Ingrid Mattson – Women In ISLAM
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Assalamualaikum. Wa alaikum, Sarah, alaikum.
We had yesterday the pleasure to listen to
your talk about Muslim women and men, and
now we have some, questions about the interesting
things you told us. Mhmm. So the first
question is
about,
the concept of conspiracy of silence.
So it's an interesting term you used,
and it's about the start it's about the
fact that the stories about Muslim women are
not told often or even aren't told at
all. So
why is this and what can we do
about it?
It's interesting,
to me. I
I,
I think it's very clear that in many
places and it's improving now. I think we've
started to the last
number of years started to raise this issue
more clearly, but,
and bring it to people's attention.
But it it really began for me,
once I had,
studied for a number of years,
Islamic history, and the history of Islamic
traditions in-depth.
And being able to read original sources, especially
the Tabakat and the Rejal literature,
and other literature that
that described the actual lives of Muslims in
different periods and times. And I kept being
struck by
these amazing women. I would keep coming, upon
these women's names.
And,
when I became a Muslim, I just,
you know, I was told what Islam was
like and I was told things like women
don't have a place in public life, there's
the private life, and, you know, all of
these all of these explanations
and also by many,
feminists and others
who criticized Islam for
never giving women a place. Saying that, you
know, when Islam rose that women
were confined to the home,
confined to the Haram,
and most Muslims were saying well, yeah, that's
where they should be And it's a good
thing, so rationalizing this.
But then these original texts were telling me
a completely different story.
Completely different story.
And I would find women's names in the,
chain of transmission of texts, of fiqh texts,
of hadith texts.
Then I would look them up, I would
look at these, Tabqaat Nur Ejag books and
find the women. So the question that I
I,
that came to my mind is, I mean,
why are why have they disappeared? Mhmm. Why
are the women kept in the closet? Mhmm.
Why are they,
you know, what's happened?
And even it's quite interesting because,
what what I saw was that there were
many modern
editions or publications
of traditional texts,
but they weren't faithful. They weren't,
scholarly publications. And a scholarly publication,
you work very hard to make sure that
you,
when you make a modern edition, you have
it as accurate as possible. Mhmm. You accurately
reproduce the original text. What I found in
the modern publications,
put out by by many contemporary religious publishing
houses is that they actually removed a lot
of the material. Mhmm. So they would say
that this,
this book is,
you know, this is,
Ibn Khayyim's,
Kitabar Rooh
or, some book, Imam Al Ghazari Zaha'adu Madin,
or some other book.
But actually what had happened is that the
publishers had removed a lot of the material
and sometimes they'd removed a lot of the
material
that, was about women.
And,
that clearly is an ideological
move.
That is a deliberate move,
based on a view that,
women should have a certain place in society.
So this is one of the reasons.
The other reason is something else and it's,
it's that we
as human beings very naturally
are attracted
to people who are like us.
We,
in a crowd of people,
you know, if you don't know anyone, who
are you gonna go to to talk? Someone
who
you feel comfortable with. Why? Because they, somehow
they seem like you. It's a very natural
human,
reaction.
And I think what had happened is that,
for a number of reasons, political, historical reasons,
The people who were producing Islamic literature in
the modern period, primarily men,
and it was just a question of them
resonating with these stories.
Resonating, for example, with the stories of the
of the male Sahaba primarily.
And so you would find books,
modern publications,
Stories of the Sahaba, for example.
They might have and I don't wanna give
the name of any particular book, but
you you could look at if you look
20 years ago at the major publications,
they might have 1 or 2 of the
Uman Hadza Mumineen, for example,
or Fatima, may Allah be pleased with her.
But then the other 30 entries were all
male Sahaba.
And,
you know, it was this deliberate because they
were hiding women? I don't think so. I
think they just read the stories of the
men and they resonated. So when they selected
them, they they put them in.
Now, because more women, more Muslim women are
involved in scholarship,
I think for us, it's not that we're
deliberately
looking for women either or we have an
agenda of putting women forward, but we read
a story of a Muslim woman and there's
a certain resonance, a recognition
and so we also wanna tell their stories.
