
Can we settle with you? Can we live
with you? She says, yes,
but I control the water.
And they settle with her, and her son
marries into that that group, and they found
these are the people that did the descendants
of the their descendants are the Arab people,
the Quraysh.
So
we have two versions of the story of
the same story.
Can anyone
tell me what are some significant differences
that you see in the stories?
In terms of,
the relationships
that are being expressed
here and the responses
to the situation.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
I think Hajar alaihis salam, my English is
not It's okay. You could say it in
German and someone will tell me what you
mean. Okay.
Did something.
She she tried
to do something
to
save her child
and to, yeah, to Right.
Yeah. This is one of the really, what
I see as a very key difference in
the two stories is that Hijit has a
very active role
in
the,
report that the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon
him, is narrating.
In the biblical story,
Hajar is left
by Abraham. She's sent out. Go, and she
goes.
Right? And then she's there. She runs out
of the water. What what does she do?
She sits down and cries. She's crying,
and then
God intervenes. The water appears, and he he
even has to say say, okay. Open your
eyes now so you could see.
So she's there.
In this beautiful story narrated by the prophet
Muhammad, alayhisatt Sam, there's such a big difference.
First of all,
when she she goes, Saydai Ibrahim takes her
there.
And when he goes to leave her there,
what does she do?
She questions him.
She says, is this from you or is
this from God?
Right?
She said, oh, Abraham, where are you going
leaving us in this valley? She repeats it,
keeps asking him, and then she says, has
God ordered you to do so?
And when he says yes, what does she
say?
Then he will not neglect us.
So here, we see
the and this is so interesting because this
is also how the Sahaba
men and women used to be with the
prophet Muhammad alaihis salam,
that they would ask him,
oh, messenger of Allah, is this from you?
Is this wahi, or is this from you?
Yani, your opinion.
Right?
Which is a very important theological lesson in
Islam
that
no human being has authority in and of
among themselves,
that any human being who's who's making some
judgment about something to do can be questioned,
can be interrogated.
Even here,
Hadjib, her husband's a prophet,
You know? This is the the period of
patriarchs, the patriarchs of Banu Israel, of the
this is before Banu Israel, but the patriarchs
of the Hebrew people.
And here she is questioning him. Hey.
You know?
She's not just like, oh, well, whatever happens,
I'll just
go. She doesn't say a word in the
biblical story. Here, she's taught she's speaking. She
is speaking. She's in active questioning role.
And when
when he, Ari says, says,
this is from God,
she then says, he will not neglect this.
This is a positive act of faith, and
we see this is
also reflected later
in the story when God orders Abraham,
alayhi salaam,
to sacrifice his son. His son
engages with him in the conversation and then
says, then I will be among those who
submit. It's not the son is not a
passive voices voiceless victim,
but it is the family together believing in
God, and each one has to have the
conviction.
No one is used as an instrument by
the others. Sahaja is not used as an
instrument by her husband. The son is not
used as an instrument by the father. They
are active
in themselves.
They decide
to participate in this act of faith.
So this is a beautiful part of it.
And
so she she
is there. Now she's decided she knows God
will survive, will
will help them survive, will not neglect them,
but she doesn't know how.
She doesn't
can't
see in M'Rab. She can't see the future.
All she knows is she has faith, but
she doesn't know the way out. The reason
why she would run she's running back and
forth to the tops of the mountains is
she thinks that her salvation's gonna come from
other people, that someone's gonna appear so she
goes to the highest place so she could
look.
You know, maybe someone's coming from this side.
No. Maybe someone's coming from this side because
our human imagination is very limited.
So we only think of certain things. When
we're in a very difficult situation,
we think, oh, maybe,
maybe this will happen. We're praying for this
way out of it, but then sometimes God
opens another way. We never thought of this
other way. So this is a beautiful
story of faith that we that we have
in this, this lesson about
hardship
and the openings that God gives us, that
that we have to have that faith, but
we don't necessarily know where this is gonna
come. So she's running back, and and so
she is not passive.
She has tawakkal. She has faith. She has
iman, but she's doing something about it.
She's doing what she can. And through that
effort, faith and effort,
right, Iman and Anil, together,
then there is an intervention,
and the intervention is this water
that opens up,
that creates now life, not only for her,
not only for her son,
but for the birds
that begin to circle around and come and
drink,
for people who come and settle there.
So through her faith,
she has she has brought life
to
creatures and people who never were able to
live there before.
She makes it a beneficial place in a
material sense,
but then also makes it possible for this
to be
a place where people come and worship constantly.
It is later when Sayna Ibrahim comes back,
when Ishmael grows up, that together they build
the Kaaba,
as a permanent place,
permanent place of worship that until now continues.
And this is why part of our mandatory
Hajj
is following in her footsteps.
We follow
in remembrance of her action, her faith.
So this is what's very moving about this
action, and I hope if you, you know,
go on Hajdu,
you do this, really understand
the the implications of this.
So this is what
what
you know, this is a foundational
story for Muslims.
And in this foundational story, we see a
woman
who is in difficult circumstances,
but is is playing an active role,
is working with her family to establish this
whole new line,
the to this another line of the descendants
of Abraham who's working to, through her effort,
has established this place, Mecca, as a place
for life and a play sacred place for
worship.
And this is really important to remember because
there are other versions of the story,
and
whoever told the story that eventually ended up
in the Bible had a certain view of,
of
which branch of Abraham was the chosen one
and was really kind
of didn't really care about the the Ishmaelites,
the people who descended
from Isma'il.
So they are not given you know, it
said, well, they will be a great people.
You have this line, but there's not a
lot of interest in telling that that part
of the line. So we don't we see
her role as, you know, she's this voiceless
passive kind of person.
It's very easy
when
it's very easy for a story to get
distorted.
