Mustafa Umar – Gender Differentiation in Revealed Texts
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The speakers discuss the use of title Islamic texts in the Bible and the importance of gender differentiation, deeds, and physical and mental differentiation between men and women. They also touch on the definition of equitable deeds and the importance of achieving universal childcare and universal universal childcare for women. The speakers explain the concept of ranges and the importance of achieving equality, while also discussing the impact of men's and women's salaries on women and the misunderstandings of the gap between salaries and wages.
AI: Summary ©
The topic today is gender differentiation
particularly in Islamic texts. And this is a
very important point
because what we find is that we find
the Islamic texts,
when we say Islamic texts, let me define
that first of all. First, we're talking about
the Quran. So verses in the Quran which
talk about the male and the female, talks
about men and women.
We find hadith texts, the statements and teachings
of the prophet Muhammad salallahu alayhi wa sallam
peace be upon him also talk about male
and female.
And then potentially you can even talk about,
Islamic texts as being commentaries
on the Quran or,
potentially, you know, books of Islamic law written
by Muslim scholars.
But those really don't fall into the category
of like the source foundational Islamic text. So
we're focusing primarily on Quran and hadith.
The reason why this is really important to
talk about, first of all, is our context.
The context in which we live is,
we find that people look at the Islamic
texts of the Quran and hadith in particular
and they try to read in different notions
or different ideas
of
gender that they have depending on their own
background and depending on their own,
context in society.
So what ends up happening is you have
this
offensive,
defensive taking place,
when Muslims
or non muslims are looking at these texts.
So they're looking at how the Quran is
spoken about the male, how the Quran is
spoken about spoken about females.
And usually because we live in a Western
society, and I say we coming from America,
but Qatar is kind of a Western society,
I guess.
You can say, I mean the fact that
we're speaking in English,
but from an institute that is,
from the east quote unquote,
Qatar
shows the effect at least of westernization,
of having a western language actually being the
medium of discourse
from an organization,
where, you know, all of the people who
work for it, they're all fluent in English
as well. Right? So so even if it's
not a western, country per se,
the effect of,
of western languages and western culture plays a
role, a very important role. So when I
say when I say we, I mean, you
know, the the influence of western discourse,
on Islam
is important in our context that we live
in. So you have
people looking at the genders
being mentioned
in the Quran and in the hadith
and you find certain arguments come about. And
one of the discussions that comes about is
this discussion of equality,
which is something very important in Western discourse
when it comes to gender. The importance of
equality,
is is is paramount and it's, part of
all of these discussions. So I'll come back
to that point in a moment.
So because that is
part and parcel of our discussion, it's part
and parcel of the situation in which we
live in, it's very important to discuss the
idea of equality in Islam with respect to
genders and look at why does gender differentiation
actually exist in the text of Islam and
what does Islam say about that?
So we could start with the idea of
equality. What does Islam say about the genders
with respect to
equality in particular?
Well, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says in the
Quran in chapter 3 verse 195, he
says,
He says then
he responded to them or their Lord responded
to them and said,
Lord meaning God Allah responded and said,
I will not
allow
the works
of
any
anyone to be lost or to be in
vain or to not have any effect or
benefit,
whether it is from a male or a
female.
So one of the crucial points we get
from here is if someone was
doubting that, you know what, the good deeds
or even the bad deeds,
of a male or female are somehow going
to be differentiated,
this verse removes that differentiation and says no.
In the sight of God, in the sight
of Allah, the deeds of a person are
considered to be the same. In terms of
one person performs a deed of charity, the
other person performs the same deed of charity,
they have equal value.
So what that means is if we look
at it from the framework of Islam,
from an Islamic perspective,
the most important part of life
is fulfilling your purpose in creation of of
doing good deeds, earning the pleasure of Allah,
trying to get to paradise, trying to avoid
hellfire. So from that from that perspective,
we could say from a spiritual perspective,
the spiritual status
or the humanly status,
of a male or the purpose of being
human from a male and female is the
same. They're equal. There's no differentiation between them.
