Mohammed Hijab – Reacting to BBC Reporter Interrogating Hijabi

			Salam aleikum wa rahmatullah better care to brother and sisters and all the stuff of the galleons.
Welcome to another episode.
		

			I would like to thank you for your recent reputation of was that one coat?
		

			Here's the app. If you guys haven't watched it, guys, please go there, I think was the best
reputation down in history. It was it was absolutely epic, with new words. But today, it's something
a bit different is a bit of a controversial topic that's been happening. Now we've been discussing
how we can tackle this I'm going to come from different
		

			venues, angles angles. Yes. So are you ready? This is strange, because I think we waste a lot of
time, you know, talking sometimes unnecessarily local. Yeah. Okay. Let's get right into it. Yep. So
there's a baby, BBC BBC interview, the woman's hour. Yeah. Isn't it ironic, a woman's hour, but look
what she does to a sister, Muslim woman.
		

			How many female imams are there
		

			in the UK at the moment, just because I presume we'll get to this more but representing, of course,
women, which you will do as part of this. How many do we have in Britain? I mean, I think give quick
context. This is the recent. She's
		

			the lead not either one of the Muslim Council of Britain. Yeah. She's the new from a mistaken
		

			issues that she's the head lashes direct. And that was the Muslim Council of Britain. Yeah. Okay.
Yeah. So just imagine you have just been like awarded something. Yeah. You're a champion? Yeah.
Imagine you've done something. And this is how you've been treated? Again, I'm not I wouldn't have a
clue on these numbers, because my role is making sure that we include our affiliates, particularly
women in the work that we are doing and making sure that and we're our structures as well as the
work we do, and are truly representative. So I think that you are sorry, you don't know that. That's
fine, if you don't know. But do do we have female moms in this country? I mean, again, it's not what
		

			are you referring to chaplains? Are you referring to women that lead the prayer were you referring
to and I think what you tell me, I'm genuinely intrigued to know, of course, female priests have
been around for some time. We've also seen that the advent of female rabbis in this country, what
what is the picture for women leading prayer in Britain in, in Muslim communities? Well, I think my
role isn't really to do to key or to examine that part of spirituality. I think we're women want to
make those choices? And we are you know, that these are all religious discussions? Oh, no.
		

			It was just I thought, because the Muslim Council of Britons played such an important role in
getting the number of Muslims for instance, added to the census. I mean, that was done at the turn
of the turn of the century. So we actually knew how many Muslims there were. Do we? Do we have
female their moms? I think what's really important for the Muslim Council of Britain, the work that
we do is actually that it's not about defining, you know, or going into these types of questions
regarding spirituality, but actually looking at how we can benefit our communities, especially given
the pandemic and given the role that everybody needs to be playing. And we will get to we will get
		

			to pandemic, it's quite striking that you can't sort of answer that question. I recognize it's not
to a religious or spiritual role. I don't feel like that's within the parameters of my roles and
responsibilities, especially as you know, the first elected female representative, I would have
asked the man, but I'm asking you,
		

			how do you how do you feel watching but you know, it's, it's not you having to you know, it was more
like not interviewing somebody who's like, I have an interlocutor. And like, if I, if I was speaking
to an atheist, I would be hammering the contingency argument over and over and over and over again,
because I'm trying to catch him.
		

			She's just, you know, become the chairman. chairwoman of a Muslim Council. Yep. And instead of
congratulating, asked him what she's planning on doing. She was no mercy. She was Nope. Do you know?
You don't know. Okay, so there isn't no over six instances, while watching that. How do you feel? I
think there was many fallacies that were committed in that line of interrogation. So the first thing
that I think was fallacious was the false equivalency between Imams and priests and rabbis is false
comparison. Because, yeah, so in, in Christianity, you have ordinance, that they go through a kind
of training program, then they become either priests or whatever it is, depending on the dominant
		

			denomination. In Judaism, we have rabbis, but those individuals, rabbis and priests are usually
trained. They're usually individuals who have authority in the community. So the equivalent in a
Muslim community, especially in Sunni Islam would be something like a Mufti, potentially a chef, and
definitely something like Ireland or a scholar. So an Imam is just someone who leads the prayer. Now
you can have no authority. Like for example, in Ramadan,
		

			you have children.
		

