Maryam Amir – Should women be Quran reciters
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss their experiences with parents' cultural views and the importance of finding women to excel in religion. They share their struggles with the transmission of the Quran and the " Four Moth tariff" campaign, as well as the success of the " Clarinetists" clarinet competition. The speakers also discuss the impact of the pandemic on women, the importance of finding women to listen to the message, and the importance of digital expression in society. They mention upcoming online clarinet competition for clarinetists from the United States and how women are expected to participate.
AI: Summary ©
Girl Island and friend and you're listening to the digital
sisterhood podcast.
So I met Ustad and Mariam on social media, which I feel like
most of us have. She was this really outspoken woman who had so
much knowledge, and you could tell by just listening to one short
clip reel, and she spent a lot of time educating women about women's
scholarship and recitation. And naturally, I was very, very
inquisitive about her. So I followed her, and I always kept
like I always kept along about what she was doing. And when I
thought about interviewing for season two, I thought, oh, you
know, I would love to get us down the money to come and talk about
my story. And I know she has done it before, but I was even more
affirmed to do it when I found out about her Claudia app that was
coming out. I was like, Oh, I have to, I have to figure out the story
behind all of this and who she is, and really how Allah swatta led
her to creating this, what sounds like a groundbreaking app when we
interviewed Ustad muddy and we weren't able to fully get our
story because we had a really short time in the studio, but
consider this a part one of her story, and in the future,
Inshallah, we plan to bring her back, and we can talk more details
about all the things that we missed. But what I do know is is
this, Ustad money was born and raised in California. She grew up
with parents that rediscovered Islam in their college years and
were very intentional about raising kids that were aware of
Islam
when I really first heard her story sounded kind of like a
romantic film. Let me tell you, this is how it went. My My dad
really found Islam and, you know, chose to embrace his Muslim
identity. In college in California, my mom did the same in
college in Iowa. They both were really introduced to Islam through
Christian roommates that they had. Wow, they would go to church with
and go to Bible study with. And then that kind of opened their
path to learning about different religions, until they both
separately in two different two different states, in two different
times, in two different years, read the Quran. Were so
overwhelmed by the beauty of the Quran and really chose that they
wanted to live this life. And so by the time I was born, I was born
into this family. It was very intentionally raising. You know me
as someone who knows a lot in a loving way, hamdullah, almost all
my other relatives really found and embraced Islam with that same
time period, with my parents. So we're very diverse. We have a lot
of different ethnic and racial backgrounds in my family. I'm
very, very fortunate, very grateful, and being able to have
all of that growing up and yet feeling so supported and so loved,
it helped me kind of explore different aspects of my own
identity as a young person, when I was trying to figure out what my
own path is, many of his parents were super excited about teaching
their daughter Islam, as you can imagine. You know, when you learn
Islam and you find the truth, you're excited to live in it. More
importantly, you're even more excited to grow children who are
going to continue this, this legacy and this belief in this
system.
But as you know, Allah is the one that guides although we can set up
all of the blocks so our kids can succeed. It's really up to them to
find Allah, subhana wa taala. And for Maryam, it didn't come as
quickly or as easily. She did have a hard time finding that same
connection her parents felt to Islam. So I wasn't really into
religion at all, even though my parents were very intentional
about trying to help us learn the love of who Allah's Panama Taala
is, and going to the masjid and just being surrounded by this,
like, you know, this, like, love for God. I personally didn't
really know if I wanted to be Muslim, and I didn't. I had a lot
of questions. And I thought, you know, I did generally believe that
God exists, but I didn't know if Islam was the truth or the one
that I wanted to follow. From early on, Mariam felt hindered by
Muslim society's view of how a Muslim is supposed to be. Mariam
was an extrovert. She was always very energetic, outspoken, loved
sports, loved to perform and even do martial arts, which didn't
match the typical expectations some Muslims placed on women.
Unfortunately, a lot of times that aspect of a woman's personality
within our community is not nurtured. And so I've been very
I've been very intentional about what I do share when I'm public.
Because of that misunderstanding, a lot of times people look at
Muslim woman with a very cultural lens, that it's not based in
religion, it is based in their own culture. And when all of that
comes together and says a certain version of piety is what this
looks like, and that's not someone who's extroverted now going and
who loves to skateboard and who has a black one Taekwondo, nope.
That's really not what you.
That's not what a Muslim woman should look like. And
unfortunately, that's so cultural, but it was something that impacted
me as well. And so for me, like, yes, all of these aspects are
still a huge part of my personality. I just choose where I
share those parts of my personality. You know, it's so
funny. In our earlier podcast, we talked about that, how, like, you
know, if you wanted to be a pie, you wanted to be a religious or if
you wanted to, like, be practicing, you had to have
personality. And I remember he lost, said, with no salt and no
pepper, you gotta you had to seem like you had no personality, that
you didn't have other interests outside of studying the Quran. And
they you were like, you know, boring or and if not, that
judgmental you were. It affected us even, even our ability to want
to practice, it's like I had to abandon parts of myself.
Subhanallah, yes, yes, absolutely. I completely understand that, and
I still it's something I still pray about. But you know, it's so
far removed from the example of the Prophet Muhammad. Peace be
upon him. And the Companions, the woman companions, oh, they're
examples. I mean, they were so, so assertive, so So such like such
warriors and and and fun And subhanAllah, that aspect of who
they were. Unfortunately, it's not, it's not emphasized as much
as it needs to be. And I absolutely blame colonialism for a
part of it, because colonialism heavily impacted the way that that
Muslim women were seen within certain cultures, like if you look
at the texts that we have pre colonization, the way that women
are and the roles that they played in society based in Islamic
knowledge were drastically shifted once colonization hit, and the
puritanical ideas that were outside of our religion, that did
not come from our religion, but those pure, puritanical ideas of
women that were that were heavily influenced the culture that they,
they colonized. I mean, we're, we are. We are only a few generations
away from that, and so, so we're still reeling from it. But
Alhamdulillah, I feel like more and more the way that our
tradition, the traditions, the scholarship, is going back to our
roots, and I think that is really where we're going to be able to
find women finding healing in our religion as well, absolutely. And
I think that's, that's exactly how I came into it. I started to learn
about side to a book, and then I started to realize that I never
had to abandon parts of who I was in order to excel in this, you
know, yeah, because they always there was, we even talked about
this element of, like, memorization, that if you were a
serious Quran student, you didn't talk, you didn't speak, you were
strict, you weren't funny, you couldn't make jokes. Like, you
know, that somehow you had to be this, like, this, this rigid
person, robot, yeah, robot that had, like, you know, one focus and
one focus only. But then you started to see people Masha Allah,
like ustadel, who had personality and then became a Hafid, you know,
like, and those, and those parts of who she was inspired other
people like, oh, maybe I there is room for me here, you know, yeah,
it isn't a girls club that had, like, you know, kind of similar to
a boys club, but you had to, you know, be a certain way, but you
could actually be however way and use those parts of you to excel.