So from that perspective,
there's inequality of the genders in Islam. In
Islam, which is built upon,
a verse of the Quran and many verses
of the Quran.
Another verse it says,
O people.
We have created you from a male and
from a female.
And we have created
from you
groups and peoples so that you can get
to know one another.
That the most honorable you, the most honorable
among you in the sight of God is
the one who is the most pious, the
most righteous.
Allah is the knowing and
the informed.
So what this verse basically talks about is
it says that the most
honorable of you, the most noble of you
in the sight of Allah
is the one who has the most taqwa
or the one who has the most righteousness,
the one who is the most mindful of
God. So if you look at it from
that perspective, right? So the first verse is
telling us that spiritually
or humanly at the fundamental human purpose level,
we find male and female
being equal. And equal using the word equal
here. In this verse, we're seeing that
it says the only way you can differentiate
yourself with all these different groups and people
and races and tribes and everything, and that
includes genders,
any potential differentiation that could exist
in the human race,
what do we find over here is it
says the only way to really differentiate
is through that righteousness. So
doesn't it meaning that the ability
to gain righteousness
or to lose righteousness
is equal across the board and is equal
across across the genders as well. So what's
interesting about that is that that concept of
Taqwa or that righteousness
is not something that is visible.
You see, if it was race, it's something
that's visible. It's perceptible. We can we can
we can see it. We can we can
feel it almost. Right? Someone has physical differentiation.
Even wealth differentiation is somewhat perceptible,
you know. You can kind of have a
feel for how much wealth the person is
gonna have. But when it comes to taqwa,
it's something which is in the heart. So
it's not perceptible.
You cannot even perceive it in any way.
So if it's not visible and people cannot
perceive it, then that means only God can
judge that. So if this is the only
factor of differentiation
between human beings that's legitimate and valid from
an Islamic perspective
and on top of that it is something
that is not visible,
it means that there's no basis for discrimination
at the fundamental level from an Islamic perspective
because no one can measure that besides God.
No one can measure that besides Allah.
So that is an important part and that's
why there's other verses in the Quran 449-5332
that basically says,
Don't ascribe purity to yourselves.
Don't claim that you're righteous or pure. You're
not allowed to do that. You're not allowed
to go and say from an Islamic perspective
that, you know, I am righteous or God
loves me or I know that, you know,
I'm doing good deeds because you don't know
what you're you don't know what you have.
It's almost like,
I like to give like the, you know,
those video games. You ever played a video
game? You have like the 2 player game
and then they're like there's a score, you
know, on the side. Even those fighting games
and stuff. I'm trying to, you know, appeal
to all genders here. You know, I know
sisters don't play as many fighting games, right?
But you have like the score and you
have like the energy. You have like points
on each side, right? So like those points,
each human being has points, right? But the
thing is in life it's hidden. You have
like a point counter up here, like above
you floating up here but nobody knows how
many points the other person has and how
many points the other person has lost. So
the
criteria for making a judgment and saying, Well,
you have this many points and I have
this many points. It's not allowed. So it's
interesting what Islam did was it says people
differentiate
based upon historically, right? They differentiate based upon
race, based upon wealth, based upon the someone
is free or someone is a slave. They
differentiate based upon tribe. And they used to
differ And they differentiated based upon gender as
well. Many societies would do that. But what
Islam came and said the only basis for
differentiation
is the one factor that is invisible to
everyone else and no one can ever know
it. So therefore, there's no basis for that
discrimination.
Alright. So this is a interesting point. And
then,
I'm gonna skip a few points here because
we're limited on time. But, there's other verses
that talk about the equality, of human being,
human beings.
Let's move on. So the next section is
not just equality
but
now that we've established that there's an inherent
equality of genders between male and female,
we also have to realize that when it
comes to human beings,
when it comes to human beings, forget just
gender. Right? But when it comes to human
beings, there are inherent qualities that differ.
