Contradictory Expectations of some ‘Muslim Feminists’ in Marriage – Naima B Robert #02

Genoa is like, I find the most pernicious and most unacceptable type of feminist as a Muslim feminists. You know why? Because it's a true feminist lack of a second wave complexion or

background orientation. She would. Everything's 5050 domestic housework is 5050. Yeah. And also finances are 50 50x y. Zed is 50. Yeah, everything is that is what the ideology says. negozi, who wrote the feminist manifesto said everything should be equal except for breastfeeding. And she gave that is the only exception. And her little pamphlet book that she wrote, which is not really an academic book anyway, but it's popular. So she the everything should be 5050 no problem. If everything is 5050, which means I'm not going to be putting extracting half of my resources for you. And I'm gonna save money. I don't need to do this. I don't need to protect you. In fact, protection

is 5050 if someone comes in a burglar I don't need to protect. So

if I'm if I'm a feminist, I would rather be oxen belavia. Putting religious put if we're just talking just based on the domesticity or lack thereof, or the interactivity or domestic interactivity and transactional nature of the domestic environment between man and woman, I would rather be with a feminist than I would be with a Muslim feminist. Why I like Christian, I'd love to have a Christian family or something. Why? Because at least she has a sense of

consistent self consistency. Everything is 5050. But the Muslim feminists, she wants to take the resources, which means she wants to not make it 5050 when it comes to finances, and work and protection, yes. So she wants to take all of the things are into Islamic entitlements. Plus, she wants to have a feministic entitlements. So she wants to double entitlements. That woman is a leech. That woman is just a leech, and she needs to be called out in the community. People like yourself need to say Listen, don't shove the man. You choose what you want to be you want to be a Muslim, this is Islam. Feminism is different. And you can't mix them. If you want to be both, then you're

going to end up being a leech. challenge your charity, you are charged, you might as well go to Oxfam, and put your hands out like this. This is what you should do. With all due respect. I'm sorry, I'm gonna but this the entitled nature of some people that want both. If you if you want 5050, then you have to provide 5050. Right, right. You see the point here? Yeah, no, I totally get your point. I think what's interesting, it's just anecdotally again, the the the experience of brothers kind of own these matrimonial apps, et cetera. Is it pretty much what you're seeing? So I'm hearing again, and again, about sisters who want the traditional benefits exactly what the

traditional responsibilities Hello, this is beautiful. One of the traditional I was trying to save was like four or five minutes you said, like one sentence? Yes, the traditional benefits, but they do not want the traditional response. Yes, they don't want that role. So a sister will say, islamically, you have to provide for me, you have to pay off my car, you have to do this, you know, I like this, I like this. I like that financially. And if you can't provide financially, this conversation is over.

It doesn't matter the sister can be she's got three kids, she could be 45 years old. And I know you know, people don't like this, but some of us and I'm going to say us because I'm not pointing fingers here, I'm looking in the mirror. Okay, I want people to understand that. I'm not pointing fingers at anyone, I'm looking in the mirror. And I'm very well aware that some people Mashallah at certain stages of life, Allah has blessed them with certain things where Mashallah they, they can make demands, and people will fall over themselves to fulfill those demands, Mashallah, because they're highly sought after they're highly prized, right? If you're a sister who is older, you have

children, or you've been divorced, whatever the case may be, right? You don't want to have any more kids. Okay, you've got your and the thing is, what I've also found is with us as women, the older we get, the more life experience we've had, the more we've been married, the more we've had children, the more demanding we become, not the less the more demanding we become. So by the time you're 35, and on your second marriage, or you're 40, and you want to find a third husband, your list of what you want, and what you won't put up with, etc. is very long now. Because you've been you've experienced that some things you came out with the first marriage, you're like, well, I don't want

that again. Now that's new things added to your list.