It's very easy for what is,
an incident as it goes through, you know,
different
narrations,
different oral transmission,
that if there's not very careful scrutiny
and attention and concern for the details,
it gets filtered
through the eyes and the perception
and the interests and the desires of the
people who are telling the story. They select
a little bit of it and they neglect
the rest.
This is a human reality and it's a
reality Muslims face with our own tradition.
There are many empowering stories
from the Islamic tradition. There are many empowering
role models,
but how often are they told?
I can't tell you how,
how really sobering it is for me as
a professor
when I when I teach and I ask,
you know, I'll ask my first year students,
have you heard what do you know about
the founding of Mecca? Tell me about it.
Tell me, what do you know about name
as many female companions of the prophet Muhammad
alaihis salam as you can.
They can't even name all the Ummunhatu mumineen,
much less the other women.
Name a famous woman scholar in Islamic history.
Nothing. And these are the students who are
religious students who are coming to study Islamic
studies.
The ignorance
in our community
about
about women's role
historically in Islam
is so horrible. It's almost I'm gonna use
this word. It's almost a conspiracy of silence.
I mean, you start to say,
why is this happening again and again? Not
a conspiracy theorist, but it is very problematic.
So,
this is just a
painting of from the western version of Hajar
being sent out. So this is the view
of her. Right? In the western tradition,
this is our view of her.
Right?
Suparna law. And this is, of course,
you know, the the one of the,
of course, the the representative
the representative
visual tradition
of Western civilization or of European civilization is
very beautiful and moving and it's and should
be appreciated for its own right.
But what's interesting about the Islamic tradition is
we don't lack because we don't have this
representative tradition.
Because we have our stories
that are told,
that are narrated, and also that are embodied
in our actions.
You see,
the the the image is as we run,
we are
recreating.
It's like a
and maybe now these days that we have
people playing virtual games where you embody an
avatar or something. In a way, we
Islam is almost,
fits better in this kind of age
where you have this virtual
little bit
kind of,
fantastic, but think about it for a little
while.
What is it when we talk about
patriarchy?
What's the word in German?
Same word. Same word. Yes, pretty much. That's
why I can understand half of what people
are. It's pretty almost the same language. Okay.
So patriarchy
literally means
the rule of
of
elder men.
So the authority
or empowerment of elder men. So it's not
only the rule of,
the authority of men over women, it's also
involved the rule of elders over younger.
So in a patriarchal society, you will see,
for example, in a typical, you know, many
typical,
like a traditional Arab society,
who is the person who all the brothers
and sisters have to listen to?
The oldest
brother. Right?
You know, if you have if you have
4 brothers
and they're separated by 9 months each,
it doesn't matter.
The 3 that are younger have to listen
to the older one. I have, friends who
are from Libya, and they have twin twin
boys.
And one of the boys was born
2 minutes before the other, and he actually
says my brother has to listen to me
because I'm older. So this is this is
part of a patriarchy.
The word sheikh,
literally, the literal meaning of sheikh is old
man, elder man, an old man, or sometimes
we use the term elder
when we wanna talk respectfully
about people. So Sheik means old man.
And this is why,
it has the it has the
the literally, and it was used to indicate
the Sheikh Al Kabila, who is the the
elder man in the tribe,
but it also has the the connotation of
wisdom. That's why sometimes we'll call even younger
people, in a religious context, we'll call them
sheikh,
or how this term got transferred over to
sheikh because it's elder. It's like the person
we respect for their knowledge and wisdom.
Patriarchy
is this so patriarchy in and of itself
is this
is the view that in and of themselves,
men
have
authority, status, or over women,
irregardless of their merits.
Right?
Regardless of their merits.
You may have a very brilliant woman,
and you might have an uneducated,
not very wise
man,
yet
just because of his maleness, because of his
gender, he has
this,
power
that the woman doesn't have.
So when when we talk about patriarchy in
the community, this is part of what we're
looking at. Now the question is, to what
extent
is,
patriarchy
a necessarily
part of Islam?
To what extent is it a good thing
in Islam? Some people argue that it's a
stabilizing
force in society
and that it's a necessary part of Islam.
Some people argue very strongly against it.
Of these two books, and this is this
is,
Aminu Wadud, who's known for some very original
progressive interpretations in Islam,
nontraditional,
nonorthodox
positions,
nevertheless makes some interesting arguments,
but I would say that this,
Asma Barlas,
makes much more convincing arguments to me
in
part of her book. Part of her book
is, in my view, wrong historically and theologically,
But there's something that she says that's really
interesting to me and I think very compelling.
She says that part of the Islamic message
is, in fact, explicitly
anti patriarchal.
And proof of it is
in that that with the prophethood of Muhammad
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam,
that this ends
the reign of the patriarchal prophets.
Because the prophets of of,
Bani Israel
and also the prophets, the Arab prophets,
were all prophets
who were at the same time patriarchs of
their people, meaning
that,
rule was passed
through from father to son or father to
another male in in line.
Right? So there was a there was a
passing down
through the male line of religious authority.
Now
what's interesting
is that,
what does the Quran say
about
Muhammad, alaihisat Sam,
when it comes to
his maleness.
What's very interesting is the place where the
prophet Mohammed's maleness is explicitly addressed
is to refute
the relevance of it.
When Allah
in the Quran says
Mohammed is not the father
of any of your men.
He is not the father of any of
your men,
but he is?
He is? What is he?
Right. So he's the seal of the prophets,
the seal, the end of that. So with
the prophet Muhammad he ends the patriarchal rule
of prophet of prophecy.
He is not the father of any of
your men. So there's a real kind of
denial of the relevance of his masculinity
to a large extent, that the major feature
of of masculinity, and
of course,
Allah is capable of doing all things,
could easily have given him many sons.
But any sons he had,
Allah took their life when they were very
young.
So he was the father of girls. He
was the father of women.
Right?
And,
this is very interesting
because,
nothing that happens
in the life of the prophet Muhammad, alayhis
salaam, is accidental.