People are created with different inherent qualities
and people have different acquired qualities, right? So
this whole nature versus nurture discussion whenever it
comes to
gender issues or or so many other issues,
these things exist. People acknowledge
that people are inherently created with different abilities,
right? So there's inherent qualities, there's acquired qualities.
What are the inherent qualities? Some people are
physically born with a little bit more physical
strength than others. So some people will be,
you know, their muscle mass is just not
gonna be the same as the muscle mass
of somebody else, Right? So what's gonna happen
is, you know, there has to be a
room for differentiation.
I don't know if anyone's heard of UFC
or MMA, Ultimate Fighting Championship and all that.
You know, wrestling,
any sports that involve a lot of muscle
or strength or something like that, there's always
different weight categories.
That's a form of discrimination technically. Right? Legally.
But why is there discrimination? Because they realize
that there's inherent qualities that people are born
with that differ. So some people are in
a really heavy weight range like, Muhammad Ali,
you know, rakimahullah.
He was heavyweight. Right? Heavy heavyweight.
And then you have all these other people,
they're like featherweights and stuff like that. I
don't know Prince so and so, whatever his
name was. He's some boxer or something like
that. I don't know if you guys follow
this. I don't.
But you have you have to put them
in different care categories
because everyone understood
that they have been created in a different
way.
So that happens when it comes to physical
strength. It even happens when it comes to
wealth, right? People are born into wealth as
well. It's not only acquired. So it could
be acquired wealth that people get from the
life opportunities they're given and it could be
wealth that has been inherited from,
their family members or gifted from from somebody
else or whatever it may be. So you
have these differentiation. You have weak and strong
in society. You have young and old. You
have poor and rich.
And what happens is there's this diversity that
exists in terms of both inherent qualities and
acquired qualities,
exists for 2 main reasons. The primary reason
is Allah tells us in the Quran that
it is a
test, right? Because Allah is testing people with
the qualities that they've been given to see
how they're going to act within the circumstances
that have been given. So people who have
wealth,
they're going to be tested with how they're
going to spend that wealth. Are they going
to be miserly? Are they gonna hold all
the money and spend it just on themselves?
People who are not given wealth, they're gonna
be tested by how they respond and how
they react with the wealth that they're not
given.
So are they gonna be patient? Are they
gonna, you know, try to, you know, work?
Are they going to try to, you know,
do something? You know, all of these things.
So the test
differs
depending on people's circumstances.
The secondary reason
according to Alama ibn Ashur in Istafsir,
he says that
if people were all the same, right, if
they if they were the same across the
board then they would not actually be in
need of each other. So another additional wisdom
for actually having this differentiation
is so that people will have to support
one another Not just as a test from
Allah because of what they're doing, but also
to make sure that you have people supporting
one another so that they build what's called
a community
and a family is a type of community.
So there would be no concept of community
if you were to put the opposite case.
Let's just everyone was equal across the board.
There would be no intrinsic need for other
people. So the ability to establish a community,
the ability to have,
reliance
or strong bonds within family
would actually deteriorate. So these concepts would not
be there
had people not been created with different inherent
qualities
and had people not had the opportunity to
have different
acquired qualities.
So when we look at all of that,
we can take,
an example
of these two words that we use. So
when it comes to gender, we talked about
first of all equality
of the genders.
When it comes to
their fundamental humanity, their purpose of life. But
there's a different term that needs to be
used now. So first we had equality in
Islam.
Now we have a new term called
equity. It's not here, but I'm gonna write
it down. And it's a very important term
to differentiate.
Like this marker
and this marker are not equal because one
of them has more ink than the other
and this marker
suits the job better. So there's equality
and there's
equity.
There we go. Is that right? Yes. So
the difference is equality, if we look at
it from a perspective of mathematics, what you're
gonna find is that
if you have the number 2 on this
side of the equation,
right, in order for both sides of the
equation to be equal, you have to have
a number 2 here.
Right?
But
if you have a variable here let's just
add a variable here. Just add a variable
here. You add it over here.
Okay.