			Leading the prayer. If you have in a house, a mother and a child, that's a male. It's very possible
that the boy leads the mother in prayer, even though she's much more important in the hierarchy,
right? So this, the reason why it's it's wrong question in the first place or it's a false
equivalence is because you're comparing apples and oranges. If you wanted to compare priests with a
group of representatives in the Muslim world, you should compare them with Muslims, etc. Having said
that, though, yeah. If we did do that, I don't know about the comparison. It's actually quite an
interesting question. Definitely. There are female Muftis. Definitely there are female Alchemist
		

			definitely though she hot that she has are Muslim. But in terms of proportion, I don't know why I
will say is this for I forget, is that in the span of 1400 years of Islamic history, right? There
have been hundreds of 1000s of not just scholars of Islam that are female, but we're talking about
prominent scholars who have had a lasting contribution. I'll just give you one reference for that.
So I can I'm Nedley Mohammed, Dr. Mohammed lack of another way has written a book is voluminous,
many different volumes on it's called the Mojave Desert. So it's just actually one subfield called
Hadith, which is transmission and teaching of Hadith. And he catalogues in that 10,000 women 10,000
		

			women in Islamic history, okay? Now, if you compare that like for like, with a woman, while they're
just women, they're just scholars, scholars have just one tradition, one subfield, which is how do
you think so transmission of the prophetic tradition, okay. And in that, for example, some of the
things I found were really astonishing, for example, what he didn't
		

			do in a job because a student and not jobs are quite popular, even the job of the seventh century,
not the one that humbly that.
		

			No, that another one more he didn't even know john, he had, according to the hubby and his biography
400 female teachers now, I want you to imagine we're talking about a seventh century. We're not
we're not being tokenistic. you're mentioning, you know, the Sahaba yet, or the female scholars that
were there at the time of the Prophet. We're talking about seventh century, medieval Arab world. And
this is a play the Muslim world, and a man has, what does it take for a man to have 400 female
educators, it must mean that they are being educated. And and they are given accessibility to be
able to educate. And this is one of many, like 1000s of examples. Okay. The point the point is, is
		

			that now is if there isn't a representation of female scholars now today, in the UK, or wherever is,
is there a problem? I do think there's a problem, I think there's something we need to do to try and
give more accessibility as was the case, by the way, interestingly enough, at the time of a the
Prophet because he he definitely, as mentioned Bahati, he dedicated times and places for educating
women specifically so that they don't miss out. And was the case with the fact that, you know, the
hobbyist was there, and was the case throughout Islamic history. So I do think there's an issue, I
think, but the way that she's she's handled that I think is completely wrong. It shows theological
		

			illiteracy, she doesn't know the differences between priests and islands, and so on. One thing I
want to just touch upon before moving into that area, because there is the mistreatment of females.
In today's time. Yes, I'll go to that.
		

			I thought you would come from this angle. Yeah, maybe Yeah. But for example,
		

			notice of about Who are you to come and tell us and implement? And let's suppose there is no female
in mums? So what? back like, we need to come to this angle, because we shouldn't be just this,
they're gonna come and say to us, why is it no female profits? Yeah. So the thing is, look, and this
is where the system was kind of, and I understand where you're coming from, you know, we're in the
dour. Sometimes we try to, you know, shut down things we shouldn't. There are no female demons. Our
religion doesn't cover that and what, but the thing is, and well, who are you to come and tell me
that I have to come to your standards, which by the way is a false equivocation because you're
		

			claiming because there's no demand means there's no scholars, which you just debunked. Yeah, but
we're seeing like to to herb Ward paradigm. Does she have any right to come here? And tell me as a
Muslim woman who is a chairman of the Muslim Council of Britain to come and tell us number one, why
don't you? Why don't
		

			you have rabbis and other What was she say? So Emma, Bonnie was admitted she didn't believe in
female rabbis. yet. So Pamela Yani. Look at hypocrisy. Yeah, rabbis. Go go speak to Jewish lady and
go question them but they don't even have a right to divorce. Yeah, I know. It's different topic.
But the thing is, can you imagine you're just pressing on the issue and who are you and we just have
a backbone when like there's something the original teach, Allah said it Holla Holla so don't
explain nothing to you. Are you? Yes, you are you unless there's no, there's no, there are no female
imams. This is religion, no family. No, no currency.
		

			Once again, just because that is not allowed in the religion. And just because they're not female
prophets. Do we see female as any less should they be? Female a month leading men? believing men?
No. Oh, hitting my nose.
		

			But let the inferior No, of course not. Look, there are things that women are entitled to them and
we don't have a second wave feministic paradigm. And for those who want to know what the difference
is between the Islamic paradigm and the second wave feminist paradigm, there are many lectures that
I've done on this the fundamental flaws of feminism, Islam, the dark phase of feminism, just put
these titles in the, in the search bar, you'll find my, my, my lectures there. It's a paradigmatic
problem in the sense that you're now imposing a paradigm or something else. This is another problem,
right? Obviously, here,
		

			in terms of there's two different things going on at the same time, number one, female scholars are
what are being discussed here? Yes. So this this female Imam thing is a red herring. Yes. Would you
respect someone praying and bending because our prayer has all kinds of positioning, a woman bending
over in front of men and kneeling over and it seems inappropriate from our perspective because of
physiological anatomical differences? And we think and we have good evidence that that could disturb
somebody, okay, especially a man, physiologically, if they're praying, and what's the evidence of
that? Look, you've got four female schools and all male male schools in your country, why don't you
		

			go on questions about women?
		

