Mohammad Elshinawy – Does Islam Have Gender Norms
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AI: Transcript ©
Brothers and sisters, the
so called gender debates
that we hear about in broader society,
We
find in them almost
without fail
that people even with good intentions
always swerve
in so many different directions
on this topic and not realizing why.
A major reason being the fact that it's
a conflict.
They're even called the gender wars. Right? And
so when you're reacting, you will react in
an imbalanced way.
And that is why, of course, there is
a spectrum, but you will have some people
defending tooth and nail blindly
the need to break the binary as they
call it. No such thing as binary. Male
female. No No such thing as, you know,
only 2 genders. This is a social construct.
Society created this and just shoved it down
our throats.
And you'll have on the opposite end, people
that are defending blindly their personal or cultural
or limited
assumption of what the binary must look like.
So 1 group swerved into being very fluid
and another group swerved into being very rigid,
and Allah pulled you out of the whole
mess with his Islam.
Allah
says,
And in this manner, we have made you
into a moderate,
balanced perfect nation. A nation that is balanced
because it has perfect ideals.
Islam is not a reaction to anything.
Islam is not any 1 of the isms,
the ideologies
that
trend and collapse, trend and collapse.
Islam has all of the pros of all
of the isms
and has none of the cons of any
of them.
When it comes to gender for instance,
Islam says,
there absolutely
is
a thing such as
male and female.
In fact, it is a wonderful beautiful thing
that Allah created that the male and female
complement 1 another.
This notion of, like, complete fluidity
is is nonsense.
Allah
in the Quran, he says,
I swear by the night as it covers
and by the day as it becomes bright.
Complimentary pairs. We need the night, we need
the day.
And I swear by the spectacle, the amazing
way
that the male and the female were created.
Not the human, the male and the female.
Once again, the interplay, complementary
pairs. He's swearing by these pairs and then
he says,
and your actions this is what he's swearing
about now.
By these pairs that your actions are also
diverse. Some of you are gonna work for
good. Some of you are gonna work for
evil. And there is a grand wisdom at
play for why that exists too, even good
and evil.
So Islam says no to this absolute fluidity
of the genders.
At the same time, Islam, however, brothers and
sisters,
considers
personality traits, temperaments. You know, many times we
talk about gender
and we talk we're actually talking about people's
personalities.
Islam considers your personality
traits as neither positive nor negative by themselves.
It's about what you do with them.
You know, rulings in Islam are for behaviors,
are for actions.
Like
pork is not haram.
Eating pork is haram. It's the action itself.
Pork just happens to exist. Right?
It's 1 of the creation of Allah
that he's testing us with. Likewise, when someone
says male, you know, there could be this
stereotypical,
like, his picture in their head automatically,
strong male. Male strong. Is that necessarily true?
Is that necessarily a positive even if it's
true?
It depends on what you use your strength
for. What if you use your strength to
beat up on the weak? Then the strength
is not a positive anymore.
And what about a woman? Is it sort
of a negative automatically that a woman is
strong?
What do you do with Musaib Bintikaa When
the men fled at Uhud and the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam was ambushed,
she dove forward and said, give the swords
up to those willing to fight, and she
fought
until she was gashed across her collarbone. A
gas that would later erupt and give her
martyrdom.
Or in another battle, when the when the
enemies were able to break past the lines
of the Muslims
and get into the tents
behind the army ranks. The tents of the
women, Safiyyah bin Abdul Muttalib
saw the man enter, she grabbed the pole
of the tent, and she struck him over
the head with it and killed him. And
he was the 1 with the sword.
Is this a negative? It's not a negative.
Right? It's about what it's used for. Likewise,
you know, you go to the other side
to give you, like, an opposing stereotype that
sort of being artistic
is something feminine.
Says who?
You know, being artistic also depends on what
you use it for. What if you use
art? What if you use media?
To deceive people, to seduce people, to mislead
people? Not a positive anyway.
But let's say art in its positive forms,
is that a feminine only thing? Absolutely not.
Look at the poets of the prophet
He employed his artistic nature,
to stand in front of those that were
smearing the prophet alaihis salatu wa sallam.
And he used to say,
You dare try to smear Muhammad while I'm
alive?
Try to employ art against him? I'll fight
fire with fire. He says, and I will
be the 1 to respond and with Allah
is my reward.
You dare attack Muhammad,
the pure and the pious.