I mean, Allah chose
his life from the beginning of who his
parents were
to who raised him
to being to being orphaned to, you know,
all throughout his life, everything was significant.
So this, we have to give it some
significance and and really think about this.
We also have to look into the fact
that,
people before us, the people who were recipients
of revelation,
were permitted to
call Allah
father.
So this is why we have the prayer
of Jesus, peace be upon him,
our father, who art in heaven. Right? So
it was typical in Christianity
and Judaism
to call God our father.
It is forbidden in Islam to call God
the father.
So it became,
it was abrogated
to call God the father.
And it doesn't mean that it's it doesn't
mean that it's I won't say I don't
it's overstating to say it's absolutely forbidden,
okay, because,
there may be some cases where,
I mean it's not a sin, let me
say. I don't believe it's a sin, but
it is not the way that we are
allowed to pray to God and we shouldn't
conceive of God as the Father.
Allah has many attributes,
rahma,
lut,
jalan.
Are any of them
do any of them indicate
masculinity?
Fatherhood,
masculinity.
None of them do.
The only thing that maybe even, to some
extent, makes us think of of of gender
is in fact
rahma.
I mean, rahma is the is the one
that's most clearly related to a gendered concept,
which is the rahm,
which is the uterus and the source of
mercy. This is not to say that Allah
is gendered,
but to say that it's interesting that this
this attribute of Allah,
rahma, which
is repeated again and again and again, we
know that Allah
overtakes creation and that Prophet Muhammad, alayhis salam,
talked about
the mercy of God, God's mercy towards his
people being like the mercy of a mother
towards
her children.
SubhanAllah,
the prophet Muhammad, alayhis salam, kept referring to
maternal feelings,
whereas
before Islam,
the the most,
common metaphor was the paternal
relation feeling,
of god. That was the metaphor that was
used. So this is a this is,
something that we really need to think about
significantly because
pre modern people,
at least as long as they were in,
urbanized and in civilization at the time of
written the historical period,
that,
the,
most societies were patriarchal in the sense that
men had more of a rule
or were considered to be the appropriate,
the proper gender to have
control and power and authority over the community.
The public rule, right? Public authority.
There's a lot of different, you know, questions
about why that was, is it ideological, or
is it just the reality of life? When
you have most,
when you have life being nasty, mean, and
short,
you know, many women, their life expectancy less
than 40 years old,
it being taking a lot of labor to
just
to just keep your family fed and happy
and healthy,
There's a lot of focus on that, you
know, that area of life. So this is
a complex area. I don't wanna get too
much into it.
We could talk about that later if you
have questions.
But
for whatever reason, most societies
were
structured in a patriarchal manner,
and pre Islamic Arabia certainly was.
Certainly was. I mean, more than anything in
particular because
without an overriding rule of law
that,
that kept order
and that enforced rights for people or rule
of law,
the only protection was through the tribe.
The only way you had any safety and
protection was through the the protection of your
tribe, your collectivity.
This is why if you were an independent
person, you could be kidnapped, you could be
enslaved,
why if you wanted to be protected in
pre Islamic Arabia, you either had to have
a relationship of walaya,
means a client relationship. You had to become
a client of a tribe, and they said,
okay, well, you're like an honorary member, kind
of or adopted member of our tribe. We'll
take care of you. That's what Wa'laia is.
You had to do that or you had
to have an explicit contract for a limited
period of time saying, as long as this
person
is in Mecca, they will be protected
until,
until the,
Helf al Fadol
for Mecca, at least.
So,
this was a very patriarchal
society. We really need to understand
how difficult it was to be a woman
in the society where
the person who was elevated
was the strong
warrior.
I mean, look at Priusanic
poetry.
It is all about the martial virtues.
It's it's celebrating
the warrior.
Right? And even women's poetry,
women's special poetry was a kind of cheerleading
for the warriors.
That that's a lot of of what it
was. It was the that's sort of their
role in that society. Of course, there are
always some women who are exceptional, but basically
that's what it was.
So when we look at any changes that
Islam brought to the situation of women, we
have to understand their significance.
And what we should understand is that their
significance
is not simply for rulings for themselves.
We always hear that,
oh, Islam improved improved the situation of women
in the 7th century. The situation of women
in the 7th century was very bad. Look,
they got inheritance.
They got,
they had to have consent to marriage. They
had the right to life, whereas before, they
could be subject to infanticide.
They, there was a ban on this, vihar,
which is,
which is what we have here. So there
are these different,
particular
changes
in the law,
but the but what I want us to
notice is that,
the Quran is not only
the message of the Quran is not only
what the Quran gives us rules and regulations
in in a few particular areas,
its message is also its sound. Right? The
sound is part of the message, the beauty
of the but also
how
the Quran
responded to the people of the time. You
could almost say
you could use an expression almost like the
sunnah of the Quran.
You know, we talk about sunatallahi,
the Allah's,
like, way of dealing with people on Earth.
We can also look at, as it were,
the way of the Quran of interacting with
the people of that time. And what I
want us to notice is
the primary sunnah of the Quran, one of
the dominant sunnahs of the Quran is responsiveness
to people who are oppressed
and
especially to women.
The number of times that there is a
revelation
in response to a difficult situation that women
find themselves in is remarkable.
And so we have to say, this responsiveness
is part of what the Quran's teaching us.
So we have the story of of,
Hawla,
who Al Mujadila.
Of course, we have a we have a
surah of the Quran that later is named
after her.
The woman who disputed with the prophet Muhammad
and made her complaint to God. SubhanAllah, what's
amazing is,
again, here's this woman saying this what's happened,
this situation, the status quo is is unjust.
She really believed that. She had she had
a deep sense of conscience. How many of
you know the background of this, what it
means, what Lihar is, and what happened to
her? Raise your hand if you know that.
Not a lot do. Okay.
So I'm gonna explain it because it's really
important.