Well, money was in high school. Her father decides a gifter with
the best gift anyone could gift someone a trip to go to Umrah. You
know, people spend their whole lives saving to go to Umrah, and
here marim was, oh, thinking, Okay, we're going on a trip that's
fantastic, not understanding what exactly was about to come her way.
My first reaction, you know, when you hear that someone is going to
go to Mecca, when you're told you get a you got to go to Mecca, It's
a trip of a lifetime. But my first reaction was, I don't want to
change like I had known people who had gone to Mecca and come back,
very, very spiritual. And I was like, I don't want to change. I'm
not looking for that. I don't want that. And subhanAllah, when we
went into the Haram, like, you know, the Kaaba is in the middle,
and then there's like this haram, like the masjid that surrounds it,
the the masjid is surrounding it. And then there's like the Haram
outside. I mean, the whole area is the haram. But anyway, we're
walking in through the masjid, and I remember that my dad had told us
to look down so that, like the very first, you know, glimpse that
we get to see is the Kaaba. And I was looking down, and I remember
my parents were crying, and I just thought, I don't feel anything
like I literally was like, I feel nothing. I could be at the mall
and feel something more, and I didn't. I didn't feel connected in
any way to what was happening to my parents. And then we kept
walking up to the steps where
it's the opening to the Kaaba, and
when my dad
told us to look up
the first time I saw the Kaaba, it felt like
it felt like my heart came to life. I had no idea you could feel
your heart. I had no idea.
Da that you could actually feel your heart inside your body. It
felt like Allah had raised my dead heart to life. And in that moment,
I was so struck with the awe of loving Allah, Subhanahu wa, with
just wanting to know who he is, with wanting to turn back to him,
and wanting to live my life for him and and in that, that that
moment, I just asked for his forgiveness, I asked for his
guidance, I asked for him to help me, know him. And then I came
back, back to California, back to, you know, my high school I was
going to, I went to public school. I wasn't surrounded by like, oh,
like Islam all the time. I wasn't surrounded by any of that. And
honestly, some people who are surrounded by that also have
really difficult experiences, like not Islam, but like an Islamic
school or an Islamic environment, because, again, there's so much
culture at play that's not necessarily Islam itself, but
SubhanAllah. I came back, and I'm like, How do I maintain this
connection? And I decided I'm gonna start reading the Quran, and
I am not Arab. I didn't know. I barely knew how to read the
letters, and I tried to read five pages a day at that time, I was
like, I could watch friends for like, hours, but I don't know how
to, like, read the Quran. And so I sat with that, and I have a lot of
commentary on friends, by the way, that's not a that's not a common
who I am now. But just like reading. Reading those five pages
took hours. And I remember one time my mom was like, why don't
you read it in English, so that you understand what you're
reading? And I started to read the translation, and it was
transformational. I would I would go to school, something would
happen. I would come back, like, bawling my eyes out, open the
Quran to a random page, point at a verse, and the verse was exactly
what happened to me. Wow. It was like, I would be praying and like,
Oh Allah, can you even hear what I'm saying? Do you even not? Can
you even hear? I know he can hear. But are you listening to me? Like,
like, literally, I just, I remember sitting on my floor with
my hands up, talking to Allah and saying, oh, Allah, like, there's
like, billions of people on the earth. Like, are you actually
listening to me specifically? And then I open the Quran with my eyes
closed, pointed at a random verse. What was the ayah when My servants
call me? What either said any when My servants ask of me, I am near.
I answer the one who calls when they call. And Subhan Allah, it
was just one experience after another that, you know, I was
going through something. I'd open the Quran, and it was like Allah
was was with me in his knowledge. And the more that I read it, the
more I wanted to memorize it. And so that began my journey of
starting to memorize the Quran, starting to learn Arabic and and
then as I went through that journey, I started hearing all
these things related to women, and that was, that's a that's another
fight. That was another fight. Yeah, before we get there, I have
a question to ask you, yeah, what was your relationship with the
Quran like before that experience? Before experience, before Umrah?
Oh, there is zero that had no relationship at all. I remember
that my parents had me going to the last time before Umrah, I had
opened up Quran, the verses and transliteration, like, write out
B, I, S, M, I, L, L, A, H, on a sticky note. I'd put it on my
hand, and then when the teacher would ask me, because the teacher
was looking at her, must have so she couldn't she wasn't looking at
me, I would read it off the sticky note to pretend I had memorized,
wow. So I hadn't opened the Quran at all since that class. It had
been years since I had touched the Quran.
With every friend that I have that's ever memorized the Quran,
cover to cover always explains to me that you'll never really fully
understand what it is Allah is trying to say to you, until you
learn Arabic, until you remove the third party, which is, you know,
needing assistance in English, you always feel like there's a barrier
between you and Allah.
And so when Mariam opened the Kitab that day, and she pointed
out a random verse, and it was a verse where Allah saying, I
respond to the supplicant. I respond as if Allah was talking to
her,
she was beyond curious to understand Allah in ways that was
beyond just English written words on a page, but she really wanted
to understand what exactly Allah intends, or what He means to say
when he says those verses. And so this, this desire to know, the
desire to remove the third party and learn Arabic, really began. So
I started taking Quran and Arabic classes. When I was in high
school, I started taking classes and just trying to, like, learn as
much as I could. And after high school, I really wanted to go
study like overseas or study somewhere, but especially at that
time, like there was no, you know, online courses. There was nothing.
Thing, like, you know, no social social media didn't exist at that
time. There was no way to even know people, like, of like, who's
studying, where get connected with someone. And so my parents were
like, We don't know anyone in the Middle East. How are you gonna go
study in the Middle East? You don't speak the you don't know any
you're 17. They're like, go to college. And then after you go to
college, you can go. And so I was like, no, like, every year of
college, I tried to find a way, and they were very supportive.
They were like, you know, open to helping me find, you know,
potential, like someone who knows, someone who lives somewhere, who
could help me, like, access this path. But it wasn't until after
college, the day after I graduated from college, that I flew to
Cairo, and that's when I started my, I guess, my more foremost,
full time studies. So who told you about Cairo? How did you know
about Cairo going there? How did you know that women could go there
and learn? Yeah, Imam sohib Webb, may Allah, bless him and increase
his ranks and bless his family. He was the Imam of my Masjid at the
time, and he was studying in Azhar. And so, because he was in
Azhar in Egypt, my parents were like, Okay, we know im Suhaib, and
we know his family. And I had a few friends who actually moved to
study in Al Zahara as well by that time. So they were like, Okay,
there's, like, a small community of people we know we trust and
like, you know we we we can connect with if, like, there's a
reason that you know we're concerned that we know that you're
taken care of. So yeah, Alhamdulillah, my dad actually
flew over with me. He helped me make sure to I found an apartment
like I had wonderful roommates, masha Allah, and then he flew
back. And so hamdullah, I was very blessed to have that kind of like
supportive space once I was there. What was the first day in Egypt?