Now,
are both sides
of the are both sides of this equation,
are they equal?
Yes.
Depends on the variables. Right? You do you
have an equal sign there.
So I'll be saying because of the equal
sign. Right? So it depends on what you're
gonna put in the variable. So the way
equity works is whatever you add to this
side of the equation,
you have to add to the other side
of the equation. You can add different things
on the side of the equation as long
as they balance out, right? So now if
I add this and I say, Okay. Hold
on. I'm gonna add a 1 here. Plus
1 and I'm gonna add a 2 here.
Now what?
Are they still equal?
The equal sign is there. Alexander said because
the equal sign is there, we know it's
equal
as long as you put in the correct
x and the correct y.
But now the question is, is the x
and are the x and the y equal?
No. They're not in this case, right? So
equity basically means that they're equal in the
sense as long as you keep on adding
things to both sides but the variables,
you can have a differentiation. The numbers on
one side are not equal to the numbers
on the other side but at the end
of the day, they equal out. That's the
difference between equity and equality. And when it
comes to the idea of equal when we
talk about gender equality in Islam, sometimes it's
better to use the term gender equity in
Islam because
there is an inherent
difference
of
qualities that exist between the genders. So people
are gonna have I'm gonna skip a few
parts. People are gonna have different, you know,
inherited traits. They're gonna have different acquired traits.
Right? So
what is,
let's take one example before we jump into
gender. Right? So let's take,
people who have acquired wealth, people who have
inherited
wealth. Right? Versus people who have inherent wealth.
The differences,
right? Between someone who has a lot of
money and a little bit money. Should we
differentiate between them? Should we discriminate between them
when it comes to,
giving them
equal opportunity
for getting a job.
Should we?
We should not. Okay. Why not?
Why not? If they qualify for the job.
Okay.
No no discrimination.
It's on merit, not wealth. It's on merit.
It's not on wealth. Okay. So that's from
their perspective. From the company's perspective,
it's also from their merit. So from their
side, it's merit. And from the company's side,
the company wants to, you know, accomplish whatever
it can. It just matters what whatever the
person has to bring. Right? So we don't
differentiate. Right? How about
should we differentiate
between
people and their wealth when it comes to
taxes?
In terms of how much money we charge
them?
Depends on Monica says
yes. Yes, they should.
Anyone disagree?
Well, depends on the policy. Depends on the
I know. Qatar is a different situation. I'm
talking from I'm talking about from an American
perspective. There's like no tax in Qatar, right?
So As a percentage
collected from people who have wealth is the
same for everybody then. So let's put taxes
aside. Oh, okay. How about when it comes
to giving charity? Should we just
You you have a
there is a principle
about,
having
higher rates of taxation
for the wealthy
and lower rates of taxation.
If you have the same
percentage,
it's gonna be unequal. Alright. So so so
so the So you you mentioned a really
good point. She said if we had a
different percentage
of taxation for the wealthy and the poor,
it's gonna be unequal.
But probably what you meant to say, right,
what what you actually were thinking when you
said it's unequal,
we know it's unequal. Obviously,
you know, what you're saying is a different
if we if we had the same percentage,
it would be unequal.
What's wrong with it being unequal?
But it's unequal to begin with.
You may introduce policies to reduce the inequality.
Mhmm. Right? So you have progressive taxation. Right.
Right. But but you're agreeing with the idea
that there's a different tax levels for the
wealthy and for the poor? Well, again, it
comes back to You're agreeing with the idea.
Right? Oh. Yes. Okay. That's I wanna be
clear. Yes. Right. Not not on the basis
of what you're
trying to put words into my mouth. No.
No. I'm not trying to do that.
I was just trying to build up one
point that I was coming to anyways.
So what I was trying to say is
that the the wording which is used, right,
intentionally or unintentionally,
was that it's unequal.
But probably what you were trying to say
was that this achieves more justice,
right? When you have a different tax
brackets for the wealthy and for the poor,
right? And what's happened today in the discourse
is that we have confused
the words equal
with
fairness, with justice.