There was, in pre Islamic Arabia,
there were many customs
and there was what you could call sort
of laws or rules,
but they weren't necessarily written down.
But there were things that everyone knew that
you did, and a lot of them had
to do with,
superstitions
or their pre Islamic religion.
One of them was this,
that if a man
wanted to
dishonor his wife,
disrespect his wife,
or he no longer wanted to really have
a relationship with her,
but he didn't want to deal with the
consequences of divorce,
right, for some reason,
that he might say this,
anti elaiya
kevahri umi.
You are to me like the backside of
my mother.
What does that mean? Well, of course, you
can't have an intimate relationship with your mother.
Correct?
So by saying this,
now
he had he had to treat her as
if
not with the respect of the mother, but
with the distance of the mother,
that she is that repulse, and it's a
very vulgar statement. I mean, to hear it,
you know, if we wanted to translate it
in the vernacular, it would be very,
you know, vulgar.
So,
to say this is humiliating
in and of itself, and it is also
very consequential
because the woman is
now she she's not married.
Right? So she's or she's not divorced.
On the one hand, she's not free to
go marry someone else, but she's not really
married. She's just stuck. She's tied to him,
but she has no affection, love, intimacy with
this man.
So this was called vihar. This is the
the the technical term, and it was a
kind of taboo status. What I mean by
taboo is that
when you said this, you couldn't take it
back. It was like,
in the pre Islamic era, if you adopted
a child, that child really became part of
your blood. Right? From now, they are part
of your blood. So it's a it's a
formula
that transformed the relationship.
So after her husband said this,
he was he was
sorry that he did. They were old. Sometimes
they fought, you know. This sometimes old people
do. They get grumpy them with each other.
So he wanted to go back to her
and she wanted to go back to him,
but there was no way. If you said
this, that's it. It is the ties cut.
So she, Hawla, may Allah be pleased with
her, went to the prophet Muhammad
and said
said, you know, I I wanna go back
to him.
Can you do something about it? And prophet
Muhammad, alaihis salam, said, I can't do anything
because I haven't received a revelation,
which is proof that,
Al'awf Muhekima or Al Adat Muhekima, that custom
is a source of law,
without revelation.
So he's acting on the existing customary law,
alaihis salasam. So she's fighting with him, Jidal.
The prophet Mohammed alaiya sasam, when she's arguing
with him, did he say,
shut up, be quiet, how can you argue
with me? I am a prophet, I'm the
leader, I'm no. Stop for the lie. He
never said anything of this.
He he said I'm sorry, I haven't received
a revelation.
And she said, okay. Then I'm gonna complain
to God. God will answer my prayer. SubhanAllah.
It's so much like Hajar.
And it's so much like Aisha
when she was accused
of infidelity.
Again and again, these women have a very
strong sense of the justice of God. This
is what you see in them. They really
believe
that, and and they're willing to challenge
even the highest authority, who they respect, but
challenge
and say, you know, I know that God
will be on my side.
So then
this beautiful,
beautiful,
beginning opening of Surat Anujjadira
was revealed
called Semi Allah
God has heard,
paula leti tujadiluka
fizaujih
who argues with you
about her husband,
Watashteki
ilallah,
and and has made her complaint to God,
Wallahu yasimahu.
And Allah
hears
your discussion or your debate.
Allah
hears everything and sees everything. This is so
beautiful.
It's such an affirmation
of her
of her
right to stand up and and argue for
her rights, you know, to articulate
and argue for,
what she believes is a wrong in society.
It is a complete affirmation
of that.
And we have to think that this is
the sunnah of the Quran. This is Allah's
way of dealing with us we as we
see revealed in the Quran.
So again and again, interventions.
We can't even go through it. I mentioned
Aisha when she was unjustly
accused of infidelity.
We have this beautiful passage
where,
the,
it was the wife of Jafarib and Abitalib
coming back from Abyssinia
saying to the women, oh, what happened while
I was away? Does the Quran have anything,
like, just about women?
And they said,
well, not not specifically on women. So she
said, oh, I'm disappointed. I'm going to go
and ask the Prophet Muhammad
So she asked him, and because, you see,
they thought that when when the Quran used
the masculine plural that it was they were
used to men only being the ones who
were important
in society.
That's why when when,
Aisha one time, she heard the prophet, Mohammed,
he from preaching from the Masjid,
she went she went go closer to the
door to hear what he was saying,
and the woman who was helping her do
her hair said,
Oh, he's, he's,
speaking to the people,
like Inas,
not, not to you.
And she said, Am I not one of
the people?
Am I not one of the people?
So this,
this idea, it was common for them to
think, oh, no. Anything that's addressed,
even the Quran revelation, it must be for
men, unless it's specifically for women.
So in response to that, Allah
Allah revealed this beautiful,
beautiful
passage of the Qur'an
that affirms, no, everything is equal for you
and for them. I mean, look how many
words are revealed just in response to that.
So when women ask the question,
wait a minute, where are we in the
community?
Where are we with respect to this religion?
Again,
when the prophet Muhammad, salallahu alayhi wasalam, was
asked this question,
he didn't he didn't say, how dare you
ask this?
And
when when it was and Allah
his responsiveness
to the need
the needs and the desires of the of
the women
was not
women should just know their place and their
husbands will take care of it or the
no. It was this beautiful affirmation.
Indeed, the Muslim men and the Muslim women,
and the believing men, the believing women, etcetera,
to the rest of the of the aya.
So beautiful.
So we we see that this, this responsiveness
is
is very strong.
And and as I say,
one of the
dominant messages of the Quran, some I'll very
often we talk about themes of the Quran,
but this is a bit different than a
theme.
As I mentioned, I I consider of a
kind of, like, a sunnah of the Quran,
a methodology
of the Quran.
And we should think about that when it
comes to
power relations,
questions,
questioning,
and and saying, wait a minute. Is this
from you
or is this from God? Now the question
is, if if the Quran was so responsiveness,
you know, there's this momentum building up. Right?