			One second, summer, why don't you go and question a head teacher of an all female school and say,
why is it that you allow such discrimination to exist? The reason why they don't
		

			comment on that is because they've allowed as part of the culture even though really and truly, it's
something which opposes in many ways. second wave feministic discourses. So the reasoning behind it
if you ask those who advocate for it is distraction, physiological, psychological distraction. So a
woman or girls in a school together, there'll be less distracted boys with that and vice versa. For
a man's you know, the, the way a man is created? Yeah. Recently, I came across something on YouTube
called shortsea. And it was talking about, you know, this female, a woman
		

			hostess is in the airplane. Yeah. The closing the door. So I fought like closing the what's like off
with something, you know, these interesting videos, man, is there a way to close the door? Okay, I
watched the video, then. But they weren't dressing up properly. I was still wearing a skirt. But
then I went to the comment section. That would be no, no, no, no, what I'm trying to say is that
they they won't relax. You know?
		

			They would dress. Yeah, yeah, you can see, I was looking for something at the dock was also in
there. Okay. Is there a way of closing the door? Yeah, I went to the comment section. Oh, and I see
comments of, Oh, I didn't notice the door. I didn't notice the door. Exactly. Get the * out of
them. And they know it.
		

			Yeah, they know, they know. And so this equality from Islamic perspective, and there is our we have
our own version of equality is not identical. Exactly. It's not identical. It doesn't mean that men
and women have the same roles and responsibilities in all cases. And though, for example, war, like
it's not mandated upon women, at the end of the day, and this is a very if you think about the
reality of war. War is the case of men, okay, for the most part history, not just in Islamic
history, but cross culturally, going out and sacrificing their lives or potentially sacrificing
their lives. The point of the matter is, someone goes extreme to save a woman yet, most of this,
		

			this is where second wave feminism kind of breaks down because you start thinking about why don't
you campaign for the draft a woman to now be compensated in similar ways that men have been done?
You
		

			can come and see, why am I going to war? Why exactly. There's lots of things right. But if we fail
to identify differences between men and women, then there's going to be all kinds of absurdities
that want to propose from a feminist perspective. I can say, well, there's been there's been 200
years of men being drafted into wars. We need to we need to undo this imbalance. Yes, now we have to
draft women for the next 11 wars for electrical wars, so that we can undo the just injustice. The
point is, once again, the Islamic understanding of equality does not mean identical it so there's a
different paradigm. And if you want to be a sophisticated interlocutor, instead of cross examining
		

			somebody on your worldview and your paradigm, try and understand where they're coming back. I don't
know if this woman is an enemy of Islam, I don't think I don't think so. I think she's just trying
to do her job. Really, I do think, because it's part of the journalistic capacity to try and
interrogate Well, you have to remember, you do have to remember something that when you're speaking
to my phone, let's not talk about our paradigm. Let me speak to Roman for a second. Let's talk about
your paradigm. Because you are a journalist. Yes, you are a journalist who probably is a liberal
with a small L and is trying to do the work of journalists. But the truth of the matter is on your
		

			paradigm, which I'm guessing is a liberal feminist paradigm by the old questioning, you need to make
sure you need to ensure that you're protecting the rights of minorities. And you're not because
there's something called tyranny of the majority. tyranny of the majority is something which is the
dominant people, the dominant group is now kind of assaulting value Otherwise, the minority and that
humanizing them, okay, so it's what needs to be done for me anyways, if I was a liberal, if I was in
your paradigm, I'll be trying to amplify the voices of the minorities so it can kind of create
equilibria
		

			For what would otherwise be a tyranny of the majority, which is a liberal principle. So it doesn't
seem any It doesn't make sense for me to for you to bring a minority someone who's representing a
minority group, or actually a double minority because he's a woman leader, like, you know that
there's not that many of them, generally, and only that in the woman's hour.
		

			Yeah, getting another woman and it doesn't it doesn't make sense for me one second. Yeah, get to
look at a feminist. Yeah, woman's our BBC liberal, you're a woman and you get in a woman and
degrading and meeting her. And you are you're a feminist Get the * out of you, you immediately
		

			to an achievement that she's done in your eyes. Okay. She's become the leader of the Muslim council
meeting. Yeah, instead of upholding and say, you know, you've done a great regime and what you have
to do immediately today, you embarrassed you made it feel like she should never speak to you should
be ashamed of yourself. So you're basically punished her for being a woman? Yes. Yeah.
		