Right? And the problem is is that the
goal
is not to reach equality.
The ultimate goal is to reach justice
and we're hoping that in many cases equality
will result in justice
but not necessarily. It's always going to happen
that way. Right? So this is where one
of the problems that we encounter is. And,
Ibn Ashur mentions again in his tafsir, he
says
that
the idea of equality
in legislation, the idea of equality in establishing
laws is the underlying principle
but it can be overlooked
when there's a
necessity. Right? So what does he mean by
that? What he means is that whenever you
have a legal ruling, whether it's normal law
or whether it's Islamic law or the Sharia
or something like that,
if you have a differentiated
characteristic because people have different characteristics. Right? Inherent
or acquired, it doesn't matter.
If you have a differentiated
characteristic
and that's gonna cause a conflict between
human equality
and human justice, the justice that we're trying
to achieve, then you need to take that
into consideration
and abandon the equality, which should have been
the default, and go with what is gonna
be reach justice.
Right? So what's gonna happen is every time
you have an opportunity, right, you say, okay.
People who are rich and poor, we don't
discriminate between them when it comes to job
opportunities. Right? Companies going to hire. It's it's
unjust to discriminate between them. Why? Say, well,
because it's not equal. We use the word
equal. But in reality, what we mean is
it wouldn't be just. It wouldn't be fair
to discriminate between them because they should both
have the same opportunity
because that's that's how we define fairness. Right?
Let me just finish the point and then
I'll come to you. But when it comes
to taxation
or when it comes to charity in Islam
like Zakah,
right? It's not gonna be the same amount
is gonna be given by every single person.
It depends on how much money you have.
So we differentiate.
Why do we differentiate? It's not equal anymore.
There's inequality
in taxation.
There's inequality
in charity.
In Zakat in particular, right? Why does the
inequality exist?
Because
the purpose was to achieve justice
and this inequality would have led to injustice.
So when equality is going equality in legislation,
in the rule is going to lead to
injustice,
we override the principle of equality
and we go with what is going to
achieve justice. This is what Ibn Ashoor is
basically saying in terms of his argument.
Is that similar to the idea of positive
discrimination
or what I think in the United States
is called affirmative action,
whereby
the principle of equality of opportunity
has a result
of the same,
in in inequalities
in terms of achievement.
If you if you everybody starts at the
same point,
but some are disadvantaged Mhmm. They're gonna still
be disadvantaged
at the end of the race if we
wanna Exact be exactly. So that you give
some
more of an opportunity,
that is you'd be positive. So for example,
in a job job application,
2 people, a male and a female, for
example, who are equal in terms of merit
Mhmm.
You then choose the female over the male
as a form of positive discrimination,
the same with,
issues of race in the United States Right.
Which creates its own problems, but the the
the principle
That's exact that that that is exactly the
principle. That's precisely the principle. So for those
of you who don't know about affirmative action,
that's exactly the way that it works.
Assuming that the presumption
of the presumption and the outcome
actually does yield justice, Right? Assuming that's the
case. So that's the way it does work.
Alright. So very good. So,
so it would so basically what he's saying
is that it would be unfair to apply
the same rules to all people when there
are differentiated characteristics.
So there's inherent and acquired qualities
whether If if people had acquired qualities, we
can say well that is something that happened
later. It could have been different. But inherent
qualities becomes the bigger issue when it comes
to gender discourse.
If there are inherent qualities within people and
they've been created this way and if we
were to apply all the same rules across
the board, then what's gonna end up happening
is you're gonna end up with the type
of injustice that takes place to either gender.
And that injustice
is the reason for the
differentiated gender rules within Islamic texts.
So I'll start with the biological,
differences in gender and then I'm gonna leave
it to, you know, Sherkri to,
go through some of the details of the
text and figure out why,
why those specific rules exist. So
biological differences in gender
are something that pretty much people understand
on intuitive level.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has said in the
Quran that, you know, from everything we've created,
2 mates, you know, there's male and female
have been created.