There's all of these things happening
during the period of Revelation,
affirming women's rights and increasing women's right and
affirming women's dignity and voice. So you have
a kind of momentum. What happens after?
Well, what happens is
much of it continues,
and there's a lot of beauty in Islamic
civilization, and we see that that women's lives
are improved in many ways,
but there's also a backlash.
Like, every pro every time there's progress in
society and any movement, there will always be
a a backlash against it, right, where the
status quo tries to come back
and reasserts its power. And sometimes they're successful,
and sometimes they're not. All we have to
do is look at something like the, so
called Arab Spring to understand
some of this dynamic about backlash, right, when
people are arguing fighting for their rights
and then the backlash of the entrenched elite.
Such an interesting
statement
that Khaled Abbafalda, who's professor of, Islamic law
at UCLA,
mentions in his book.
He mentions this very interesting statement by, Abdullah
bin Umar ibn Al Khattab. May Allah be
pleased with both of them. So, Abdullah, who's
the son of the caliph Umar bin Al
Khattab, and Abdullah bin Umar is a great
scholar. He's a great Muslim.
He is someone who we learn much of
our religion from. He said something very, very
interesting, SubhanAllah.
He said,
while the Quran was being revealed,
we were so careful with our women
out of fear that
maybe a verse would be revealed about us.
Right? Because like all this stuff is being
revealed about women and how embarrassing
would it be for your name
to be in the Quran or your everyone
knows all that's about about him because he
was such a jerk to his wife or
something like that.
So we were so careful,
but after
after the prophet Muhammad alaihis salami died,
then we did as we wished.
And he's not bragging about it. He's not
saying this is a good thing. This is
kind of a confession.
He's saying he's saying, you know,
we should have been
as aware that Allah is watching us even
when the Quran is not being revealed,
but without that added
disincentive,
without that added threat of worldly humiliation
and embarrassment,
we,
you know, we went backwards a little bit.
And he doesn't mean himself necessarily
because,
Abdul ibn Ahmad, may Allah be pleased with
him, he argued.
He was someone who argued sometimes with other
men. Like, for example,
when a man said, I would never let,
my my wife go to the mosque. And,
ibn Amer said,
didn't you know that the prophet Mohammed
said
and the which means do not forbid the
maidservants of Allah from going to the Mas
of Allah, and the man said, well, I
wouldn't allow it.
And ibn Umar, he he, like, punched him
or poked him, and he said
he said,
I
I said the messenger of Allah said, and
you say,
I say?
Meaning, you're putting your word above the Messenger
of Allah. So, ibn Amr was trying, but
he saw, like,
you know, this entrant when people have power,
it's very difficult for them to give up.
They don't give it up freely unless someone
forces them or they really are,
have very strong conviction and strong faith that
it's the right thing to do.
If you have power to give it up,
it takes a lot of faith, a lot
of conviction, a lot of willpower to give
it up. So he says there was a,
there was a rollback, and we should understand
that, and you see it in different places.
That in some places,
the way people talk about women, even some
scholars, some of the interpretations,
it clearly is against this spirit.
It clearly is against sometimes very explicit teachings,
and,
this is why
it's important
that women and men work together and in
dialogue, and this is part of the partnership,
to really discuss these things because it's as
bad for men
to oppress women as it is for women.
Right? The prophet Mohammed said,
unsar ahaq, help your brother,
whether he's the oppressor or being oppressed.
So if there are men in our community
who are doing something contrary to the teaching
of the Prophet Muhammad
to to the Quran who are engaging in
zulum,
we need to help not just those women,
but those men too. It is not helping
them. It is not merciful or good for
them to allow them to continue in sin
and oppression. So we have to work together
for everyone to help help this.
But why do why did some patriarchy
become re entrenched in some cases?
I mean, I have some theories about it.
1,
I would say and I'm not I'm not
someone who engages in, like,
sectarian
debate or anything like that,
but I would say that that,
you know, I do follow the Sunni tradition.
The the the the
real The the the one point that I
disagree with Shi'ites about
is the doctrine of the imamate. I mean,
that is the the the one thing where
you have to take a position on. Either
you have to accept it or you don't
accept it.
Because I don't accept it, that's what makes
me a Sunni.
It doesn't, but after that, I don't think
there's,
like, everything we differ on. No. We should
we're all Muslims. We're all ahlulqibla.
We should be together. And it's also up
for Shi'ite Muslims to talk about, from their
perspective,
what
these things mean for gender. But I do
think that when we have the ending of
the period of the patriarchal prophets and then
there's a reestablishment
of
of religious authority through descent through the
sons,
right, which is a a patriarchal line of
religious authority, I think it undermines
one of the main messages of the Quran
when it comes to this issue of of
human authority and gender relations.
This is my speculation,
and it may be completely
wrong. Some Shiites might say, oh, but the
line goes through,
Fatima. May Allah be pleased with her. And
so this gives, you know, a matriarchal establishment
for it. So are those who could argue
that? As I say, I don't want it
to be a sectarian thing, but I I
I find it a little bit problematic.
There's also
certain aspects of Neo Platonism,
and this is getting a little bit,
esoteric, but for those of you who have
studied Islamic philosophy and theology,
part of Neo Platonic philosophy that entered in,
Islamic discourse and some kind, not all Sufism,
but some kinds of world denying Sufism
that that really picked up a lot of
that was more almost philosophical
Sufism than Sufism as spiritual discipline and practice.
Those aspects that pick up Neo play Platonism,
whether they were philosophers or religious people,
there is a very
sharp divide
between
male and female.
And the feminine is associated with matter, which
is which is evil and of this world,
and the masculine is associated
with,
spirit,
which is what we aim for. And this
is one of the reasons why some of
the the Christian traditions that encourage chastity,
it was because
you could never attain the highest levels of
spirituality
if you were entangled with women,
right, and and with sexuality, which was of
this world.