So I think this is part of the,
part of the solution is, of course, that
we need both men and women. We need
both men and women. We
need
part of the solution is, of course, that
we need both men and women
and men and women of different ethnic groups,
different cultural groups, different racial groups who are
involved in scholarship and leadership
so that we all bring our interests and
perspectives and the stories that resonate with us
into contemporary literature and teaching.
Mhmm.
So I have a related question to this,
first one.
So because you talked yesterday about the postcolonial
Islam,
and you said that we are living in
this era,
and that this post colonial Islam is shaping
our idea of Islam and
especially,
of woman and manhood.
So,
can you explain it? And is this also
a reason for,
something like conspiracy of silence?
Many,
many generations of Muslims now
have been,
born into
the post colonial period. I mean, colonialism,
European colonialism of the Muslim world started in
the, as early as the 16th, 17th century
in some areas.
That has,
it changed Muslim societies.
And the many generations who were born after,
began to,
naturally
experienced
Muslim life,
and knowing that this was the Muslim life
of their,
you know,
their parents, their grandparents, their great grandparents,
they started to
think of that as traditional Islam.
That this is Islamic tradition because not only
was I raised this way, but my parents
were raised this way, my grandparents were raised
this way.
Not fully understanding
that the way they were practicing Islam
had been
completely changed by the colonial encounter.
Mhmm.
And this is particularly important when it has,
when we look at the situation of women
in Muslim societies
because there's an awful lot of evidence. There's
a great deal of evidence,
about the removal of women from public life,
specifically by colonialism.
Some of the, if you look at,
wonderful book by Professor Waal Hallak,
who's a professor of Islamic Law now at
Columbia University in New York. He has a
very thick textbook on Sharia and the history
of Sharia.
He gathers a lot of sources there to
show, for example, that in the pre colonial
period,
women
tended to be,
up to 50%,
around half
of the individuals who both established the alqaf,
the religious
endowments,
as well as over seeing them. The oversight
of a religious foundation
or a charitable foundation is a is a
public role. It is a role of public
authority.
You know, we have if you look at
a lot of modern Islamic literature,
the the dichotomy that is established is that
the public,
public functions are for men
and private functions are for women.
That that reflects a
a European
Protestant bourgeois
19th century division of society. It does not
reflect
what Muslim societies
looked like for a 1000 years in the
classical period.
In the classical period, there was not that
kind of division between public and and private
in that same way.
The the strength of Muslim society was on
this broad diversity,
decentralized
approach to religious life, education, charitable giving.
The government played a minimal,
protective role,
ensuring the security of society,
the security of the borders,
ensuring the rule of law.
But,
religious life activity functions. Education,
education was not top down, education was
diverse and pluralistic
precisely because
it was based on these independent,
free,
charitable endowments.
That women were very deeply involved in establishing,
overseeing,
and and setting the terms of what were
priorities.
Most modern Muslims don't know that unless
they have now studied this recent scholarship.
And so this is why we need to
understand
how deeply
colonialism affected the very structure of society.
When the colonials came in and they destroyed
these alqav
or they took them over,
where were these women to go? And also,
any time there's war and occupation, it becomes,
and society becomes very unstable and dangerous,
it's natural that people withdraw
their public activities, especially women.
So they begin to withdraw
their public activities and try to stay in
a zone of more security.
So it is true that during periods of
of colonialism,
military unrest, occupation,
you'll find
far less women in the public sphere. But
that's not because that's Islamic, that's the right
way, that's the role of women in Islam.
That's because normal society
is under occupation
and disruption. And so we really need to
reclaim our heritage
and understand how deeply,
not only individuals, but our societies have been
traumatized.
How normal relationships between men and women
were traumatized
and and devastated by this,
colonial period.
So
I
I want to,
to ask another question about a term you
used. It was the sunnah of the Quran.
You talked about the,
responsiveness of the Quran to women's concerns as
a kind of sunnah of the Quran.
Could you give an example,
and what was the impact on gender relations
at the time of the Sahabas? Could you
explain it a little bit?
This is, a view that I've developed based
on,
the recognition
that the Quran,
can be understood
in many different ways in terms of what
the Quran is saying to us and meaning.
So we know that that when we study
the Quran,
we can study it linguistically.