Like the very first day I was with my dad, and it was so fun. We,
host Subhanallah Cairo. So we were staying in this in this hotel, it
was called the Boy Scouts hotel, and there were, like, literally,
there were boy scouts that came to the hotel. So it's just like this
hotel filled with Boy Scouts. I don't know why it was so random,
but like, there was a mission nearby that we walked to, and
like, we'd walk the streets, and my dad was having a blast crossing
like seven lane roads that have no crosswalks. And he's like, this is
life, and you're just so excited about it. It was amazing to hear
the event everywhere. Oh, the first time in my life living
somewhere where you can hear the event. It just, oh, the event just
touches your soul and and just being surrounded by so many
people. Cairo, at that time, had 30 million people in the city. It
was packed everywhere, like people were in microbuses. People were on
top of microbuses. People were hanging on the sides of
microbuses. It was incredible for me to just observe a totally
different area, and I loved every minute of it. May Allah bless the
people of Egypt and bless, bless people everywhere. But it was a
very it was, it was a blessing. I obviously had moments where I
bawled my eyes out, and I would stare at the moon and just like,
like, just miss my family and miss being home. There were the second
day I was in Egypt, I threw up because I was crying so hard. I
was like, I miss my parents so much. But alhamdulillah, by the
first week, I was just so grateful hamdullah, so so, so grateful to
be there.
Mariam was in the land of her dreams. She began to learn Arabic
for one year, but just because she had made it there, did it mean the
hard part had passed no child. It had just begun for her. What does
that say? That people say anything worth having is worth struggling
for? Yeah, something like that. You know, for Arabic, when you
start learning, you think you're gonna start learning tafsir Quran,
and you're so excited to learn about Islam. And you're learning.
Yousef walked to the bank, Yousef went to the grocery store. Yusuf
met his friend at the hotel. And it's so incredibly hard to
understand why I need to study this to get to that. But
obviously, for any person who actually studies a language, it
makes sense why you need to start there to get here and in the in
the process. Though, in the beginning, it's just very hard to
to be patient, you know, you come all the way so you could study the
language, and you're learning about different names for fruit.
But all those names of fruit, they're in the Quran. You know,
Yusuf going home. That's, those are words in the Quran. I mean,
these are words that we, that that we, that we, that we, you know, we
this panel will have in our revelation. And so it's, it's a
very long and, you know, I remember when I was still here,
and a friend of mine had just moved to Cairo, and she was
messaging with me, and she was like, I just feel so like, down,
like I came to study and I'm not studying what I really wanted to
study. And I was like, girl, do you know how much I dream of being
in Egypt, and at that time, I had no idea that I would be blessed
with going. I was like, That's my dream. And and you're there. And
she's like, thanks. I just needed that reminder, because sometimes
you just get it's not that you get bored, although it is a little bit
boring, and in a sense, because the material isn't like me.
Mentally invigorating, but, but you get, you get like, restless
because you want to study more, but you're, you're barely learning
how to walk. You can't sprint a marathon. Like you can't even
sprint a marathon. You know you shouldn't sprint a marathon, but
you're not ready for the like. Long for the like? Well, I guess
you can. It depends on how you know the amount of running.
Anyway, what am I saying? The point is that it's a process. It's
a process, and in the beginning it can be really hard to be patient.
It reminds me of the film The Karate Kid, Mr. Miyagi, and the
Karate Kid wanted to do all these incredible moves that he knew, but
he's like, you're a grasshopper. You have to start with the basics.
He's like, in his head, all he saw was soap, child labor. What he
thought with child labor, he's like, he would clean his car.
You thought he probably think I'm being exploited here, like I came
here for one thing, and I don't see me doing that. But then, and
as we, as we watch the film, we realized that those movement he
was learning over and over again would be the most power dynamic
movie he needed to know. But like, at time, we didn't know. And it's
like, I think a lot of us like learning Arabic. I don't know. I
mean, I can imagine, is kind of like, you know, the Karate Kid.
You think you you have all these expectations. You already see
yourself at the final destination, but you don't quite know what it
looks like to get there. And so when you figure out how simple
downed it is, you're like, what is it really what I was supposed to
be doing? Yeah, this and like, I'm sure anybody that mastered
anything will tell you, bro, you it gets restless doing the thing
over and over again, but it's necessary. You have to do that
work in order to get to where you need to. And it's very humbling.
I'm assuming, I would assume, it's a very humbling experience. Yes,
upon Allah, absolutely. Sometimes you're studying Islam or you're
beginning to practice
there's a lot of misinformation. I remember one of the one
misinformation I had learned was that women's voices were out of
and what that means is that essentially,
a woman couldn't speak
because it was something I needed to be kind of hidden. And I at
first, I was confused about what that meant. Does that mean that
women should never speak like I didn't understand how that that
would make sense to anything. But it was something that was very
popularly known, and it was something that was often
reinforced, reinforced even by women, older, older, traditional
cultural like, you know, I learned then quickly that it was more
culturally than it was religious. But that was, that was this, that
was a sense of it I heard for a very long time. And obviously it
was only when I studied the fiqh of Salah that I learned that was
incorrect, because women's voices are out in Salah. And
then somebody had asked the class, does that mean women's voices are
out of outside salah? And the shield said no. And that blew my
mind, like, when I told you, like, it blew my mind. I was so shocked.
And I was like, the why are people saying that? Like they said I
didn't ask you this because I was kind of embarrassed to even even
allow to, you know, to think that was true or even challenge it. But
alhamdulillah, you know, when you seek knowledge, you start to
realize the difference between culture and actual religious you
know, sentiments you do, you start to separate them, and you
recognize that people are pushing their own agenda, and that's why,
also, it's really important to seek knowledge. You know, it's
really important for me to acknowledge and for Mariam back
home in the US, Mariam heard similar sentiments, and it wasn't
until she went to Egypt that she started to see something
different. For the first time in her life, Mariam witnessed Muslim
women reciting Quran out loud in public.
So being in Egypt, one of the things that I was exposed to,
which was we're actively teaching Islam, and that's not something
that I had seen in my locale. And of course, women scholars are
literally in the 1000s. They're all over the world, if not the 10s
of 1000s, but I didn't have that same experience growing up, and so
I didn't know that when you don't see something, you don't know that
that's necessarily part of the existence and at least for me. I
mean, I mean perhaps if I had, at that time, had access to social
media, and like all these online opportunities, I would have just
known about more, but that didn't exist. It was just my locale, and
I didn't see that example in Egypt. I started seeing that
example everywhere. Women were everywhere. Women were teaching
everywhere, women were lecturing, and women were part of these
Islamic spaces of knowledge that in my own masjid, typically, was,
you know, very, very closed off. And when I had Panola one time, a
friend of mine and I went to Masjid Al Azhar, and it was the
first time we had gone there full vast Aryan. And elzhar is like a
very historic Masjid. So we walk in, and as we walk in, I'm hearing
Quran.