			So So now now as a Muslim woman, go look at that and think, well, if this if this is the entailment
of being a Muslim spokesperson, then maybe it's not something I want to be and Allah says that in
the Quran, what does Allah say in the Koran? What is obviously in the Quran? Yeah, they will never
be pleased with you. has never, so don't feel the sister feel bad for the sister because she's
thinking, Okay, how can I fix this one light? So for me, it was there isn't a handler blind? What?
Yeah. Let's go back to one point here. Again, what I want to finish with this. The reason why I
found that the the the line of questioning was unproductive, not just from the Islamic perspective,
		

			yeah. Because we said, we've got some issues that we need to, like, let's be honest, let's be
honest, in our messages, there are mosques in this country, which don't have access for women. It's
unbelievable. And the Prophet said, let them not MLM such do not do not stop the woman slaves of
Allah, meaning the woman worshipers gone to the mosques of God, how can you How can you facilitate
that? How can you facilitate that when there's not even a space for them to
		

			boycott? It is very sad because of this. Yeah. And the thing is not me. I went to a Masjid when I
told you Yeah, and they said the uncle didn't let the sister come in this space. While I had to go
into Gemma with the sister outside because it was a nightclub. So yeah, so there are problems. There
are problems. And we see that and that's within our own paradigm. Yeah, access, access is limited.
We need to we need to have we need to work within our own paradigm to allow women just like, just
like in the medieval period, and just like in the in the time of the Prophet. Yeah, where access was
was was there, right. And as a result, women were edified and they were edify us. We need to bring
		

			that back. There's no, there's no power. And we have that within our own paradigm. But it's
unproductive. Okay? It's unproductive for a woman who is probably a liberal, probably a feminist, to
go down this line of
		

			questioning, which is not bullying, that which was, number one, alienate Muslim spokespeople, number
to show other women that this is the entailment of being a spokesperson, thereby, you know, acting
as a barrier to entrance to such a thing, if you're, if you're trying to promote women being in
power positions, so called propositions from your liberal paradigm, if you're trying to promote that
this is a very bad way of doing so you should be you should be offering support, and so on. So I
think from our paradigm and your paradigm, you've not achieved anything. And quite frankly, it shows
theological incompetence and illiteracy that you couldn't even know the difference between an Imam
		

			and a priest and a rabbi. And a mom is no way and yes, sometimes imams have pastoral
responsibilities. Sometimes they can have that, but it's not that's not necessarily part of their
job. Sometimes they just go and lead the prayer. This is this is literally the job description
leading the prayer some children do this is not equivalent. And so the question should have been how
many Muslim authorities do you have shares or share has in this case, or Alamos or Muftis or so on?
And compare that with the rabbi? And if you do that, by the way, yeah, if you do that across time, I
will, I will promise you, I bet my bottom dollar, that if you do it from the time of the prophet to
		

			this time, no, I'm not talking about 21st century UK. Let's let's do a longitudinal study of the
entire time period. There's no way I'm sorry, there is absolutely no way that you that in the
Christian tradition and the Jewish tradition, there's even I would even go as far as say one 10th.
Yes. And I'm making this claim, one 10th as much representation. Yeah, maybe even that, if I'm
telling you, there's a book with 10,000 names of just one subfield of Islamic Studies. You can't
even go there. You can't even go there with this. We have we have hobbyists that literally preserve
the tradition. So it's the case is closed, you didn't know how to question you didn't know the
		

			implications of the question, and you didn't know what to question. But this is a lesson for all of
us that before you have these interviews on BBC, quite frankly, you need to be ready for that kind
of confrontation number one, and number two, you know, get ready for the Muslim retaliation, because
we shouldn't we should not allow the media bullies. To do this to us. We need to have a voice as
well. I know sisters, I look social media outlets like your channel, my channel and our channels and
so on. This is becoming now
		

			A big way of retaliating yeah which is why you need to subscribe to this channel and LIKE and SHARE
the video
		

			oh my god
		

			yeah inshallah bone sisters, it's very important. The reason we did is because we saw our sister
being bullied and abused, you know she'd been bullied. So share this video with what's his name Mr.
Barrett's barn. It's where my name is. Yep. Okay, send this to her. Okay, she needs to watch this
and re focus her evaluate reevaluate everything that she's going to re evaluate. She's totally well
I should just believe that sister as a feminist somebody from here so promises please share that
with them with the Mr. In short, and hopefully she can fix the ways BBC kept this video down and she
was absolutely humiliation, embarrassment to your standards when you guys are doing so next time to
		

			disturb the galleons. Goodbye