We can study historical context.
We can study the the the rulings.
There are also,
it's very fruitful to study themes of the
Quran.
Themes of justice.
Themes of,
care for the poor.
Themes of, the relationship of,
of course,
Allah and humanity,
themes of collective responsibility,
as well as individual accountability to Allah. These
are all major themes of the Quran.
We also know that part of,
of the meaning of the Quran is the
very sound of it.
The, the recitation of the Quran, the way
the Quran,
the Quranic language,
the words, the the,
structure of it.
The the fact that the Quran isn't just
a a document written in straight prose, but
has all of these aspects of
of,
rhyme and rhythm and,
things that make it beautiful. The beauty is
a message
of the Quran
that we should be beautiful in our religion.
We should be beautiful in our religious speech.
We should use that. So that's a message.
But the responsiveness of the Quran, this is,
you know, for for lack of a better
term, it is this concept of the sunnah
of the Quran that I've developed based on
this, which is that
we know that when we talk about something
general, like the Sunnah of the prophet Muhammad,
we could say,
the sunnah of the prophet Muhammad was kindness,
generosity,
right, attentiveness to people,
And we could support that with individual Hadith.
There
is,
of course the expression, the Sunnah of Allah
with humanity.
What is the Sunnah of Allah with humanity?
It is that Allah gives us a chance,
warns us, gives us what we need to
know.
And if we continue in,
in doing injustice and harm,
then
we will,
incur punishment.
But if we turn to him,
in repentance, he will forgive us. This is
the Sunnah of Allah with us. The sunnah
of the Quran
is
that,
what we see
again and again and again is that,
the Quran was revealed
not always, but in so many cases.
So, this is one of the, one of
the aspects of the Quran, of the sunnah
of the Quran.
In so many cases in response
to injustice,
a complaint
or a difficulty or hardship of the week.
You know, how many occasions the the early
Muslims who were being persecuted, like Sayid Nabal,
for example,
may Allah be pleased with him. The early
Muslims who were being persecuted
and even some of them had to verbally
reject their faith or belief in Allah.
We have we have we have Quran being
revealed in response to that to give them
comfort
and to so they know very clearly that
this is not this is not a sin.
This is not that Allah understands their heart.
So when I when I read the Quran
and I see
in the different places where the Quran addresses
women,
it's it's astonishing to see in in the
vast majority of cases,
it's in response
to a woman's complaint,
to her hardship,
to a difficult situation.
So you could say the sunnah of the
Quran with respect to women is responsiveness
to try to
to assure them that
that Allah loves them, that Allah hears them,
that their sense of injustice
is valid.
And if this is the sunnah of the
Quran, this should be our sunnah as well
with people,
with those who are crying for help, whether
they're women, whether they're refugees, whatever they are.
So a very clear case,
in the case of the sunnah of the
Quran,
being being responsiveness
to women is the case of Mujadila.
Right? And Mujadila
who disputed
with the prophet Muhammad Alaihi Salam about a
particular Islamic practice and made her complaint to
Allah
And
what was revealed in response to her situation
was such an affirmation
of her sense of injustice,
of her right to complain,
of her faith that Allah
is just
and would change the situation.
We have also,
Aisha Radiallahu Anha, when she was accused falsely
of an impropriety,
Surat Anur, versus being revealed in response to
her difficult situation.
So again and again, we have many examples
of this.
And if we ignore this, if we ignore
this very strong message of the Quran,
the sunnah of the Quran, then we're not,
we're missing a major part
of of what Allah's guidance,
last revelation
to humanity tells us, which is that this
has to be our position.
If we want if we need to have
the same kind of presence and responsiveness.
Mhmm. So on the one hand, we have
responsiveness,
on the and on the other hand, you
talked about active faith.
So this is perhaps the counterpart. So because
those women or those people are active. Right.
You mentioned Hajar alaihis salam as an ex
example or role model
for active faith,
which is until today embodied in the ritual
practices of Hajj. So,
what would a tradition of active faith mean
for us today?
Yes. Precisely. It it means that that we
don't just sit and complain and do nothing
about it.
Each in each one of these examples,
these women did something.
Mhmm.