And then I see that there's a major Quran reciter. There's,
like, news cameras. And not news cameras, actually, they were like,
just like, like a camera for TV that that while we were there, the
reciter was like, Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't expect that
somebody would come because they heard that this major reciter was
in this masjid. And so they, like, rushed over to record him. He was
just so chill and so so like accessible to people. And in this
class, I'm seeing that as he's reciting Quran, he's reciting
Quran, and all the students are repeating after him. And there
were probably, like 200 people at this class, and half of the
students were men and half of the students were women. And that was
the very first time I had seen a class where men and women are
studying the Quran and reciting the Quran together publicly in
Masjid Al Azhar itself. It just blew me away. Subhan Allah, I had
come from a background of, you know, getting excited about Islam,
and when I got really excited about it, I learned all of these
things that women should not do, women should not do, women should
not do, women should not do. And it got me into this place where I
was very scared of my own personality, and I was very scared
of myself, and I was very doubtful of my role as a Muslim woman.
Seeing this by a scholar in a masjid of scholarship, it really
started opening my mind to the idea that maybe the quote,
unquote, only authentic truth, the only way to understand the Quran
and the Sunnah, the only Haqq is perhaps not necessarily the only
one. Maybe there are differences of opinion on issues that I was
taught or only one way. And maybe what I was taught, and this is not
from my own parents, but from some of the experiences I had in Muslim
circles. Maybe that's not even based in Islamic knowledge. Maybe
what they said is the way women should be was actually an based in
a cultural understanding of women. So for me, that was really the
first time where I started experiencing that difference for
what women's roles could actually be. And that experience really
opened my eyes to, you know, subhanAllah, how women see
ourselves in our religion, and why? Sometimes many women struggle
with the way that they see themselves. So how did that? How
did that drive you? So now you see this, this moment where your eyes
would peel back and you're like, oh, maybe I need to know more.
At that time, I was really scared of learning about women in Islam
because I had heard, I had taken this class in college. It was
called Women Islam and sexuality. And the professor, I had taken the
class so that I could, like, defend Islam from anything I
heard. But the professor brought up so many things that I had no
idea how to reply. And anyone I asked, you know, they didn't have
the answer either. And so what ended up happening is that,
course, in addition to all the messages I was hearing from women
who were very righteous but who had not actually studied Islam
formally at all, those two things combined made me terrified of
studying women's issues, because I didn't know how I would feel about
myself and about Islam if I continue to hear messages like
this. So I was passionate about the Quran. I was obsessed with the
Quran. I am obsessed with the Quran. Alhamdulillah, it's it is
the greatest joy of my life. The Quran is just such a gift from God
and and I knew I wanted to pursue that. So I I was amazed by this
program, but I also couldn't continue learning more about it,
because I wasn't at a place emotionally where I was ready to
hear really anything. I was very young. I had just started learning
Arabic, and I told myself, focus on Quran. Focus on Arabic and
Inshallah, at one point you might be ready to start really focusing
on what it means to be specifically what it means to be a
woman, as a as a lecturer, as a Quran reciter, what does that role
look like? And subhanAllah, it really, for me, didn't start
shifting completely just by seeing that one example. That example
opened my eyes. It didn't shift the way I thought fully that
happened when I hamdullah memorized the Quran in California,
when I came back from Egypt with Sheik Mohib, fool, who is a senior
Quran scholar, who has an ijazah, multiple ijazahs in every Akira
ATS of Quran, who never needs to look at the must have, because he
knows the Quran so well that he will open it just because he loves
The Quran, and he will open it because it's worship, just to gaze
at it. But he'll be opening to Suratul Naida, and he'll be
reciting Suratul Baqarah. And his recitation, his connection, is
just so strong, subhanAllah and being in connection with him,
Alhamdulillah, finishing my memorization with him. It wasn't
just that I had this experience of, I love the Quran, and I just
want to know it. And yes, absolutely. But also, he taught me
how to live the Quran as a woman, and how to use my voice for the
Quran as a woman. And no one had ever had that particular focus
before. No one had ever had had ever emphasized the importance of.
Women being Quran reciters. Before that had never even entered my
mind before him, and it wasn't until he I mean, yes, of course,
these women were at a class, those women were at a class. And I
messaged it. And never seen a mixed class like that before. But
Sheik Mohib, when I was studying the Quran with him, he was like,
Miriam, you need to recite at the at the graduation banquet for all
the people who have memorized the Quran this year. And I was like,
Sheik, like, and Sheik Mohib is a grandfather. He is, he is
mashallah, like, an amazing, amazing, you know, scholar who is
elder. He's older than me, right? And so, like, I'm like, Sheik,
like, I'm, I'm a I'm a woman. Like, you're, you're, you're,
you're, like, a grandfather, you're, you're shirk like, of
course, I can recite to you, but, but on, you know, in front of, in
front of a bunch of men, like share, you're a share. We're
gonna continue story after a message. This Ramadan, the digital
steward, is partnering up with helping hand for relief and
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We're gonna continue story after a message. This Ramadan, the digital
steward, is partnering up with helping hand for relief and
development to sponsor a skills of development and livelihood center
in matogo, Kenya, for women and youth living in poverty, skills
training empowers beneficiaries to take charge of their own lives
with dignity and determination. Our goal is to sponsor 138
students, that is 138 women and youth who will learn employable
skills and gain financial stability. Help us in making that
happen by visiting www.hhrd.org
forward slash sisterhood to learn more and donate. Now finally, back
to the story, and his response was anger. He was furious. He pointed
to a picture he had that he kept a newspaper article of Sheikha Om
sadha Om sad was a Quran reciter in Egypt who had one of the
shortest senads in the world. Men and women would travel from Saudi
Arabia, from Kuwait, from Palestine, different parts of
Egypt, to go and study under her one of the greatest Quran
scholars, subhanAllah has his ijazah through her. Just so much
knowledge in this woman. And he pointed to her, and he was like,
Mariam, like, yelling at me. And he was like, he was like, Muslim
woman have been Quran reciters and Islamic scholars in all of Islamic
history. And like, he pointed at her picture, and he was like, Look
at who she is. And subhanAllah, he yelled at me, and he was like,
this is Islamic history. This is Islamic legacy. Do not let anyone
else tell you otherwise. Do not let this narrative of women do not
belong in the space of Quran change who you need to be. And
that moment, for me was so shocking and also embarrassing. I
was like, Sheik, I'm so sorry that I was like, Sheik, don't you know
It's haram? Like, of course he knows it's haram. If it was haram,
he would have known it was haram. Like, he's a scholar of the Quran.
And then he was like, you are reciting. You need to show people
that someone who is not Arab, a woman from America, can recite the
Quran, and I certainly don't recite it better than anyone else,
but in his words, he was like, better than someone who just says
that they know the Quran because they speak Arabic. No, you have to
study this, and you've shown that you study this, and you need to
give that example And subhanAllah, so I recited at this banquet,
because Shah wahib was very passionate about it. And you know
what happened at the banquet? What? Let me tell you what
happened. There were men and women who listened. And afterwards, some
of the men came up and they said, Thank you for reciting. And a lot
of women came up and said, subhanAllah, I I'm I want to do it
too. And how do I do this too? And who do I study with, too? And
those women saw someone recite, saw a woman recite, and they
wanted to study, and those men said, Thank you, and they moved on
with their lives. That's exactly what happened. Wow. And that's all
that happened. But, but for me, but for me, that was really the
beginning of my research on women as Quran reciters. That's that
those two experiences as well as an experience when I was in my own
local masjid, and the coordinator for outreach events had a high
school girl, she was reciting the Quran for an event that taught,
you know, taught the basics of Islam to those who are not Muslim,
who are interested. And I was shocked that there was a girl
reciting the Quran in the masjid I went up to.