Human beings, they cannot reproduce without the presence
of a male and female under normal circumstances,
unlike bacteria or something else. So there's a
wisdom in that. There's basically there's a wisdom
in why Allah has created human beings as
males and females.
Now if we look at the differentiation
beyond just the physical differentiation,
we understand
that there is a hormonal differentiation.
And a hormonal differentiation
actually causes
a differentiation
in behavior or we can say in the
psychology
or the mentality
of a male and female because of the
type of hormones that they're usually going to
be or naturally going to be,
endowed with. And if you find that when
there's an interference
in these hormones and other chemical processes within
the body,
of a male or female, you find that
interfering within this normal hormonal,
regulation,
is gonna cause serious changes in each gender.
And you can actually see the re you
can see the manifestation of the differences,
in particular aspects,
of their body. Whether not only in terms
of, like, voice and, you know, physical features,
but even in terms
of their emotional states or their their psychology.
So there's so what happens is that
there are physical differences but there are psychological
differences.
And one of the problems that's happened, I
don't know what it's like in Qatar or
people who are coming from elsewhere, but I
can speak particularly for California,
is that, you know, the
intellectual trends
of Western society or Western society, I'm mentioning
it because it's had a pot, a very
strong impact
on much of the world today.
And especially the language we're speaking in is
English. So therefore, this, like I said, this
Western influence. We're speaking English. The Qataris are
speaking in English. The Qatari professors all know
English. So because of this, Western role, it's
important to look at some of the intellectual
trends and movements that have affected
the perception
of
gender
differentiation
when it comes to just the the human
being. So Western feminism is particularly one of
those strong intellectual movements.
So this is a fairly recent phenomenon. You
know, the term feminism, you know, feminism was
coined in France in 18/37.
It's about 200 years old.
And in 2015,
there was a poll across the world
actually, where they wanted to see how many
people identify as feminists. Alright? Let me just
define feminism real quick. The feminism has many
different definitions
but it's basically,
it's basically a movement which is advocating for,
the rights of women
in different spheres. Whether it be work, whether
it be
opportunity, whether it be so many other things.
There's different waves of feminism. There's a 1st
wave, 2nd wave, 3rd wave, different ways of
classifying feminism.
But it's somewhere along that line. So without
going into details, I'm assuming everyone has at
least heard of the concept of feminism a
little bit. But to clarify it, 2015
poll, they surveyed,
people around the world and in America they
found out that how many percentage of people
identified as Feminists? What percentage would you think?
70%.
70%.
Good guess.
Anyone?
40 to 50%. 40 to 50%. Only men
or women?
Men and women, they surveyed both.
Combined.
40.
40? Okay. Let's let's remove the men and
just say America women.
American women, what percentage would identify as feminists?
20. So
he'd say 40 and then down to 20?
Let's gamble. Let's gamble.
Very good. He's the closest so far. It's
actually 18%.
18%.
Which is really interesting,
because people thought the numbers would be much
higher. But then they asked another question. So
what percentage of you believe in equality for
women? And of course there's a There's such
a subtle difference between feminism and equality for
women because feminism claims to be trying to
achieve equality for women. So what percentage was
that?
How many people? What percentage people said, Yeah.
We believe in equality for women?
60%.
85%.
85%.
So so from 85% here to 18% here,
right? The only country in the world
where more men claim to be feminist than
women
was Poland.
So at 21%
and 17%, which is interesting. I don't know
what's going on. They were lying.
They were lying.
So what you find is you you know,
it's really feminism is a huge topic but
without defining it clearly,
without going into the details and the nuances
of it, we could say there's 4 very
important works that have influenced American feminism in
particular.
That have had a role
on,
had a role in shaping
the idea
of
the,
what role the psychological
differences
between a man and woman should play
or actually
exist in society. So that's the whole point
I'm I'm talking about. Everyone recognize that men
and women are physically different. That's not a
very difficult thing for people to acquire. Right?