They went to the religious authority, who, of
course, was the prophet Muhammad at that time,
and
they they did something. They asked for a
change.
They asked for a response. They asked for
the situation to be addressed.
And this is
the,
the model for Muslim women.
If we wanna know what Muslim women should
do, it is that is that when something's
wrong,
that they should be active in changing it.
Not as some people say, well, you'll be
rewarded if you're patient.
You're not rewarded if you passively accept injustice
in society.
If you have no choice,
if you have no way forward,
if someone has you in chains and you
have nothing else, then then of course,
your continued faith in Allah is rewarded.
But, we are never asked, Muslim men or
women,
to simply,
accept without a struggle,
being harmed and being hurt. Mhmm.
Or being in a situation that is that
is, like this. And this is why,
I began in my talk
comparison of the biblical passage
describing,
a Hajjif situation
in the desert,
with the,
Hadith of the prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam
where he describes
what happened
when Hejid was brought to the desert
with her son Ismail
by the prophet Ibrahim, may Allah be pleased
with all of them.
In the biblical passage in Genesis,
Hajid is depicted as very passive. She never
speaks.
She is is
sent out by Ibrahim.
She sits and cries.
She sits and cries.
Right?
In the the beautiful, beautiful hadith that is,
narrated,
the hadith of the prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam where he tells the story of Hajar.
She is active.
She asked Sayidna Ibrahim,
is this from you or is this from
Allah?
And when he says this is from Allah
then she says, Allah will not neglect us.
When she runs out of water, she does
not sit and cry. She goes and runs
looking for
a source of water.
She runs looking for it
And when the water comes
and some people come and say, oh, can
we can we come and live with you
and also benefit from this water? She says,
yes, but I will control the water.
Alright? She has confidence in
her
her right
to have that authority
and she also has confidence in her ability
to be a person of justice and fairness
who will make sure that no one takes
it over. Think about today how often
how often commercial companies are coming and taking
over water supplies.
They go and they sell it
and people are left, you know, the ordinary
people are are left struggling because
there's not enough water or there aren't any
fish left because of that situation.
So here she is saying, I'm gonna control
it. Mhmm. Because she is someone, a person
of righteousness, a person who Allah sent an
angel to. Mhmm. Who Allah sent a miracle
to.
A person who Allah chose to establish
one of the most important,
rituals in Islam, an aspect of the one
the most important rituals in Islam chose her,
selected her to do that, of course, she's
a person who should have also worldly authority
and who can do it
with justice and righteousness.
Mhmm. So you mentioned,
that this is a role model to be,
or to have an active faith.
So, we thought about the question because this
is when we talk to Muslim women and
men, they are always talking about one type
of womanhood
and one type of manhood.
So we were thinking about, about the question,
is there an an ideal model,
for being a Muslim woman and Muslim man
and for the relationship between man and woman?
What would you say?
There is,
Muslim
in Muslims are individuals like everyone else. Mhmm.
Allah gave people
all different kinds of capacities, gave men different
capacities and women different capacities. And that is
necessary. If we all had the same abilities,
intellect, capacity,
our society would not have all the things
that we need. For example,
there are some people who are natural risk
takers. Mhmm. They're the ones who who who
neglect the risks and who are willing to
who are able to endure, like, physical hardship,
those are the people who are go out
on the frontier, who, when something
is needed,
who go out
and look for that opportunity,
they help move humanity forward. Mhmm.
They're the ones
who don't, who when there's a sound in
the night, they don't hide, they get up
and they go and they look for it.
Mhmm. So we need those people.
There are those who are more introverts,
who are more,
who are not comfortable taking risks, but they
are have a great ability to pay detail
to a lot of complex information.
I always think of the Hadith scholars as
these people. Mhmm. The Hadith scholars are like
the computer programmers and mathematicians.
They're able to get a lot of data
and information
and hours and hours and hours upon it,
focus on it.
Now, I couldn't do that. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Me too. That's not my personality,
right? But
there are people who are able to do
that. Yes, alhamdulillah.
So we all, we need each other.
When I was a graduate student
and I had 2 children,
you know, it's very difficult to manage all
of those things. I lived with a wonderful
woman, Khaledela,
who is a widow
from Syria,
was living in Chicago.
