Maryam Amir – Can women recite the Quran in public Part 1

When I was in college, I went to my local masjid for an event that

was geared about teaching those who are not Muslim, Isla, and they

had a high school student who was female recite the Quran. And I was

so appalled, because I thought it was so haram that a woman would

recite the Quran where men could hear her, I approached the

organizer of the event, an incredible sister, may Allah,

bless her. And I asked her about this, and I was like, you know, we

shouldn't have had a woman, we said, in the Quran. And she said,

Well, maybe it's a difference of opinion. And she was so surprised

to hear that, because she said she's from Indonesia, and in

Indonesia, woman reset Quran all the time. Now that's normal. And

that was the first time I ever came across that idea that

Subhanallah, there are Muslim majority countries in which women

recite the Quran on competitions, on TV, in conferences, women

recite the Quran. And then, when I moved to Egypt, I went to Mishal

alzhar One day I was going to study, and there was a famous

Quran reciter. He was sitting in the masjid in front of him. There

were men on one side with a small little gap. On the other side,

there were women, and he was reciting, and the men and women

were reciting after him. They were practicing their recitation by

mimicking exactly how he would recite. There were probably 200

people there. And subhanAllah, he was conducting this halo where men

and women were feeling so uplifted with the words of Allah, subhanho

wa taala, and they were all present. And there was a second

time that I was ever exposed to women reciting the Quran in a

space where men could hear their voices. And then the third time

was when I moved to LA after Egypt, I went to go do my masters

at UCLA, and I was looking everywhere for female Quran

teacher. Because even though I had those two experiences, I had never

really studied this issue, and I wasn't sure I could study with a

male. I had only had female Quran teachers until, until that point,

and I couldn't find a Quran teacher anywhere who was a woman.

And then Allah opened. I mean, Masha, Allah, I did, may Allah,

bless her so much. But it was just her schedule. My schedule wouldn't

work because she was an hour in and I was in LA and I was doing my

program, and it just couldn't work. Subhanallah, I kept making

dah to Allah open the right way. And Allah, bless me. Was Sheik

Moheb, who many of you have heard me rave about on social media, a

master of the Quran, Mashallah. He knows all of the ascended and

everything. He knows the Quran, the entire thing, like Suratul

tatiha, he does not look at the must have to recite. He opens the

must have because he says that it's a ibada simply to look at the

must have. But he'll have it open at sort of Baqarah. And he's

reciting surat al Naida Subhan Allah. So he told me, Miriam, you

need to recite the Quran at the end of the year banquet. You need

to show people that you're not Arab, that you're from California,

that you're a woman, and that you can recite the Quran. And I was

like Sheik so far. Allah, Sheik, I am, you know, I'm not able to do

that. I'm a female. You are a teacher. You are my Quran teacher,

and you are a grandfather, because he actually is May Allah bless him

and have so much mercy on him and his family. I can't recite him

from a bunch of men. And he got so angry at me, may Allah forgive me

for my lack of adip with Sheik shuyuk, I have no knowledge. And

Sheik Mohib was like, Maryam, don't you know that Islamic

history is filled with women reciters? Don't you know that our

legacy is women reciting the Quran? Don't you know how many in

our history? How many women have taught them, taught men the Quran?

This is our history. This is Islamic legacy, women reciters.

And so I recite the Quran at the banquet. And then I started really

studying this issue. And there are three points I'm Inshallah, going

to be releasing an article that goes into all of these issues

inshallah with all of the references for you. But because

this is going to be a very short inshallah video, just to quickly

go over the point so that you can participate inshallah in the

female Quran reciter campaign, the for mother campaign, in which

inshaAllah, every day I'm going to be releasing a recitation from

jazamma, and I would love for you women, sisters, my sisters, to

recite on social media. This doesn't have to be about men at

all. This is for women, by woman with women, for the sake of Allah

subhanahu. WA bless you so much. If you are concerned about you

know anything, we respect you and we love you for the sake of Allah,

and we just ask that you turn off your sound, because this isn't

about you. May Allah bless you so much. This is about sisters,

hearing the voices of other sisters, and feeling inspired by

other women. I personally never felt the need to hear other

women's voices. I didn't know that I loved reciting and listening to

men. I loved listening to male reciters, but when I started

reciting Quran in front of women for women's conferences and

events, hundreds of women would come to me in tears telling me

this is the first time they ever thought the Quran was accessible

to them. So we need this. We need so much to hear other women's

voice.