But when it comes to psychological difference, people
say well, wait a minute. What are you
talking about? You know?
Is that really true? Is that really it?
So what has happened is that these intellectual
movements have had a role in downplaying
the psychological
or emotional
differences between male and female. So among them,
you have 4 main authors. You have Mary
Wollstonecraft.
She wrote A Vindication of the Rights of
Woman 17/92
in England. You have Simone de Beauvoir. Beauvoir.
Is that right? Okay. Pronounced some French word
correct after 3 years in France. The called
The Second * 1949.
Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique 1963
in the USA.
Very influential book. Probably the most influential book,
for women in America.
And Germaine Greer,
The Female Eunuch in 1969.
So what's happened is you Australian. Australia. Yes.
Australian.
Are you Australian?
There you go. Yes. So Germaine was Australian.
Yes.
So
but what's interesting about her I'm gonna talk
more about her. So she wrote in 1969
but out of these people, she is one
of the ones who, 30 years later in
1999, wrote The Whole Woman and changed her
entire perspective and said, We were wrong in
the feminism that we were promoting.
And one of the points that she makes
is she says, We were
downplaying the psychological
differences between men and women and we weren't
looking at the fact that these differences really
exist. Psychological, emotional differences. And she's saying that
this has hurt women more
than it hurt men. So we thought we're
gonna liberate all these women in the 60s
and all that stuff and, in fact, we
ended up harming women more. So there's more
suicide among women. They're getting surgeries. They're getting
this. They're made up cosmetic industry. They're being
used. * has gone up. She basically says
a really interesting point. She says, We tried
to,
we tried to liberate women but we moved
them from one form of dependency to another
form of dependency.
They used to be dependent on their husbands
and upon men and now they're dependent on
counselors, psychologists, and drugs. Alright. This is kind
of like her summary of what she's saying.
So what happened is now you have these
different, movements called like difference feminism where they
say, No. We when we deny the difference
between men and women, we are actually doing
a disservice to women in particular. Since our
goal is to help women, we're actually harming
women more. So what her argument is we're
actually
causing injustice
by making the old equality argument.
So, which is kind of the point that
I was trying to make in the beginning
is that equality does not always lead to
justice. That's what Ibn Ashoor is saying, right?
So he's saying that when equality is going
to lead to injustice, we abandon the principle
of equality
and we go with something else that's differentiated,
you know, legislation
that is going to result in actual justice
that we were trying to achieve in the
first place. Right? So,
because of that we have all of these,
different,
you know,
characteristics. So we have, you know, physical muscle
mass is different between men and women. They
have, you know, men have deeper voices. They
tend to be taller. They have women have
*. Men have facial hair, etcetera, etcetera.
It's 6 weeks in the fetus. The male
gets this large dose of testosterone
that comes into the body.
And
beginning from there, you find these major differentiation
that takes place between men and women. But
on the psychological
level, we find different things that take place.
Some of, you know, most of this is
solid. Some of it is still experimental. But
I'm just gonna quote the stuff that has
really been, proven in the peer reviewed literature.
Right?
In the little bit of time that I
have.
So, you know, they say men tend to
work on when men work on visual spatial
tasks,
their testosterone
tends to surge.
And which means that they're gonna be more
inclined to seek work
as pilots, as carpenters, in the subjects of
mathematics,
in the sciences.
This is not to say that women are
not capable or they cannot change or they
cannot, you know, adjust their behavior to be
in those fields. It means that there's an
inclination
from a biological level
that men are tending more to that for
this reason.
They say that boys are less able to
detect fear in the faces of people
which is potentially why they might be inclined
towards rowdiness when they're boys and they say,
Oh, you know, boys will be boys on
the playground and they're gonna be a little
bit rougher and all of that. There's there's
reasons for that that's intrinsic in them. It's
not something that is simply socialized.
But what's happened is Western feminism or most
strands of it
has argued that men need to become socialized.
They need to be socialized to be more
like women and women need to be more
socialized to be like men. And therefore, we
can actually, you know, balance or we could,
bridge this gender gap which exists
within our society.