The messenger of God whose hallmark is integrity.
Indeed,
my father
and even his father and even my honor
are all a dispensable shield for the honor
of Muhammad
impromptu. Right?
He invested in the art and refined his
craft, and he used to also say
Better than you, my eyes have never seen.
More beautiful than you my eyes have never
seen. And better than you no woman has
ever given birth to. You were created
cleared of every flaw as if you were
created the way that you had wanted.
Yes. Strength may be more typical in men.
There may be something there. Right? But fine
in women when employed in the right ways.
And art, there may be more of an
affinity and more women for art. Right? But
it is fine in men so long as
it is
regulated the right way. My point, brothers and
sisters, Islam tells you don't get confused. This
whole idea that you're hearing around you nowadays
or in any other time and place about
masculine and these are called personality traits. Right?
These are called temperaments.
This is not don't get bogged down by
this. Don't get confused about this.
You know, it's a it's a it's a
whole mix. It's very confusing because, like, our
personalities, brothers and sisters, they're made up of
what? Like, some of the genetics that we
inherited
is gonna make us a certain way. Yes?
And then also some of our hormones, maybe
what we eat or sort of what we're
born with and like testosterone.
This is sort of the the hormone that'll
make someone
extra aggressive if it's not refined.
And it could make them a more productive
leader when it's channeled and harnessed the right
way. So it's like your genetics and then
your hormones and then society. Society can also
have a part play a part in how
it's gonna build you, how it's gonna shape
you, the way you think of so it's
a whole mix.
Not all bad, not all good.
Even the prophet alayhis salatu was salam speaking
about how society influences and it's neither here
nor there, neither sort of condemnable nor commendable,
nor great nor horrible. No. When he came
to Medina, Umar radhiallahu anted, You Rasulullah, you
know, back in Mecca, we used to run
the show. Our women would never talk back
to us.
We came to Medina, and in Medina, the
women of Medina talk back to their
husbands. And our women are being influenced by
them, like we're all in it together, You
Rasulullah.
And so the prophet was in a very
bad state at that moment. Moment. He was
his feelings were very down. He smiled and
smiled and praised the Ummah for lifting his
spirits, and he didn't condemn anything. Right? Of
course, there are boundaries.
Of course, the Sharia at the end of
the day is the fine line. Right? But
that is the whole point. Don't look elsewhere
except in the deen of Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala for this clarity.
Man and woman have many similarities because at
the end of the day, we have the
same purpose also. We are to worship Allah
But for the sake of the health of
family and the health of society,
there are certain norms of what? Behavior.
Not personality. Behavior. No. Norms that Islam gives
us that best suit us. So for instance
for instance,
the duty of jihad
defaults at where? At men.
The the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam when he
was asked by Aisha
do women have to perform jihad?
He said to her, yes.
Jihad that doesn't involve fighting, which is Hajj
and Umrah. Hajj and Umrah is a struggle.
Don't let someone else come and tell you
but I like this or I don't like
that.
I was speaking about women in Islam once
in a university in Manhattan,
and I was sort of objected to by
a sister who said, actually, it is scientifically
proven that a woman
sort of twitches less, and therefore, she's more
fit to be a sniper in the army.
I don't know if that science is true.
But even if it were true, it's very
shortsighted.
Maybe in a vacuum, in a range somewhere,
but maybe sort of when things get difficult
in the trenches, right, it becomes a completely
different formula. It becomes a completely different statistic.
Don't get confused by people's bright ideas that
turn out not to be so bright in
the end. Yes?
Likewise, Islamically speaking,
custody of the children
defaults especially in the first 7 years of
life, defaults at women. I'm trying to reiterate
what only through Islam can we figure out
the norms in the middle of all of
this fog.
That tells us that the women, just as
the men, are obligated before anyone to protect
and to guard and to defend, women are
obligated to prioritize
because they are the fountains
of compassionate
nurturance.
They are to prioritize their families and their
children once they have children.
You know, someone can also come and say,
well, what you're saying, I can't be nice
to my kids. A brother actually said this
to me. He says, how dare you say
that? I just spent a week in the
forest with my kids camping. You're saying I'm
not fit. I don't care about him. I
won't be worried about it's not the this
is not the case. Right?
But if I can't explain it to you,
if my articulation
or your rationale will not add up right
now, we are to defer to the logic
of Allah
I'll give you a third example, brothers and
sisters.