Her. And I was like, you know, very respectfully, women are not
supposed to recite the Quran. It's haram. You shouldn't have a woman
reciting the Quran in a public event. And she responded
completely like, oh, oh, really, well, in Indonesia, women are
Quran reciters. She's from Indonesia, and she said women are
Quran reciters on television and in competitions. And I've always
grown up with women as Quran reciters. And those three
experiences led me to realize that maybe the experience, the
perspective, that I had been taught, is not all of Islamic
history, is not all of Islamic opinions. And Alhamdulillah,
that's what really started the beginning of my journey to
research woman as Quran reciters. Wow. So when did the When did it
happen? When you mentioned you were invited to recite mashaAllah
from understanding, am I correct? Oh, Masha. So I was invited? Yeah.
I wasn't invited to be a reciter. I was invited with Al buruj Press.
They lead groups to go to mashsaw and have lectures in mashal Aksa.
So hamdullah had the blessing and the gift in 2019 I went with their
group, and hamdullah myself and Sheik Hasib Noor, we were there.
We were giving lectures in mashal Aksha. I was reciting the Quran in
mashall Aqsa in the compound, there were so many men and women
who were there. The Sheik of mashallah, Azhar was there. We
were translating for his speeches. Sheik Yusuf, Abu sunina, may
Allah, bless him, and Subhan Allah. It was just such a part of
the it was just so people were just coming up to me and saying,
mashallah was really nice to hear your recitation. It wasn't like,
what are you doing in national it was just such a, such a beautiful
panel, such a beautiful, you know, such a such a beautiful historical
place to recite. And let me tell you something. So there is this,
there is this Quran reciter who lived, he was very famous in the
1920s and Subhanallah, he has this really powerful statement, um, he
was reciting at a time when there were five women Quran reciters in
on Egypt's radio. They were actually, they were actually
reciters on the radio. And they, um, they had, you know, men and
women reciting publicly. At this time, the recitation was also
aired in Italy, aired in France, and women and men were reciting on
the radio. And then, and even in Egypt's panel in the late 1800s
the there was um Claudia, um Muhammad. She was actually
appointed by the core of Egypt in the palace by Muhammad Ali besha
to recite the Quran. She was a court appointed Quran reciter, and
she passed away who she's buried next to Imam ashefair, irahi,
Muhammad Allah And subhanAllah. This, this, this, this culture of
woman is Quran reciters in Egypt right now, if you ask someone like
the you know, the maybe the typical person who's grown up in
Egypt, they probably would not have heard women escort and
reciters in many public spaces. But you have to realize also what
happened between the time of woman escort and reciters in the 1800s
and now colonialism happened, and when we had women like panala for
this app that I'm working on, which is called the Clari app,
which, Inshallah, I would love to share with you soon, the we have,
um, we've had recordings on there from the early 1900s women who are
recorded in 1920 and 1910 they have recordings of their Quran
recitations. They sound like Abdul Basit. So is Abdul Basit? Is Abdul
Basit style? Or is it Shah mabruka style, Subhan Allah. So when you
when you listen to their recitations, and they came from
this time period, there was a sheik. His name is, his name is
Sheik Abu ay nain shuy Shah, and he was the first Egyptian
appointed to recite the Quran in Masjid Al Aqsa, so he recited the
Quran in MySQL and he used to recite the Quran on Cairo's radio
with these women Quran reciters like like Sheikha, Munir Abdu and
Sheik Karima. And listen to what he said when Azhar passed a fatwa
that woman cannot be public reciters, which, by the way,
Darul, if that has has changed since that time, and now it's
permissible. They mentioned conditions. But the point is that
Subhanallah, his statement was, I will never my mind will never rest
until the woman returns to being the Quran reciter on the radio,
and we return to the time of Egypt's golden age the voices of
women, the ones that we can hear, their recitation of the Quran.
These voices have been present for more than 50 years.
Like for me to recite in the same place that this shaykh of Quran,
who was working with Sheik Abdul Basit, who came from that time
period, and Subhanallah, he recited the Quran in the same
place that I was so honored to recite the Quran. And his view on
women's recitation was he will never rest until women become
Quran Mercedes on the radio again. Subhan Allah, the history that you
know because of our lack of knowledge, we say, it doesn't
exist. Because of our lack of knowledge, we say, Oh, no one's
ever I've never seen that before. Okay, if you've never seen that
before, it means you need to study. It doesn't mean it doesn't
exist. It means you're maybe ignorant. You should learn more.
Pause, I know the story is getting so good, but wait, I have a
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register today. So I have a question for you, since you've
been since you were doing research for the app, right? You've been
doing research for the app. My question to you is, what are some
of the most
incredible things that you found in your research,
I think one of the things I've just been amazed by is the
plethora of women Quran reciters throughout history, and how we
just have been so unfamiliar with their names on a more public
level,
just the role that these women scholars have played, the role of
women scholars who have taught the likes of Imam Malik and Imam
ashefairy, Imam Ibn Taymiyyah, Ibn Al qayyim, Ibn Hajar, all of these
men, and all the men that we quote, and all the men who may
Allah bless them, all who we learn from, who we study their texts
from all of them. List women that they studied under Wow,
SubhanAllah. And I mean, it's not one or two women. It's like, like
in the in the 50s, in the 60s, as PandA Law, these are some of the
greatest scholars of Islam, and they were taught by women. Their
teachers were women. For me, the more exposure that I've learned,
I've had to women's roles and shaping Islamic history and
shaping fatawa, it's just so Pana. It's heartbreaking to me that that
this isn't something that we know on the norm. Why isn't it? Why
isn't why is it something that people are surprised to hear? It
doesn't need to be something people are surprised to hear.
Sheik abnedouhi, who has done so much work in women's scholarship,
He's a lecturer in the UK. He's a hadith scholar, and he was
teaching at Oxford and Subhanallah, he wrote al
muhadithat, which is a compilation of that time when he wrote the
introduction to the volumes that he has now he had in that book, I
believe around 7000 had women, woman Hadith scholars in history.
Now, because he's done more research, I think it's closer to
10,000 and he's published al Wafa Bill Asmaa, which is in Arabic
inshallah. There's a translation, I think, that they're working on.
But the point is that, like he said, This is just my research as
one person who's doing this on the side, because he does so much
other work, imagine if we invested resources to looking at these
older texts and seeing all that's been written by women, from woman
about women who have shaped the narrations of the way that we see
Islam. Subhanallah the Saddam Maria, decides to take things into
her own hands by developing an app, an app that compiles a
recitation of female reciters from all over the world, as well as
clips of renowned female reciters from the past. And with every
project.
There are a lot of challenges
in 2020.