Whereas in Islam we find that, you know,
Allah is talking about gender differentiation
or not only in legislation
but you find the absolute equality that we
talked about in the beginning. But then he
also says
that the male is not like the female
and there is a difference between the 2
and there's no need to try to bridge,
this gap between the 2 of them. So
I'll end with one,
example.
Alright? And this example is
kind of like a warning
of how our own culture
can cause us to
misunderstand
an issue
that's an issue that's not directly related to
Islam. But if we misunderstood this issue,
on a public level, it can translate into
a misunderstanding on Islam. So let me give
you an example. How many of you heard
of the wage gap between the genders?
All of you have heard of the wage
gap, right? So what's the what's the what
is the wage gap?
75¢ total?
Close. 78¢ to a dollar. Right? So what
does that mean?
It means that for every dollar a man
earns, a woman earns 78¢.
Okay? So
you have a comment. I see your hand,
like, slowly coming up. I would like to
define
our culture. But this is very subjective when
you say our culture. Yeah. Yeah. You're talking
about Islamic culture or the Western culture? When
I say when I mean Western culture. Okay.
Yeah. Like the way I define in the
beginning yeah. Yeah. Western culture.
Yeah.
Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. So culture or
economy?
That's a good point.
They both kind of come into each other.
You're right. It's a good point. I'm really
loud. So, so yeah. So from that perspective,
okay? So like when I first heard this,
you know, I heard a Muslim comedian saying
this, but what's the problem with this?
The problem is that the assumption that the
person has in their mind is that
Kenny and Monica for example, they both go
and work at Starbucks,
which is an example. Okay? And Doug.
So
Kenny is making $15 an hour
and Monica is making $12 an hour for
the exact same job,
exact same position,
exact same amount of hours. They both work
weekend or weekdays.
And we're saying, Well, hey, this is this
is completely unfair.
Right? That's the assumption that most people when
they hear about the wage gap, that's what
the assumption is, right? But that's actually misleading
because that's not what the wage gap is.
So the figure that's quoted,
right, has actually now, according to even many
feminists who are who are actually define themselves
as feminists, they say we need to stop
quoting this statistic because it's a false statistic
and it's misleading
and we're actually doing ourselves disservice because when
people realize the data behind it, the data
has just been manipulated to make it seem
like that's the case but it's not the
case. So the reality is it's an aggregate
of all wages across the country between men
and women. So what they don't factor in
is that they're not in the same role.
Men and women don't work the same amount
of hours per week, right? So this assumption
is there. So men are working more hours
on average.
They're not in the same role, they did
not look at the difference in pay
and,
all of these other things. So let's say
you have an engineer.
Man and woman. 1 is working 70 hours
a week. 1 is working 40 hours a
week. 1 is working weekends and 1 is
working weekdays and just clocks out. Their salaries
are different. Can you say, You know what?
Look at this unfairness. They have the same
position, they're both engineers
but their salaries are different. That would be
very misleading to present that figure. So what
ends up happening now is you have people
who look at that and then you go
on the flip side and you say well
let's look at the other gaps that exist.
There's an education gap. Right? Women graduate much
more from college than men. I'm sorry guys.
I don't know why why this is. It's
not surprising to me, you know, since I
run a university I see the same thing.
There's a violent crime gap. Alright? Men are
killed way more than women. So are we
trying to achieve equality in that field as
well? Would we like to see equality there?
I probably not. There's a dangerous job gap.
Men tend to be in all the dangerous
jobs. There's a death in the workplace gap,
right? Men die more in the in the
workplace. There's a life expectancy gap. Women live
3 to 5 years longer than men.
We should probably try to get some equality
in that one, you know.
Right? So what's happening is that the discourse
in our culture, our western culture,
tends to make us think a particular way
which begins to translate into the way in
which we perceive
Islamic texts.
And that
is going to be Shawqi's discussion. So I
was just setting that up for him and
he can continue the rest inshallah.