Finances,
finances
default in Islam at men. Men are obligated
to provide.
There should be sort of no discrepancy about
that whatsoever.
Someone could say but nowadays it's all the
same thing. Women can equally be breadwinners and
maybe they can. Of course women can work.
Right? But not I while deprioritizing their family.
Right? Why women can't be breadwinners?
You may think it's fine because it's simple
because you can equally do the same job
because nowadays
so many jobs just involve pressing buttons and
stuff. We're all doing it so we're all
equal in that competence.
But maybe you're not realizing
that that will cost the children to be
emotionally impoverished.
Maybe they will be emotionally unfulfilled.
Well, there's another example we can have.
Leadership.
In Islam, in the family scheme, leadership defaults
at the man.
That does not mean abusive authority. Right? That
does not mean we should not be consulting
our spouses especially on major decisions and perhaps
not even getting involved in the minor decisions.
The same way our
prophet would. But for the sake of not
paralyzing the institution of family, to move forward
together, to have a final say somewhere and
that person gets accountable in front of Allah
more than anyone else, it defaults in a
particular place and that is the best setup,
Allah said. Right?
A 5th example.
Gold and silk,
default wear at women in Islam. Right? A
man is not to wear gold, a man
is not to wear silk
unless he can only find silk or sort
of he needs some sort of gold, right,
for a particular reason, like an implant or
otherwise. Right? A medical intervention.
And that should tell us that women have
a need. There is more value. There is
more benefit
in that being allowed.
And there is less benefit or there could
even be harm if men begin to partake
in that degree of beautification
or that kind, should I say, of beautification.
So
I know the examples were many. The idea
is only Islam.
Only through Islam. Only through the practices,
the guidance, the teachings of Islam can we
ever escape a world that is unsatisfied
with the balance and the order of the
divine what Allah
had said.
And owning that is not going to be
a khutbah. We have to create a subculture.
That's where community comes in.
To offer
what a khutba, a sermon cannot offer which
is an atmosphere
where we normalize,
we make normal again the norms that Islam
told us are norms.
There's no denial of the spectrum. There's no
shaming but at the same time we have
unique strengths. We want to grow them, we
want to promote them, we want to show
the world what it looks like when you
observe them.
May Allah make us of those people.
Finally, my brothers and sisters,
Allah
said in the Quran.
Do not be like those who forgot about
Allah and so Allah caused them to forget
about themselves, to lose sight of themselves.
Therefore,
in an age that is dismissive of God,
right,
chooses to forget him,
it should not surprise you that they will
fail at defining themselves. What am I? What
is human? What is man? What is woman?
You know people's ideas nowadays on gender?
The worst part of it all is that
they are actually not even their ideas, and
they don't realize it. These are the ideas
of shaitan.
The Quran said
that shaitan has said to warn us from
it.
Oh Allah, I promise you. I'm going to
be able to abduct a good chunk of
your creation.
And part of what I will make them
do, the end of the next verse,
and I will suggest to them and push
them and push them and push them until
they do what?
Until they try to alter the creation of
Allah. I'm not satisfied. I'm I'm in somebody
else's skin. God should have made me another
way.
Or the other verse in Surat Al Araf,
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says that shaitan swore.
I swear to you, I will come at
humanity
from their right and from their left, from
in front of them and from behind them,
and from their right and from their left,
and you will see most of them to
be ungrateful.
Ungrateful for what you provided them with. Ungrateful
for the way you made them. Right? You
will find most of them to be ungrateful.
Some of the early Muslims, they said of
the beauty of this aya
is that he said, I'll come at them
from front and from behind and from right
and from left and he did not dare
say, I will come to at them from
above.
Because Allah would not allow him to come
between the servant and his lord if the
servant seeks upwards.
Only Islam can pull us out of the
darkness.
Only Islam
can pull us out of humiliating ourselves
at the hands of shaitan.
Liberating us
through submission, through Islam. As Umar said,
We were the most humiliated of people.
And
Allah honored us with Islam.
And if we ever not just Bedouin Arabs,
even 20 24 post moderns. Right? And if
we ever seek to be honored through other
than it, through other than Islam,
Allah will cause us to become humiliated again.
May Allah honor us and you through Islam.
And make us of those that celebrate its
guidance by night and by day.
And believe in it and are exhilarated by
it and are confident with it and so
much so that we actually observe it without
hesitation.