Is it more of a

is it more of a negative thing rather than it is an affirmative stick? Maybe it could be it could

be that I'm not going to do this again. I'm not gonna go for that kind of guy that but I think the point that I'm making anyway bistra is aside from all of that, because maybe somebody will hear this and say, well, that's not me. You know, I'm not like that. I don't know anybody like that, which is fair enough. The point that I'm making is, while you sis are making all those demands, those Islamic very Islamic demands, traditional

demand on this man, you're saying out of your mouth, I don't cook, I don't clean. I'm not going to abate, I don't wear hijab, I

might as well just say whatever go marry my sister. But this is this is for me why I'm having this conversation I'm trying to have this conversation in Sharla. With sisters is, this is where the realism comes in. This is where the pragmatism comes in this is where you can't have the traditional benefits without the traditional role. If you want a man to perform the traditional function, guess what he's looking for a woman who's going to perform her traditional function. So you don't have to go for traditional man, that's your choice. But if you want the traditional man and the benefits that come with that, you need to somehow get okay with the idea of being the traditional wife.

Because being a traditional wife, it looks a certain way, just like a traditional husband looks a certain way. No one's forcing you to to go that route. It's up to you. It's your choice. But you can't have both. You can't have it both ways. You can't say, you don't get to tell me to do this. You know, I'm not going to let a man tell me to do that.

But you have to pay my bills, though, because Islam says exactly exactly but name are the same woman. Maybe sometimes this is like a type of woman, right? It's we're not talking about a woman. But the same archetype or type of woman we're talking about here, she will,

she will easily bow the knee when it comes to her white boss, McDonald's, whatever she's working on the carwash or the know, where she works anywhere, she may work in the cleaning cleaning place. Or it could be in the office where she has to even flirt with the man a little bit in order to get what she wants. So she is contextual. It's not about oh, I don't believe in obedience, you do believe in obedience. Every single society and structure works on a type of hierarchy. You know, we as Muslims, we are, we believe in a complementarity between man and woman, we don't believe in any guarantee between them. We believe in a hierarchical managerial structure, just as you would expect, if you

went and worked in a secondary school, I worked in many secondary schools, the expectation is actually quiet, sometimes disturbing. You come in the head teacher comes in, and all the women are going around him like sorry, concubines around something, you know, you think what the hell like, you know, every little word, she says scared. The same woman. She's the biggest feminist when she goes home. This is, yeah, it's a actually both my blood, especially when it comes from the Muslim community, like, oh, you're what your husband, you're aligned with him at home. But when you go to your place at work, you know, the man can tell you what he wants, wherever you do, yeah, but he's

paying me but you use the same transactional kind of thing. But he's saying you're getting all these benefits as well from the man. In fact, he's willing to do what your husband is worth for you or for you. Right? So I feel like it's just it is a wholesale acceptance without resistance. These ideologies of the West, which position a woman as only acceptable, or,

you know, even viable as a subject, if she's in the work environment, and that's what the only context where obedience makes sense. But yeah, well, Farhan says something really good in his book, you know, he's got a book called The Myth of male power. And he also boy crisis. Oh, yes, I've heard of that. Yeah, his weight is recent. But but the classic book that he wrote was called the myth of male power. And in that book, he basically he gives the example of a woman who works in a corporate environment. Yeah. And he says, What would like this archetype of woman What will she think if she is now in charge of more people, which you think that that's an expansion of her power, or influence

or what she thinks that is less power and influence, he says she would think that it's an expansion of apparent influence. When she goes home and she has more kids she she sees as a burden, she's encumbered with those children she's burden wise, but she has more influence on the children and will have more influence on those children, then she could or ever will have influence on those employees. It's the same paradigm but different environment, the moment it moves into the domestic environment. The moment drudgery starts appear, this domestic drudgery starts appear and becomes the prevailing narrative theme, as you said,

it's in this context is oppression is in this context is professionalism. You see how they change the words, your promo being professional, professional, when you're listening to your boss, or your you are slave oppressed, when you're in the house and listening to the hierarchy. And it's just it's a play on lexicon, and they've been able to dupe half of the population so they can pull them out of home so that they can stimulate their economies. And I'm, quite frankly, that men are the biggest beneficiaries of this ideology.