Islam was against this view,
but there was, if you look at some
of the Neo Platonic,
both philosophy
spiritual writings, you'll see a very sharp divide
between the feminine and the masculine form, and
it really is a hierarchy. We have to
be careful.
And then there is just simply the tendency
to rationalize
existing patriarchal norms. So,
you know, as
as people who were part of the Roman
Empire, Byzantines and others,
Persians
became Muslim and converted to Islam,
part of what they did is,
unfortunately, they had some of their existing customs
and practices
that sometimes they used Islam to support,
some that were misogynistic or sexist,
and we see it even today in the,
American prison system,
and I have I've I've I've taught chaplains
and I've dealt with,
chaplaincy in prison, it's very interesting because what
you'll find is
some of the men who are imprisoned for
domestic violence, some of them even for murdering
women, murdering their wife or girlfriend,
and then they convert to Islam in prison.
So this is what one of my students
called calls prison Islam, prison Islam.
It's so interesting because they, like, select
certain aspects of Islamic discourse or teaching
and construct a very misogynistic,
Islam that they will follow,
that justifies
their
demeaning views of women, and now they're using
religion to justify it when it was criminality
that got them there in the first place.
So it's interesting because all of us rationalize
our needs and desires. Women are the same.
But, you know, in this case, we're talking
about this particular area, so we have to
be very careful about that.
This is just I mentioned Khaled Abufadil,
who, I think this is a really a
very excellent book,
very moving and challenging.
I don't agree with every aspect of it,
and many, you know,
I think there's lots of things that could
be discussed,
but he does really challenge people
to look at this issue much more, clearly.
Fatima Mernisi, again,
she says some really unsubstantiated
and simply incorrect things about Islamic history and
theology, certainly about Seydin al Mirabein al Khotab,
who's my hero and I love. So I
really resent what she says about him, and
I believe it's not true because I think
Saina Ahmed actually
overcome a overcame a great deal of trauma,
childhood trauma, and a difficult life, and a
lot of his own purse what what that
created him in terms of a lot of
anger
to really restrain it and and be an
extraordinary person. And in fact, he often upheld
or upheld the situation,
like the rights of the weakest people in
society, including women.
I mean, there's some very moving stories about
how Saydna Ahmed
really struggled to help women who were in
very difficult circumstances.
But,
one of the things that Fatima Merenisi says
is she talks about the archaeology of women.
She says, where are the women
growing up as a Muslim in Morocco? She
didn't hear much about women in Islam. All
she heard is the place of women in
Islam is at home.
Why are you why are you going out
and studying? Why are you doing this? You
should be at home.
Meanwhile, she's in a country
with the oldest continuing
existing
continuously operating university in the world founded by
a woman,
founded by a great, pious,
wonderful woman.
So if
we have something like Fatima al Fihri, who
founded this extraordinary institution,
pious,
who managed
this this
enormous project,
then,
you know, why why are we so blind
to what's right in front of us? This
is right, you know, in her society,
yet everyone knows that the place of woman
is just to be a wife and mother
and leave the public things. There's nothing more
public
than this extraordinary mosque complex, and the story
of how this was built and what she
did is, you know, you really should look
it up. But it's not only that,
it is that, and of course, this is
the inside of Karawin.
And what's interesting is that even when Sheikh
Hamza was teaching there about 15 years ago,
you see that,
the way it's structured, it's very difficult. We
have all the male students in this picture,
you don't see the female students.
But of course, when Sheikh Hamza,
set up Zetunah and is teaching his students,
you see here they are side by side.
So take the good,
take the beautiful part of our tradition,
and also,
you know,
notice
where there are barriers. And this is something
that,
Sheikh Hamza, and the other scholars at Zeitouna
do. So this is and, of course, you
have it here at at your,
institution as well.
You know, where are the women scholars of
Hadith? Many people were shocked by this book
by Mohammed Akram
Naidawi,
in which he talked about
finding
not dozens, not 100, but 1,000 of female
scholars in the,
in the Ijazas
and in the manuscripts that he was working
on, women scholars of Hadith and his results
are summarized in this book,
including things like evidence that women
women taught from the the the Kursi, from
the endowed chairs in mosques in Baghdad and
and Damascus. I mean,
publicly to men and women in a public
space.
So this is was shocking to many people,
but what's interesting is
that, again,
we're very selective. Sometimes we don't even
notice what's going on. For example, and I
believe that some there are some women in
this in this,
maybe
place even today who have studied in Syria.
You have you have a group like the
Qubaisiyat
in Syria, whether you like their politics or
not. This isn't about their politics,
but we're talking about
100 of women
who are certified
in the 10 Qara'at of the Quran,
who have ijazas
in memorizing the 6 books of Hadith with
all of their asanid,
100 100 of them. Masha'Allah.
May Allah preserve them, preserve the people of
Syria,
bring peace and healing to them. You Arab.
But, you know,
we have all of these women, and then
you hear, you know, you hear, oh, no.
Women aren't, you know, involved. It's like, it's
right in front of our eyes. It's there
everywhere, but there's a kind of blind blindness
to it.
Now how do we how do we,
rectify it? The other thing I wanna say,
very important point,
there is more and more and more historical
evidence
that,
in pre modern, pre colonial Muslim society,
the strength of pre colonial Muslim society was
in the al Qaf. The al Qaf are
the endowments that support different charities. Right?
Schools, madrasas, universities,
soup kitchens,
orphanages,
shelters for for
women,
homeless shelters,
animal,
like,
humane societies, all of those things were in
Islamic society. They're supported by charitable endowments. They're
called alqaf or in the Maliki tradition, habuos.
Okay? Hebz Haboos, Wach Alqaf.