Says, And it's okay if you sound like nails on a chalkboard, we're

all gonna sound like that in the beginning, because we haven't

practiced this. But with practice Inshallah, we will get there, and

Allah sees your effort. And here are the three points that I want

inshallah to tell you, so that Inshallah, your heart will feel at

ease. The first one is the concept of a voice of a woman being awra.

But that concept is refuted in the Quran itself, because Allah says,

What?

Yes, hey, jab, if you're going to ask them something, ask them from

behind a curtain. Now that ayah itself has the most empowering

understanding, but we're not going to get into that right now. What

we're actually going to focus on is the fact that Allah spent Allah

simply says when you speak that is refutation to the concept of a

woman's voice being aura. Allah SWT also says, Welcome Nicole and

marufa and speak words that are speak well, and that's a

refutation. I mean, obviously, if you're going to be speaking, your

voice is not going to be out of in fact, the Quran is giving

guidelines for how to speak. Now here is a real issue, the ayafa

Donna, Bill colfay, he modeled local Nicole and marufa, so don't

speak. And here is the by loose attempt at a translation. Don't

speak seductively. Don't speak flirtatiously. Don't make your

voice in this manner so that it can impact someone who has a

disease in their heart. Now, Irene suyuti, his tafsir does very much

align with what I just said, but other, MUFA si Roon, like katada,

like and scholars, katada, Imam abawi and others, their

understanding of this ayah is very different. They talk about a

person who has hypocrisy in their heart, someone who has someone who

has fuju, who has fuju, who's struggling with fiscal like these

are very big, serious, serious issues. So a different

understanding of this verse that is used for not just women don't

be sad Quran could have to do with protecting the Muslim community

from the way the words that you speak could be protection of the

whole Mahat themselves from someone who could be having ill

will. So many different interpretations of this verse

exist from classical Quran scholars. So we're not going to go

into all of that right now. We're just going to say that more exists

than simply women don't recite Quran. So then what about Hadith?

The Hadith of the Prophet salallahu alaihi wasallam doesn't,

in any way, in anywhere, say women do not recite Quran. In fact,

there was a narration of the Prophet Sallallahu alasam, as

mentioned in Imam Ahmed. He was the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa

sallam was walking past a home and he heard a woman reciting Hadith

Allah Shia, the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, to whom this

verse has the news not come to you, was revealed, became

extremely emotional and said, it has come to me. It has come to me.

Oh, chemical Salalah. Ali wasallam, the Prophet sallallahu

alayhi waslam, it's an obligation on him to say, It's haram for a

woman to recite, to recite the Quran so loudly. It's haram for

men to hear the a woman recite Quran. It's an obligation for him.

Sallallahu alayhi wasallam to clarify rulings, but he didn't and

said he was simply emotionally impacted by the recitation of this

woman. Now, where does the concept of a woman not reciting come from?

It comes from, said, of the rare which is really

blocking the means to great to harm, so preventing something that

could cause fitna, so in a certain time period, maybe hearing a

woman's voice reciting the Quran could have been a cause of great

fitna for a particular community.

We live in California, right? I live in California. You live

wherever you live. But we can generally say that in our globe

right now, we are hearing women and men sing. We are exposed on

Instagram, on your feed, to crazy, crazy stuff on Tiktok. I mean, we

have in our society exposure to so much more fitna than a woman

reciting the Quran. The greater fitna that we have in our society

right now is the fact that we have closed the doors of hearing

women's recitation so other women don't know that the Quran is for

them. The Greater fitna right now is that we've caused women to feel

like they cannot approach the Quran like memorizing the Quran is

not something that they should even consider. The greater fitna

is leaving Islam our May Allah protect us. Is women not feeling

like Islam is accessible to them because we've closed those doors

in fear of fitna. We have Islamic history in which women were Quran

reciters, the teacher of Abdul Basit, the great reciter. We have

umsa al khair, who would was a master of the Quran in Egypt, who

would teach men and whose recitation would be asked to be in

banquets and in weddings and only with she mentions the plethora of

radios, and just using the radio. When that came about, she stopped

being such a well asked Quran recited to recite in all these

functions. We also have um Imam sahawi Listening to um Hani and

being emotionally impacted by her. We have Quran reciters as part of

our history. It's time that we allow women to hear other women

and become them. InshaAllah.