I was just saying I 100% 100% agree with you. I agree because you know, the the anyway, 100 law

I think the steep decline that you know, we've seen in terms of, you know, sexual morality since the 60s,

I think our Dean has managed to, to shield us from the west of that, obviously, in Muslim countries, there is a slow burn. But for lots of different reasons, it's just hasn't been, you know, some of the steep downward, whatever, as it is in the West, but but but but even if we are not having, you know, partners before marriage, if even if we're not kind of having a hot girl, summer, and all of that kind of thing, the ideas are all around us. And that's why I think it's really important to have these open conversations and really get young men and women to examine the forces around them and examine the ideas that they're surrounded by and, and learn more about their Islamic grounding,

so that they have an effective filter for those ideas that are around us. We're just gonna go the ways the way the people went before, we're just gonna follow them like and listen and hold your right to finalize this discussion. It's been a pleasure talking to you, by the way, and life has been very, very fruitful. And I thank you so much for all your insights, there have been good and you've articulated yourself very well, I'm going to steal some of the articulations and repackage them on very traditional roles, traditional responsibilities, you know, is, is that you have the gift of, of being able to summarize things. But I was going to ask you this question, which is a

parting advice now for Muslim men, Muslim women young, let's say call the millennials call them whatever you want. starting up? Yeah, this this child demographic of maybe 18 to 3518 to 45. That's the kind of major age group that so a lot of men, a lot of women are going to start up families and stuff like that. What advice would you give a young man let's start with the man right advice you would give based on your extensive experience in the community and your own life experience? on how to what to look out for what are the blind spots? What should we do? What should we look out for young man signing up and the same advice for a young woman

that's in law. So the first thing that I would say is echoing what we said before, which is to get your grounding in your deen. The second thing I would say is pay attention to your mental health. And make sure that you are a healthy mind, body soul. Because a healthy person moving forward in life into a partnership with another healthy person, what do you have, have a healthy marriage. So that advice is for both is to learn your deen and get healthy. And I mean that holistically, mind, body and soul get healthy. If you're struggling, get help. If you are confused, get help. You know, don't think that a marriage or a husband or wife is going to solve any issues that you have any

anything that you're carrying with you. You don't want to take that into a marriage, right? You've got any addictions, anything like that. And I say this because this generation it seems to be is the mentally the most fragile generation that we've probably ever seen. You know, this is the generation where we have, you know, just off the charts level of depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, self harm, and Muslims have it too. We're not immune. If it were your Instagram and tik tok collapse, okay, it's game over. Right? So that's what I would say the first thing, learn your deen and get healthy and choose a healthy partner, understand what it means to be a wife, understand what it

means to be a husband and actively learn and cultivate those qualities within you. Unfortunately, it's something that it's not really spoken about. What does it mean to be a wife, I was thinking to myself if I was to do a video, for example, you know, all you life material. I don't actually think that a lot of young people could even say what wife material is, you know what I mean, husband material, I think people know kind of what husband material is okay, I need to provide and protect, you know, whatever. But wife material, I think a lot of people are confused, because we've got our own way of valuing ourselves as women, that has nothing to do with being a wife, and has nothing to

do with what men are looking for when they look for a wife, right? So so these are some of the conversations to have with yourself. Main thing is, be healthy, look for someone healthy to build with, and make a commitment that is based on something bigger than yourselves. It's not just a pleasure thing. It's not just a fun thing. It's not just like a good time thing. It's not like, tick tock. It's not like Pinterest. It's a commitment. And insha Allah, Allah will bless you with joy and happiness and good times, but it will come at a cost. You have to sacrifice you have to understand that and be prepared to do that in sha Allah and just make a decision to say, healthy children will

come from me. You know, a healthy lineage is going to come from me and mine in sha Allah and I'm going to do everything in my power to ensure the health of my family unit and those who come up often inshallah, we have 10 100,000 50,000 people who've made that decision and are on that path. So can I look how it would affect our communities, we would change the game completely.

lawanna precious advice and you've killed two birds with one stone that was, can you tell us where we can see that we'll read some of your books. So where are you on social media? Well, we can see some of your kind of videos or any programs that you're doing for young men, young women, women in particular, I know you do a lot of stuff where can we get that stuff?

I'm on all the platforms Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube name a B, Robert. And all my books are available on Amazon also just search name a B, Robert and you will find all 25 of them that hamdulillah fantastic, Mashallah, you've done a great job and really had a enjoyable and fruitful conversation review. Hopefully we'll do it another time. And for those who are watching at home, we've we have kind of, maybe you could argue diverted a little bit from the remit. But a lot of these issues, which have been discussed today really do affect the Muslim community and they do need to be spoken about and I think

many if not most, especially on this channel agree. Sister name has done a wonderful job in tackling those issues. Until next time, Somali