Study after study show shows that at the
rise of at the beginning of colonialism,
approximately in most places, approximately 50% of the
Alqaf
were founded by women,
and approximately 50% of the al Qaf were
administered by women. What does it mean to
be
the administrator
of a waqf?
It means that you are responsible for ensuring
that what if this waqf is based on,
say, the profits of a farm
or rental property
or whatever, any income generating,
business. Right? You take the income and then
you apply it to the charity.
So
when you are the overseer
of the walkth, you get both a salary
and you have status.
You have to you have to talk to
the farmers, you have to talk to the
person who's maybe managing or supervising the farm.
You have to count the money. You have
to make sure people are doing it's like
being the executive director of a charity now.
You have to decide the projects, all of
these things. So this is has been part
of Islamic society.
Women were everywhere.
When people talk now, Muslims talking now about
traditional Muslim society,
very often it's based on ignorance,
because we don't know what traditional Muslim society
is without going back and doing the historical
research.
Traditional Muslim societies were destroyed.
The only places that,
they were not destroyed, but somehow continued in
some ways were some of the tribal areas,
but the tribal areas were always exceptions in
Islamic civilization.
Tribal people have always been a little bit
different
and
kind of difficult to to to work with,
frankly.
So they tend to be the most patriarchal
and the most difficult to
to get them to work together collectively for
the good. They're they're They have their tribal
interests. So you see that. We don't have
to mention the countries, but some countries, you
know, are characterized very strongly by tribalism, so
we see that. But in the vast majority
of Muslim land, we had women who were
working with men in all of these different
projects
successfully.
Religious women,
you know, women in hijab, some women, you
know, women with different kinds of veiling, whatever
it is,
pious women, but they were busy in it.
It was destroyed by colonialism because the colonists
wanted the land. They wanted the property.
And then after independence in the post colonial
period,
when in the area,
era of nation states, the new dictators who
arose in the Muslim world,
they
they replicated the model, the authoritarian model that
they had inherited.
So rather than return
to the pre colonial model, which is where
there was this large civic society or voluntary
sector, the government had very minimal involvement in
people's lives in pre modern Muslim society.
They
adopted the methods of the modern nation state,
which exercised great control and power over people's
lives, very top down, hierarchical,
central planning. So what did they do? They
all established
a ministry of endowments and religious affairs.
Right?
So almost every Muslim country has this kind
of ministry.
All the projects were
all the mosques were taken over by the
government
and the people who worked in there were
not appointed by
the local
administrator
but by appointed government personnel.
Well, when did this happen?
This all of these things happened when when
men, even in Europe, were the only public
bureaucrats. Right? The bureaucracy was dominated by men.
So the and the Muslim community
or Muslim new Muslim nations, they reproduce that,
and they appointed men to all these bureaucracies.
You never had so you didn't have any
women anymore.
And people grew up in that environment, and
they had kids in that environment, and they
thought, this is the way things have always
been done. Oh, this is traditional Islam. It's
not traditional Islam. It is post colonial Islam,
which is not traditional Islam.
And so different Muslim nations have tried to
rectify that through these different ways. So for
example, Turkey for a time,
Turkey has, in the last number of years,
appointed women
in the Mufti's office.
So for example, Mufti Kadriya
is one she served for a number of
years in the Mufti's office,
and one of the things that she did
is to take a a survey of all
of the mosques in Istanbul
and see whether they were,
like, they had good facilities for women. That
was one of the projects that she did.
So one way is to keep,
you know, unfortunately, most of these governments are
not interested in dismantling their own power, so
they still are doing it through the ministries.
So you have that. You have,
you have in Morocco, of course, the
Murshidat who have now been added to the
Ministry of Religious Affairs, and they can go
to Kerouin
to study, and then they're appointed as kind
of state appointed chaplains.
You have in Egypt, you have women
preachers
who,
are now
appointed by the ministry to go and preach
to women.
Unfortunately, again, you know, it's all this top
down through the bureaucracy serving, to a large
extent, the interests of the government
rather than
letting the interest of the people really,
you know, be free and and and flourish.
But this is what we're dealing with now
in terms of power structures.
And then you have people like,
the the,
women imams of China, and I'm almost at
the end.
I always talk way longer than I say
I'm going to, but I'm almost at the
end. We have the women imams of China
who,
it's misunderstood by many people. These are not
imams of mixed gender congregation.
They are called female imams.
Imams simply means leader. They're the female imams
for the women of the community.
They have even sometimes their own separate mosques.
These women are paid.
These are paid positions,
and they teach.
They do what we call pastoral care or
spiritual care.
They go visit the people in the home,
and they arrange visits for the women who
are sick at home. They make sure that
that the needs of the women of the
community are taken care of. And what I
really like that is they use a mosque
not as a place where everyone just has
to come to them.
They do provide services in the women's mosque,
but they go out from there in the
community to do these home visitation, which I
think is very important.
Now,
these were founded
originally by a man, by a Chinese Muslim
who saw 4 centuries ago
that his
his country that the Muslims of China
were in danger
because they had gone from many centuries where
the Chinese government,
the Chinese emperor was very open
and the different Chinese dynasties were very open
to Muslims and welcoming
to a more xenophobic
dynasty, Chinese dynasty,
that said, oh, we don't want all these
foreigner. We it sounds so familiar. We don't
want foreigners in China.
So if you're going to stay here,
Muslims, you Muslims, you can't import imams anymore
and scholars,
and you need to marry into the the
Chinese women here so you become more Chinese
culturally like us. So culturally, you fit in.
So they said, well, we have to do
something because they felt that without the influx
of this
knowledge and learning and scholars from
the central Muslim lands, that this would be
lost.
And until then, they had taken, even though
they were Muslim, they tended to follow Confucius
Confucian
culture, which is extremely patriarchal.
So traditional Confucian,
culture does,
make women very submissive to men,
and it's not necessary that women learn like
men learn.
So now the the Muslim leaders said, wait
a minute. We are not gonna survive if
the women in our community
don't understand their religion
in this situation.