We had the pandemic at that time, Subhana law. I was very restless,
because I felt like there's so many women who are professional
Quran reciters, and no one in our area has heard about them, and yet
these are women who are in so many parts of the world, in Nigeria, in
Yemen, in Tanzania, in Morocco, in Algeria, in Singapore, in
Indonesia, Indonesia and Malaysia, women as Quran reciters, women in
competitions, women on stages. It's part of their norm, and it's
approved and supported by their scholars. And so I just was
thinking about subpanalo. We are in a time where we are physically
locked in our homes. And at that time, everything was locked down,
the parks were locked down. You had a curfew for leaving your
house. And And subhanAllah, I just thought like, you know, men were
talking about how we don't have access to the masjid. That's
Ramadan. And so many women were thinking, but that's our
experience in general. That's often our experience, depending on
where you live, and depending on the masjid and and thinking about
all of these things. Panama, for 10 years, I've been working with
Quran scholars. I've been working with Islamic scholars of different
fields, and working on the idea of how to create a space where women
can view other women as Quran reciters. I've spoken to them
literally for 10 years, quite literally, 10 years of planning.
What would be the best way at that time social media had come up, we
talked about maybe making a Facebook group. Like, what would
be the best way to expose women, other women, to women, because,
again, like, when you don't see it, you don't know you can become
it. And for me, I had traveled throughout the UK giving lectures
with a staff that Jinnah and Yusuf, and we had gone through all
of these different all of these different cities. And there were
hundreds of women who came to every lecture, and I was reciting
the Quran in every lecture, and all of these women would come up
to me afterwards and say you are the very first woman that we have
ever seen reciting the Quran and the stories that they shared with
me. One woman drove four hours to get to the event. We had been in
her city the night before, and she said she had no interest in going
to a random event. Her friend called her and she was like, you
have to go to the other city that they're going to be speaking in,
because you're gonna see something you've never seen in your life,
she drove four hours away. She's in her 50s. Wow, she came to the
event. She came to me afterwards, and she asked if she could hug me,
and she said, I'm in my 50s. This is the first time I have ever
heard a woman reciting the Quran. And had I known that women can be
Quran reciters before, then, I would have pursued Quran too, and
how do I start? Wow, she's in her 50s, and she's asking, how can she
start to access the Quran? And she was just one of so many stories,
one after another, of high school, college, young professional women
in their 30s and their 40s, a woman in her 50s coming to me and
saying, you were the very first person I've ever seen recite the
Quran, who was a woman. I had no idea that women could be a Quran
reciters. If I had known, I wouldn't have spent so many hours
in choir at school. I would have memorized Quran. If I had known, I
wouldn't be singing lullabies to my kids, I would be reciting
Quran. And just the fact that this is generational, if this 50 year
old woman had no idea, and if she had children and didn't raise her
girls to know, and they have children, and they don't raise
their girls to know, when we talk about women needing to, you know,
claim the hijab or claim your Islamic identity, yeah, we're
gonna be outside 24/7 covered, and everyone is going to know that we
are Muslim, and we deal with Islamophobia, and we deal with
judgment, and We deal with all of that. And then we come into the
community, and we don't even know that we can be a Quran reciters.
We don't even know that we can have a space with the Quran. And
then people in the community have the audacity to blame women when
they struggle with their Eman. It's just her obsession with the
dunya she's obsessed with fashion. Maybe there's something more than
obsession. Maybe it's she feels so far removed from her identity as a
Muslim because she doesn't have access in the same way that her
brethren do, and yet she's expected to carry all of Islam on
her shoulders publicly, like so pan Allah, all of those
conversations I kept having with one and kept having with scholars.
Now we're in lockdown, and I'm thinking, so pan Allah, how, how
much more disconnected do women feel right now? And so finally, I
was like, You know what? We've been planning this for 10 years.
We've been talking about it for 10 years. We've just never thought of
like the best way to do it. Let's just do it. Let's just do it. And
so we did a Quran campaign. It was called the four mothers campaign.
It was through my Instagram account. I recited a surah of Jose
Amma every single day. I posted it, and then I asked other women
to recite too And subhanAllah, 1000s of women, they were actively
listening. Women were reciting. Women, women who couldn't recite,
were reading the translation. Women were sharing their
recitations, and it was.
Clear they had just opened the Quran, or they were working on it,
or they were slowly working towards it. Other women whose
recitations were just amazing. And of course, all of them are
amazing. Masha Allah, I mean, every level is amazing. The
prophet is the one who struggles with it. Has doubled the reward.
But it was just women of all levels of in terms of where they
were in their journey with the Quran, and the messages I got
after that were quite literally in the hundreds weekly, weekly, and
weekly, I was getting hundreds of messages. A woman telling me, for
the first time in my life, I recited the Quran for my parents
today. And this is a woman who was 40 years old, and she said that my
mom cried and said, This is the best gift you could have ever
given me and so many parents telling me that their eight year
old, nine year old, 10 year old little girls are tuning in to
Instagram so that they can hear the recitation of the Quran from
women and saying, for the first time ever in their young lives, I
want to be a hafida of Quran Subhanallah, that experience and
hearing from so Many women who told me that when they were so
young, they loved memorizing the Quran. I, you know, subhanAllah, I
see children now, and they're, you know, they're into so many
different things, but there are some that are very, actually
excited. They are actually excited, naturally excited to just
want to recite Quran. They enjoy it. And subhanAllah. Imagine how
many young woman told me, and actually, you know, some of them
are young, some of them are I mean, we could still say 30s are
young. So 30s in their 40s telling me that when they were in their
teens, their brothers were memorizing the Quran with them.
They were going to Quran class. It was something they enjoyed. And as
they were growing older, they were told you no longer can study with
the Imam because you're too old. Now you're you're 13 years old,
you're 14 years old, you're too old. And their brothers continued,
and they completed the entire Quran. These these young women who
were who had beautiful voices, who were so excited about Quran,
became very hurt and very angry. They stopped their own
memorization, and it was the first of many reasons why they started
to feel distant from Islam. These women were telling me now that
it's been at least 10 years, at least 15 years since they've
opened the Quran and that Subhanallah through hearing other
women, they came back. They started reading the Quran, they
started to pray for the first time in their lives. The woman told me
they started to wear hijab for the first time in their lives. It was
a massive impact to hear other women's recitation and realize
that this space is for women too. And I've heard so many people say,
Well, of course, it's for women. Of course the Quran is for women.
Yeah, you say that. But if you don't see it like all of these
women, had a very particular story on how they came back to the Quran
once they saw it. If you don't see it, you don't always know that
it's for you two And subhanAllah, that just being able to hear other
women, it was such a shift. I started this campaign throughout
the year of interviewing women from around the world, women who
have won an international Quran recitations. We started four way
recitations, where I would invite, like a Sheikha from Indonesia and
a Sheikah from different parts of the world, we would all recite the
Quran together And Alhamdulillah. More and more more, the more that
I had these, you know, these blessed encounters, more and more
women were like, We want more. We want more. And I just thought, you
know, the only place I know of, and I'm sure it exists, I just
don't know of it in English, where all these different women exist.