She invited me to live in in her
house while I was a student.
And she said to me, she said, look,
I can't read all those books and study
and talk.
You know, she'd listen to me on the
radio or giving lectures. I can't do all
of that. You do that. Mhmm. But you
can't cook.
I'm a very bad cook, but I'm a
great cook and it's true, Masha'Allah, her food
is delicious.
And,
she said, so we work together.
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
And this is this is the beauty of
it. Isn't that, you know, every woman's not
gonna be a good cook. Yes. You know,
every every woman's not gonna be interested in
in scholarship.
We all have different things and men are
the same way as well.
Even men are sometimes forced into roles that
are not natural to them. It's not their
personality, it's not their,
their ability.
So, the most important thing is that we
really,
appreciate the diversity
that Allah
has put in us. And we always talk
about Allah
create us
into different.
Yes.
We talk about the different,
linguistic and cultural, the Alwan
and the different languages that are allowed, but
we also need to look at the different
personalities.
And definitely we see that in the Sahaba,
That that there are there are women and
men of all different personalities,
and it's important that we allow people
to develop those so that we have a
strong society, so that we have people who
can
who can be mirrors to us, who are
different than us, who can see within us,
things that are flaws.
And also encourage us in
the areas where we can continue to grow.
And then because we're diverse, that means our
relationships as men and women will also be
different.
We will not all have the same kind
of marriages.
There's not an ideal Muslim marriage.
Yes, there are some general parameters for a
human being, for family life. We should have
muwaddah and rahma, we should have love and
mercy, we should have respect towards each other,
we should make sure
that, we're willing to step up for our
responsibilities.
But that's a very limited framework
within which our individual,
human capacities can develop and grow and interact
and we and we then we learn from
each other and
complete each other's,
as a family, we can have, Inshallah, even
within the family,
you know, the different things covered. Yes. So,
actually, we we're we ran out of time,
I think, but but
still,
so just the short,
question and the short answer, inshallah. Yes. Yes.
If it's possible, the question is important. Difficult
for me. Yeah.
Let's try it, inshallah. So in surah 9
aya 71, you see a theological imperative for
men and women
to be allies for the sake of the
community.
So for what reason you see an imperative
here, and what does it mean to be
an ally?
This is where Allah
Allah
says
So wilayah is
a
is a
very
serious relationship.
Mhmm.
It is alliance. It means that
when someone is in a relationship with Vallejo,
it means that
we are
absolutely loyal Mhmm. To each other. We protect
each other. We are there for each other
as we say in English, I've got your
back.
You know, you need me and I'm there
for you.
It's amazing that,
that
Allah describes our relationship as one of allies
of, of Wallaya, this relationship
In the context of the community formation,
of establishing prayer,
Right? Establishing prayer, which and we know that
means to establish the mosques and the,
sermons hooked by all of these different things
that we establish the cat, which means that
we establish that whole structure
and system of collecting charity and also dispensing
charity. That we enjoin the good, we forbid
the evil.
And that means that our collective obligations
are are Forud Kaffayat,
are the obligations that we have together,
that these obligations that we have together
must be done together between men and women.
When we do that together, this is where
Allah's mercy will be upon us because Ayat
ends with,
Allah saying that,
These are the ones upon who Allah's mercy
will be.
We are desperately in need of Allah's mercy.
We are if I don't think anyone can
deny
that we are desperately in need of Allah's
mercy. Do we want that mercy?
If we do, we really need to be
serious about working together for our collective obligations.
Because as I mentioned in my talk, Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
earlier in the same Surah talks about
the being
together,
but they aren't which
is interesting.
Which shows that their ranks
are, that their alliance with each other is
one of common interests, but not based on
sincere values. Mhmm.
Which means that they can be,
you know, that we should have confidence that
even with all of their sophistication and money
and funding and access to media and everything,
that if we are together,
our partnership will be stronger,
more lasting,
because it's based on integrity
rather than
simply based
on a, alliance of, cynical interests. Yes.
Thank you very much. It was a great
answer, and it was a great interview. Thank
you very much. I hope to see you
soon. My pleasure. And, again, here in Los
Angeles. Thank you very much. Okay.