And so they founded schools
for educating both men and women in their
community.
They established Once they were trained, there were
women who were appointed as female imams as
they had male imams.
They they taught, they mentored, they established these
female mosques,
and this is something that allowed Islam to
flourish
in China
for centuries.
During the time of the Cultural Revolution, when
Mao when when all religion was prohibited in
China in 20th century,
everyone had to go into hiding, whether you're
Christian, Buddhist,
whatever your religion was.
When, it was allowed then
about 3 decades ago for religion to be,
practiced in China now,
then the Muslims
reestablished
their,
institutions.
And what's interesting is because they were they
didn't have a lot of money, obviously, and
also they felt a little bit insecure insecure
about their religious knowledge because it had been
subsumed for a long time, so not everyone
felt really secure.
Guess what happened?
Let you think about it for a minute.
So what happened is
certain Muslims from other countries,
I'm not gonna name them,
who had a lot of money
came into the country and said, oh, we'll
build mosques,
and we'll send Imams who can teach you
about Islam.
Right?
And what were they taught? They were taught,
first of all, the mosque that they built
looked like they belonged in,
say,
a hot desert,
rather than the mosque that traditionally were in
China, which were beautiful,
gold and red, and that the architecture
it was a mosque, but it was also
so beautiful, so Chinese, you know, it was
really a Chinese
mosque.
So they built they they didn't build any
of those kind of mosques. They want there
were all these whitewashed
sort of, you you know, and the architecture
just didn't make sense in the climate or
anything.
But, plus, they said, oh, this this, idea
of women imams, was that some kind of
bida?
What do you what is that? So then
the Chinese Muslims themselves had to start to
get some
some confidence
in actually what they understood about their religion
and what they did, and really examine what
do we need for our society, and what
are the benefits of what our ancestors had
developed,
and reestablish
this tradition.
But it's still a struggle there. You see
this other ideology that's really pushing against it,
So it's very interesting,
to see that.
I'm gonna keep going just, because I know
we have to end, but this is the
this is the
Surah of the
Quran that we're talking about,
which is so beautiful. And I want us
to pay attention to it and really think
about it where Allah
says, the believing men and the believing women
are
awliya.
Okay?
Badhuhum awliya
Walaia. Remember I talked about Walaia and the
tribes that if you didn't belong to a
tribe, you had to make this this is
where the word maula comes from. You had
to
become attached to a tribe. So huliaia is
a relationship. Sometimes it's translated as friendship.
Sometimes it's translated as partners. It really is
allies. It means it's the person who has
your back. You have their back, and and
they have your back. You are protecting each
other. You're taking care of each other, you're
the one to call if there's a problem.
That's what it is, a very strong word.
And I want you to notice something. I
think this is so important.
So the believing men and the believing women
are allies of one another. They enjoin the
right. They forbid the wrong. They establish prayer.
This is a partnership.
This is a partnership. The believing men, the
believing women. They give zakat, they obey Allah
and his messenger. We have all of this.
This is what we do. These are the
community functions. Right? Establishing mosques and prayer and
zakat, giving charity, all of these things,
doing good in society,
staying away from evil.
But what does Allah say at the end
of this?
They are the ones
to whom Allah will show mercy.
These are the people,
wow. Just think of it. Does our community
need mercy?
What do you think?
You think we're in a state where we
need the mercy of Allah
If we want the mercy of Allah,
these are the people who are going to
get the mercy of Allah, the believing men
and the believing women who are partners of
one another, who work together to do these
things. And you know what?
This is a theological imperative
very clearly to me because when we talk
about Allah's mercy, this is really about faith,
about what we believe,
about where mercy comes from, and where success
comes from.
Where does success come from except from Allah?
But look at it from a pragmatic point
of view as well.
What does Allah say before in this verse?
The hypocritical men and the hypocritical
women,
they are part of one another.
They enjoin what is evil,
and they forbid what is good, and their
hands
are clasped together
doing their evil work. Right?
So,
when we look at the people who are
attacking us,
and not everyone's attacking us, there are many,
you know, we have many allies in the
Christian community, the Jewish community, other people who
are our allies and are good with us,
but when you look at the people who
are working
very, very, very hard
to put Muslims down,
to attack Islam,
they are working very well in partnership,
And these are 2 people who are among
them,
who who met at a party,
and,
then hooked up later and got married even
though he was,
married at the time. But anyways, divorced his
wife and married her,
and they worked together in this.
But I don't wanna leave you with that
bad image, I wanna leave you with a
good image. And this is my last image.
This is at a beautiful place in Toronto
called the Saidna Khadija Centre.
Imam Slimi, who's from Morocco,
a traditionally trained scholar,
deliberately named it. He said, we don't have
enough institutions named after women,
so they named their their Islamic center the
Saidna
Khadija Center.
It is beautiful. They have a beautiful open
mausala,
where anyone can see the imam and pray
you really have a sense.
And he asked me,
about 2 months ago to come and speak
at the masjid on this talk about about
Canadian Muslims and extremism,
and this table is set up right in
front of the mihrab.
And sitting here, we are partners,
auliya with one another,
Imam Salimi and Sheikh. Some of you recognize
Sheikh Farazur Rabani,
a a beautiful, beautiful scholar and teacher,
working together to try to do something good.
And this is, I have to say that
as someone,
I feel very, very blessed
to have so many
brothers in Islam who are my partners,
beginning with my husband,
my teachers, my peers,
scholars and imams who I work with, and
my students.
So it is it it's happening.
It is,
a beautiful,
thing that happens in our time, so we
shouldn't exaggerate the negative
and overlook what's positive,
but just continue to understand the roots of
it so that
so that when we see problems, we have
some
knowledge in order to counter the bad things
that are happening.
So with that, I'm I'll end. I know
I make too many promises about my timing.
Thank you.
And we'll see if they say there's any
time.