Of course, YouTube exists, but you have to really know who to search
for. You have to know their names. You have to know what to search
for. If you search female reciters or women reciters or you're gonna
find a few. But it's not like this vast list. And so I thought people
kept asking me, how like, is there a way I can download just the part
where she recites? Because I'd interview, you know, I'd interview
these Quran reciters for an hour, and they'd recite, you know, for
five minutes. So people were telling me, I'm getting in my car
for my commute, and I'm forwarding all the way to those five minutes,
and then I'm re forwarding, and I'm like, rewinding and forward
and rewinding. And they're like, is there a way that I could
download this? And then I thought, subhanAllah, why don't we just
have a way where women can hear women easily and access women
easily through an app, and that that way women can hear other
women easily. And hamduda, that was really the beginning of
starting the journey to creating the clariah app, the woman Quran
reciters, Alhamdulillah, wow.
When I had started TDs, it started off with a duha,
and I can confidently say that a lot, except for that dua, but
something did happen afterwards, when you started, when I started
to create this season, season one, you know, and you're in the middle
of the work, but I started to doubt my efforts, if I could do
this, if I was good enough. And when with any you know, project
that you might do that you're super passionate about, especially
a project that is faith based, or something you're doing for Allah's
sake, you get in your own head, you almost convince yourself that.
Can't do this job because you're not good enough, and the doubts
just get louder and louder and louder.
And so instead of Mariam, it was a lot like that.
I'll share with you SubhanAllah. There have been so many scholars
who have reached out. I haven't reached out. They've reached out
to me. Of course, I've been working with scholars from the
beginning, but scholars who I wasn't working with, who reached
out to me, who heard about it, and were like, How can I support you?
We need this so much. Just just the immense amount of support. And
I was so, so grateful and overwhelmed by how many scholars
are excited to use the app for their own children, for their own
families and the curriculum of their schools. But there was one
scholar who came up to me, and you know, out of, you know, love,
extreme love, as she was worried that, you know, women shouldn't be
Quran reciters in public. And
you know, I shared with her that there are women who are Quran
reciters in public. In so many countries, there's just their
norm. They grow up with this. In fact, when we, when we announced
the app, we have this list of the clarias and I, and I shared with
them some of the feedback that was like, okay, just be aware we're
gonna have some feedback that we're gonna need to work through.
And these are senior Quran. You don't understand. These are not
me, some random person recital Quran. These are senior Quran
scholars in their countries, they recite in on television with other
scholars like these are incredible people and incredible scholars.
And subhanAllah, I remember saying, like, you know, we're
getting this feedback and and, and the clarias, their response was,
Oh, I've never heard it's not permissible for a woman to recite
the Quran. Where did they hear that before? Like we've never
heard that before, and SubhanAllah. The only people who
have had that kind of like experience are really Muslims in
the West. I mean Muslims on the app who are from the west. We've,
some of us have heard that, but the rest, I mean Subhanallah, the
the amount of, you know, the women from so many different countries,
you know, it's just their experiences have been very
different. And so when, when this, she was speaking to me, I was, I
was, you know, I was, I listened to that. I always listen to
feedback. I when it, someone comes and gives me advice. You know, I
really think advice is a great if Allah shows you your fault, we
should. If Allah shows me my fault, I want to say
Alhamdulillah, like, Thank you, Allah for showing me my fault now
so I can change it, Inshallah, so I can improve before it's too
late. So I sat with the advice, and I was like, Thank you, you
know, hamdulillah for the advice. And at the same time, you know
this is, there's so many scholars who support it, and maybe this is
a personal opinion, or maybe, you know, for whatever reason, but I
still made istahara about it, and I was feeling very, very down,
because this isn't some random person. It's someone I trust, it's
someone I respect, it's someone who, you know, whose advice I
value, and and so I just sat and I made istikhara, and I was like,
oh, Allah, like,
is this the right thing to do? There are so many scholars who
support it, but am I doing the right thing? Am I is it the right
thing? Oh, Allah, guide me. Guide me to what is the most pleasing to
you? What is the most pleasing to you? What's the best for my
personal hereafter? What's the best for the Ummah and and Subhan?
Allah, I was very emotional. I was sobbing. I was making Ara, and
then I finished praying. And shortly afterwards I get a message
from a Quran scholar. I just get a random message from a Quran
scholar who forwards me a video of Quran recitation. And I just want
to share with you this scholar has never forwarded me a random
forward ever. It was so random. So I opened so random. I opened this
this. I opened this video, and it's Quran recitation, beautiful
Quran recitation. And I was like, Masha Allah, Masha Allah, like,
Who is this reciter? I've never heard and I've never heard but,
but I'm wondering, because it's very similar, it's very similar to
the Abdul Basit style, but it's not Abdul Basit. So it's like, Who
is this? And the sheik responded by saying, Oh, this is Sheik Abu
Alayna.
And I was like, Subhan, Allah, wow, that Shaykh is the sheik that
said, my mind will never rest until women become Quran reciters
on Egypt's radio station again. And I was just asking, Allah, Oh,
Allah, should I do this? Quran app for women, Quran app of women,
four women, and I'm making a sakhara. And then I get this
random I get this random video. And this random video is from a
Quran scholar, and the video is the reciter who himself said women
should be public reciters. And Subhan Allah, I was just blown
away. And then I told the sheik the story, and he said, You know,
I was not intending to send it to you. I meant to send it to someone
else. My finger accidentally pressed you. And I was like, well,
Inshallah, she'll benefit from it. Wow. So somehow I just sat with
that, and I was like, every single time I've had a doubt, quite
literally, quite literally, I made a sakhara about this.
App an uncountable amount of times, anytime I have a doubt
about it, I make a stehara about it. It's not like I need to wait
until a month later to hear an answer.
Allah will answer me immediately, like, like, hello. Within moments,
he will show me a clear sign this petal of golf. Do it, and I beg
Allah to accept it. I beg Allah to accept it. There are so many
women, Masha, Allah, the recitations are out of this world.
And imagine if a little if a six year old girl could hear Quran
reciter and say, I want to become her, and then she works to become
her, like these women who are incredible. Quran reciters didn't
start like me when they're 17. They started when they were three.
They started when they were five. They their voices can have such
range because they've had decades of practice on stages that is so
different from me practicing and whispering in my room to memorize
my portion. The experience is different. And having other women,
little girls, to have a little girl say, I want to be that when I
grow up, and then Inshallah, to have an app where Inshallah, the
app, this is just part phase one. We have a huge plan for where the
app is going to go Inshallah, but to be able to create career
opportunities for women to say, I want to pursue Quran as my career,
and to be able to teach that, and to be able to recite that, to be
able to give women who study a path that they know, one of the
biggest hardest parts for women at my time, when we studied were
like, where do we go with this knowledge? Like you can teach free
sabida that in the masjid, but what if you have a family that you
need to also support? Where are you gonna go with it? Panola to be
able to facilitate that? I beg a lot to make it successful. For his
sake, I mean. And I just,
I just want to thank you sadly for this, because, you know, it's when
I went to Minnesota in in the fall, I had met, oh
yes, and they had so much confidence in the way they
recited, and they had,
they had like this, this ding in their eyes that wasn't like
nobody, you could tell nobody had like and then maybe they have, but
the way they carried themselves is incredible. This is one student in
particular named so ad that I had met. She's gonna be so excited
that I'm mentioning her right now. And she actually just finished her
Quran. She just she became officially a half in she was on
live with us, and she recited the last eyes for all of us so we
could feel that we were there with her. And we always used to say to
her, Inshallah, Quran competition, we're gonna be there. Yes, you
know gonna be there. She's only like 15 years old, and she's like
me, really? I said, why not? Why not? Why not? You know, and yes,
it was like, she's like, I cannot believe you're telling me that.
