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 hell 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 hell 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