I'm like, I'm like, I can't believe the digital stories
telling me I'm gonna be I said, we're all gonna show up, and our
yellow the yellows is a joke. It's an inside joke with all of our
listeners, because we said that when we attend her Quran
competition, because it will happen. Inshallah, we're gonna be
wearing yellow Java so she knows that we're on her team.
Yellow.
Yeah, yellow. So, just so you know that we're there to support you
and I, and I, and I and she was our closing episode. She recited
the Quran
and and it was, I just wanted, I've always wanted people to know
how important it was that women persist, participated in Quran and
to this to the level that they participated in. And they're,
they're incredible talent, you know, like, there were, women are
so incredibly talented, you know, saying, and, like, there's many,
and they're in their rooms thinking, Okay, it's even, it's
ODA, to even speak. You know, I grew up right, taught that that
women's voices were, Oda, you know, and to some degree, my own
family still hear that your voice is outa, I said,
What is it, Oda, you know, saying, and it's, it's just this huge
misunderstanding that's going on that's being perpetuated on a very
strong cultural level, and it has impacted us for, as you said, for
generations. And I cannot believe there are women who have never
heard women recycled. And it just blows my mind, yes, and it breaks
my heart so much, because if they believe that and they haven't seen
it, how many more are there out there? I had been planning to say
this, and I it didn't happen yet, but you did a natural segue to it,
Minnesota, Minnesota. And again, I could just not know it could
totally be my own ignorance. But Minnesota itself is the only place
I know of that is such a hub for Quran, for women, specifically so
pan a lot. The Dubai International Competition is countries from all
over the world and in Minnesota, masha Allah, three reciters from
internet, from internationally, have won to Barak Allah, masha
Allah, like Ahmed mashallah, who won first place, and then
mashallah, we also have on the app. We are so honored, so
incredibly honored to have a way to hafida away to and hafida Nura
Masha Allah, support.
The representation from the tibial center, Tabar quma Allah, bless
the sheik who founded the tibial center, and the focus and the
expertise he's put into teaching Quran and building this community
of Quran, it's something that we need to see all over SubhanAllah.
That is exactly where we see a woman who can win an international
competition, and they're not even native Arabic speakers from the
United States. So it makes me it's like watching a soccer game, you
know? I mean, as like Dad, this is incredible. And I know it's
incredible because I know what they where they learned, I know.
And they learned in their masjids, who might be underfunded, they
learned studying in their mother's living room, you know, saying, and
here they are, like, winning, you know I'm saying and I like, I'm
always such a fan, like, whatever avitava always tell them, like,
I'm your biggest fan, and I'm always so excited to meet them. So
my last question to you is, what 99 name of allah does your story
resonate with most? Like, what name of Allah do you feel like
SubhanAllah? I There are different times in my life where different
names of Allah. I just, of course, we connect to all the names of
Allah, but that I just feel so
reflect so so so closely how I feel in my connection with him,
Subhanahu wa taala. And right now
it's al Alim and Al khabir And And subhanAllah. The connection of
those two names,
the way that the Quran itself, when Subhanallah love, how, like
when, when you know it's like this, there's a story behind what
happened. And when they asked the Prophet, sallAllahu alaihi, who
told you, and then Allah
as a response, who told who told him? Allah, alabi, Allah, I just
think that's so powerful Subhanallah that Allah is the One
who is so intimately aware of everything with his he just has so
much knowledge of everything that is happening in your life. He's so
intimately aware of it. And for me, because I have gone through so
many stages where there's so much, so much
commentary on my personality, on my person, on everything related
to my existence. And I always go back to Allah. Is the one who
knows he is the one who knows he is the one who's aware and and
that that that's so comforting to me, that he knows
it's not even about, oh, don't judge me. It's not like that. It's
the
it's, I'm not doing any of this for you. I'm not, I'm not doing
any of this so you see me or that you know what I'm doing. In fact,
I'm hiding 99.9%
of who I am from you that like point 1% of who I am you can't
even handle. And Allah made me this way, and he did out of his
knowledge, and because he is the one who knows. And he's intimate,
khabir al habibir, he is intimately aware of of every
aspect of my heart and my life and and why I'm in the space right now
and and
sometimes when I just sit back and I ask myself,
would I be?
Would I feel at peace meeting Allah Spano with Taala like this?
Obviously, we all have myself included, especially me. I have
lots of things I need to work on, but this particular thing that
everyone is like screaming at me about online or wherever,
did I do it right? Allah knows how much went into this moment. How
much is the Khara, how much consultation, how much studying
went into this decision, whether it's ARIA app or anything else.
And he is Al Alim and Al khabir, and he knows that, and and it
gives me so much comfort. It gives me so much comfort.
I'm so grateful that Allah has honored us with knowing some of
his names, and I really recommend the book reflecting on the names
of Allah by Jinan Yousuf. It's a very powerful, very easy to
connect with book that will sha Allah help readers really learn
about the names of Allah and be able to intimately connect with
his names in our lives. Knowing that he's with us is one of the
biggest comforts that we can go through when we go through
hardship, no matter what type, and also when we go through E
Subhanallah, I just want to say JazakAllah khair for coming. I'm
excited for this episode. I love how passionate you were, and I
knew this topic meant a lot to you, so I'm so glad you got to
speak it at length. I'm excited to do the interview again to kind of
talk about, like, where you're at, like, I can't wait for you to kind
of add more to inshallah as the app grows and gets better and, you
know, experience whatever it brings you inshallah. So this is,
this is not an end. This is to be continued. With that being said,
the Kali app is officially.
Out. Go download it and stream, stream and listen to the beautiful
recitation of the sisters from all over the world. And let it inspire
you to read out loud.
This episode is brought to you by beautiful light studios, recorded
at MH studios Toronto, our executive producer. Thank you for
this episode. Our recording engineer, Jonathan Lilo, our
podcast intern, Niva Haroon, our graphic designer Sima aka wasiba
fara, our project manager, Yasmin mahamud and our marketing solsana
Abdullahi, thank you ladies for all that you do and brother or I
said, ladies,
not lady, sorry, it this podcast gave you value, we're leaving it
up to you. Donate however much you feel like it gave to you. We have
a big team this year who put in so many hours into bringing the show
to life. If you can't give it right now, please keep us in your
jaws. This week, we're helping a team member of ours raise funds
for a family member that passed away. Please donate to the link in
the show notes, I'll see you guys next Friday, in your ears, in your
speakers, telling you A good story.
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